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Chief of Police Stephen Ignacio said the Guam Police Department will start exploring how to finance and construct a new northern police precinct, with two acres of land in Yigo now transferred to build it. “Now that we have property, we can got out and look at, what are the options?” Ignacio told the Pacific Daily News. Timing of the new Yigo precinct will all depend on where the money comes from, something that couldn’t be identified prior to the land transfer, the chief said. He said the construction of a precinct can take between 12 and 24 months. “If you want to build a house, you’re gonna have to have a piece of property to build your house on. So the same concept applies,” he said. Lt. Gov. Joshua Tenorio, acting governor earlier this month, signed into law a bill transferring the Yigo property from the CHamoru Land Trust Commission to GPD. Sen. Shawn Gumataotao was the main sponsor of the legislation. The land is along Route 1 just north of the Yigo Gym and Guam Animals in Need, GAIN, animal shelter. Ignacio this past week said that development funding through the Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority is how GPD typically gets new precincts built. But there are other options available, he said, like working with the Guam Economic Development authority on financing, or even applying for some of the $500 million typhoon relief “Fix in Six” grant money that GHURA plans to distribute through the next five years. The Central Precinct Command in Sinajana was the last new precinct GPD got the keys to, billed at $4.2 million in 2019. More recently, an award for an GPD Eastern Substation in Talo’fo’fo’ was awarded at $5.59 million. Both projects were done using Community Development Block Grant funds through GHURA, PDN files show. “We all know, and this is why we advocated for it, we need to build a Yigo precinct,” Ignacio said this past week, pointing to the rapid growth in the island’s northernmost village. The chief said a new precinct will help GPD to relieve some of the strain from the Dededo precinct, and get better response times. Nearly half of population Yigo, with 28,000 residents, and Dededo, with 34,700, are together home to about 40% of the island’s population, half of all cars, and more than a third of all business on Guam, Ignacio told senators in May. But besides those two villages, the Dededo Precinct also services high-population villages Barrigada and Mangilao. Ignacio told the PDN this past week that GPD has eight police “beats” spread across the northern area of Guam. “That means, when at full capacity, we should have eight police officers patrolling the Dededo and Yigo area,” he said. A new precinct would let GPD redistribute officers, with four or five at either Yigo or Dededo at any time. Ignacio said the police department will also take another look at the geography of the two villages, and could potentially redraw patrol areas based on population. GPD continues to recruit more officers to keep up with policing demand in the community. A new recruit cycle of police officer trainees bumped the number of uniformed police officers up to 266, according to the chief. That’s up from 248 in April of last year, but still less than the 277 when Ignacio took the helm of GPD in 2019, and the 289 at the start of the Leon Guerrero-Tenorio Administration, PDN files show. Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero at the time said 289 officers was the lowest in the decade, and set a goal of recruiting 100 new officers by the end of 2020. Ignacio said this week that the ideal number of officers for the force is at least 525.
