WPS had ‘no intention’ of building barriers around police HQ in 2013

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/10/2015 (3662 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Winnipeg was told its police service had “no intention” of erecting a barrier around its new downtown headquarters two years before city hall was asked to consider millions in funding for the security feature.

Earlier this week, the city confirmed it may spend $1.9 million next year to place bollards around the new Winnipeg police headquarters.

The vertical barriers, usually made of steel and concrete, are commonly placed around public buildings to minimize the potential damage wrought by motor-vehicle attacks.

In a statement, the city said a security barriers was a “known requirement” for the police HQ and “have been planned and discussed for several years.”

Two years ago, however, a consulting firm working on the police headquarters told members of a city urban-design review team there were no plans to erect security barriers around the six-storey building.

“Concerns with the east and west sides of the building have been addressed, as there is no intention on the WPS’s part to add any bollards as a security issue at this time,” Ottawa-based structural engineering firm Adjeleian Allen Rubeli wrote in a July 2013 letter obtained by the Free Press.

The police-HQ consultant was responding to concerns about “people driving into the building” and how that might affect the design of the structure.

Adjeleian Allen Rubeli went on to say the north side of the building, fronted by the 10-storey former Canada Post tower, is not part of the headquarters project and thus did not warrant protection. The south side was to be landscaped by the McGowan Russell Group, a Winnipeg consulting firm.

Now, city hall is considering a $1.9-million expenditure in 2016 to cover the cost of the installing the bollards, pending the selection of a design. In the interim, the city plans to place slabs of concrete known as Jersey barriers around the police HQ.

Doug McNeil, Winnipeg’s chief administrative officer, said the two-year-old email stating the police had no intention to add bollards to the project “at this time” should only be interpreted to mean the police did not intend to place the bollards around the building in 2013.

The security measure, he said, was part of the early design drawings for the building but was removed from the project temporarily as a means of staying within the budget.

“We were deciding what we can live without, period, or what we can live without for a short period of time,” McNeil said in an interview. “It was always considered a future construction component when budgeting could be made available.”

About $17 million worth of cost increases on the police HQ project were disclosed to members of council’s executive policy committee in September 2013 — and first made public by the Free Press.

Supt. Bruce Ormiston, in charge of organizational support for the Winnipeg Police Service, said the new headquarters must be protected by some form of barrier because the building must remain functional after a natural disaster or human attack.

“The service’s position was the headquarters would always have a protection system in place,” Ormiston said in an interview. “We don’t know it if will be bollards.”

Some form of “hardscaping” — a concrete or earth barrier — may be selected to protect the building instead, Ormiston said. Concurring with McNeil, he said the funding was removed from a previous budget.

The building’s contractor disputes this claim. While the police may have desired a security barrier, no cash was allocated for it, said Shaun Babakhanians, vice-president of Caspian Projects.

“The bollards were never part of the budget,” Babakhanians said in an interview. “Otherwise, we would have done them.”

The $1.9-million potential expenditure on the security barrier comes in addition to $1.7 million worth of additional security features and failsafes being added to the police HQ this fall. They include automated, retractable security doors at the entrance to the garage.

McNeil said he will speak to the police to see what, if any, other features of the building are still not accounted for in existing city budgets.

“If there are any other things, we’d like to know what they are,” said Charleswood-Tuxedo Coun. Marty Morantz, city council’s finance chairman.

Ormiston said he’s not aware of any additional funding requests for the headquarters project.

A 2014 audit of the police headquarters project determined it suffered from severe mismanagement, with police officers and civilian staff performing unqualified oversight roles. The projected cost is now $214 million, or $79 million more than the original council-approved budget of $135 million in 2009.

It also remains the subject of an RCMP investigation that began in December with a three-day raid of Caspian’s Winnipeg office.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca