ORRINGTON – The deputy adamantly refused to be identified, but the broad smile that covered his face as he said, “We have our own bathroom,” illustrated everything.

Local law enforcement, which for years worked out of a former storage closet at Center Drive School, has moved and now is enjoying a new home in the town’s former ambulance barn.

“It’s basically an apartment. It’s unbelievable,” Jon Carson, Orrington’s community policing supervisor for the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office, said Friday while proudly giving a tour of the facility. “The ambulance board of directors donated all this stuff. They left pretty much everything – the stove, appliances, all the chairs, desk, the radio.

“It was a huge benefit because we didn’t have to buy anything,” he added.

The Orrington Public Safety facility, located just beyond the school on Center Drive, has a bathroom with shower, a washer and dryer, and a heated garage for the cruiser, and that’s just the first floor. Upstairs is a wide-open kitchen with several tables, a bed, a locker room, a TV-video training area and an office.

The department’s new 10-by-12-foot office is a little bit bigger than the one at the school, said Carson, a sergeant and 16-year veteran with the sheriff’s office who works full time in Orrington and shares the space with eight part-time deputies.

In the former office at the school, “you had to go outside to change your mind,” the unidentified deputy joked.

He added that without a real office to call home, deputies on patrol had to go to the local store or the school to use the bathroom.

The sheriff’s office moved into the town-owned building during October 2005, after Orrington created a municipal fire and rescue department last year, leaving the building sitting empty for approximately six months.

The move did not cost the town, which contracts with the sheriff’s office, any additional funds, and this year’s budget is the same as last year.

The added space allows more than one deputy to be trained at one time and permitted the department to host a special response training two weeks ago, attended by numerous local law enforcement agencies.

Even though he has more space, Carson said he misses the interaction with students at the school and the great working relationships, which have continued, with school staff, especially Principal James White.

Another recent change within the department is with the program’s title.

“We just changed from a constable-deputy program [under the sheriff’s office] to the community policing program,” said Carson explaining his title change from constable to community policing supervisor.

In the four years Carson has patrolled the town, the department has grown and the number of calls has increased by more than one-third, he said.

“When I first came down here, we had between 800 and 900 calls,” the supervisor said. “Last year, we had right around 1,300.”

Most police calls center on traffic, especially speeding, but domestic violence and youngsters abusing prescription pills and even heroin are also issues, Carson said, adding that the same is true in most communities in Maine.

Now that the department has a new, well-equipped home, Carson’s list of needs now contains only one item.

“Adding another full-time person would be my only wish, to work the night shift,” he said. “I love my part-time guys, but they all have full-time jobs,” which makes scheduling night shifts difficult.

The good news is that the town and sheriff’s office have always been supportive of local law enforcement and have supplied the deputies with all the modern equipment they need, Carson said, adding that the building was the last piece of the pie.

“It’s been a good transition for us,” he said.