Bettendorf is hosting its first combined public safety open house with the city's fire and police departments on Saturday.Â
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Crews battle a fire at Wallace's Garden Center in Bettendorf on May of 2025.Â
Bettendorf's emergency response team, which responds to incidents such as standoffs, needs separate locker space. So, the department built a makeshift wood locker space with tactical gear in the evidence garage. The garage is heated, but not air conditioned.
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf City Administrator Decker Ploehn got his start at the city as a patrol officer in 1975. When Ploehn started, about three rooms made up the core of the police department. Ploehn pointed to a storage room that used to be the detective bureau, another room that used to be the booking room, and an office space that used to house dispatch and records.Â
- SARAH WATSON
The Bettendorf Police Department's crime lab is a repurposed bathroom from when the building used to be a maintenance garage. The department uses it to examine physical evidence, such as restoring serial numbers on firearms and fingerprint analysis.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Captain Andrew Champion gives a tour of the Bettendorf Police Department Aug. 29, 2025. This briefing room, which can comfortably host about a dozen people, is among the only spaces for training and collaboration in the police department, meaning it is frequently overbooked. In-service training for the entire police department requires training to be broken up into very small groups and repeated.
- SARAH WATSON
In a combination breakroom-storage area in the Bettendorf Police Department, a refrigerator sits next to charging body cameras. There's also a microwave, coffee pot, and sink in the multi-purpose room, as well as a gun safe, keys to police vehicles, and some temporary evidence storage lockers.
- SARAH WATSON
The Bettendorf Police Department currently stores its vehicles outside under a canopy. Capt. Andrew Champion said people have vandalized squad cars and temperature changes are hard on the electronics and equipment in the vehicles. In the proposed new station, the patrol fleet would be in an indoor garage.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf patrol officers process, test, and package evidence, including weapons and drugs, on this cabinet in an office space far from evidence storage. In the black organizers are field test kits for substances such as opioids, meth, cocaine, and weed. The doorway nearby leads to a breakroom. Â
- SARAH WATSON
A coffee maker sits underneath cabinets that house crash documents and abandoned vehicle stickers in the Bettendorf Police Department. Bettendorf leaders say they are using every square foot of the police department and have had to get creative with where they store items.Â
- SARAH WATSON
This is the work station area for patrol officers at the Bettendorf Police Department, seen Aug. 29, 2025. There are six work stations for patrol officers to make follow-up phone calls and do other investigative work. During overlaps in shifts, there could be 12 to 14 patrol officers on duty at a time.Â
- SARAH WATSON
This is the room Bettendorf police uses to obtain breath or urine samples from people suspected of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. For a urine sample, officers must escort the person to a publicly accessible bathroom. The room is also close to an exit and electronics in the room that Capt. Andrew Champion said is not great to leave someone unsupervised with.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Tim Doty, detective and evidence custodian for the Bettendorf Police Department stands in the city's evidence storage area. In recent years, the number of items has grown to more than 12,000 items. In addition to more items coming in, required retention times have grown longer, too.
- SARAH WATSON
In recent years, Bettendorf has hired more female police officers. Pictured is the women's locker room, which has just one stall and no lactation area. Both men's and women's locker rooms in department are the only restrooms in the secure area of the department and locker space is quickly running out.
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf's gun range is a converted semi-trailer. The range is too short to meet state qualifications, so the department must borrow range space from Moline or Davenport. A range required by the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy needs to be 25 yards, and the trailer is about 15 yards short of that.Â
- SARAH WATSON
The records division of the Bettendorf Police Department, seen Aug. 29, 2025. In the current configuration of the combination city hall, police department, and fire department at 1609 State St., employees must cross a publicly accessible lobby to get between the records division and other secure areas of the police department. There's also no egress from the records division other than this door, which creates concerns if someone at the window is being disruptive or violent.Â
- SARAH WATSON
See 21 photos of inside Bettendorf's police department
Bettendorf will put the question to voters of whether to build a $27 million new police station. Here's a look inside Bettendorf's current police department, which leaders say doesn't meet the needs of the force.Â
Bettendorf's emergency response team, which responds to incidents such as standoffs, needs separate locker space. So, the department built a makeshift wood locker space with tactical gear in the evidence garage. The garage is heated, but not air conditioned.
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf City Administrator Decker Ploehn got his start at the city as a patrol officer in 1975. When Ploehn started, about three rooms made up the core of the police department. Ploehn pointed to a storage room that used to be the detective bureau, another room that used to be the booking room, and an office space that used to house dispatch and records.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf stores its evidence in what used to be a maintenance garage.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf Captain Andrew Champion gives a tour Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, of the Bettendorf police station, which is at the combination city hall, police and fire complex at 1609 State Street.Â
- SARAH WATSON
The Bettendorf Police Department's crime lab is a repurposed bathroom from when the building used to be a maintenance garage. The department uses it to examine physical evidence, such as restoring serial numbers on firearms and fingerprint analysis.Â
- SARAH WATSON
The Bettendorf police department's evidence storage is in the city's former maintenance garage.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Captain Andrew Champion gives a tour of the Bettendorf Police Department Aug. 29, 2025. This briefing room, which can comfortably host about a dozen people, is among the only spaces for training and collaboration in the police department, meaning it is frequently overbooked. In-service training for the entire police department requires training to be broken up into very small groups and repeated.
- SARAH WATSON
In a combination breakroom-storage area in the Bettendorf Police Department, a refrigerator sits next to charging body cameras. There's also a microwave, coffee pot, and sink in the multi-purpose room, as well as a gun safe, keys to police vehicles, and some temporary evidence storage lockers.
- SARAH WATSON
The Bettendorf Police Department currently stores its vehicles outside under a canopy. Capt. Andrew Champion said people have vandalized squad cars and temperature changes are hard on the electronics and equipment in the vehicles. In the proposed new station, the patrol fleet would be in an indoor garage.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf patrol officers process, test, and package evidence, including weapons and drugs, on this cabinet in an office space far from evidence storage. In the black organizers are field test kits for substances such as opioids, meth, cocaine, and weed. The doorway nearby leads to a breakroom. Â
- SARAH WATSON
Sergeant Josh Paul, a patrol supervisor for the Bettendorf Police Department, shares this office with a second supervisor.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf uses a converted semi trailer for its gun range.
- SARAH WATSON
A coffee maker sits underneath cabinets that house crash documents and abandoned vehicle stickers in the Bettendorf Police Department. Bettendorf leaders say they are using every square foot of the police department and have had to get creative with where they store items.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf's emergency response team, which responds to incidents such as standoffs, needs separate locker space. So, the department built a makeshift wood locker space with tactical gear in the evidence garage.Â
- SARAH WATSON
This is the work station area for patrol officers at the Bettendorf Police Department, seen Aug. 29, 2025. There are six work stations for patrol officers to make follow-up phone calls and do other investigative work. During overlaps in shifts, there could be 12 to 14 patrol officers on duty at a time.Â
- SARAH WATSON
This is the room Bettendorf police uses to obtain breath or urine samples from people suspected of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. For a urine sample, officers must escort the person to a publicly accessible bathroom. The room is also close to an exit and electronics in the room that Capt. Andrew Champion said is not great to leave someone unsupervised with.Â
- SARAH WATSON
Tim Doty, detective and evidence custodian for the Bettendorf Police Department stands in the city's evidence storage area. In recent years, the number of items has grown to more than 12,000 items. In addition to more items coming in, required retention times have grown longer, too.
- SARAH WATSON
In recent years, Bettendorf has hired more female police officers. Pictured is the women's locker room, which has just one stall and no lactation area. Both men's and women's locker rooms in department are the only restrooms in the secure area of the department and locker space is quickly running out.
- SARAH WATSON
Bettendorf's gun range is a converted semi-trailer. The range is too short to meet state qualifications, so the department must borrow range space from Moline or Davenport. A range required by the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy needs to be 25 yards, and the trailer is about 15 yards short of that.Â
- SARAH WATSON
As technology has evolved, so has police departments' storage needs. This cabinet, located in the detective bureau offices, stores and charges seized cell phones.
- SARAH WATSON
The records division of the Bettendorf Police Department, seen Aug. 29, 2025. In the current configuration of the combination city hall, police department, and fire department at 1609 State St., employees must cross a publicly accessible lobby to get between the records division and other secure areas of the police department. There's also no egress from the records division other than this door, which creates concerns if someone at the window is being disruptive or violent.Â
- SARAH WATSON
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