Tribe seeks help for Shiprock police building
WINDOW ROCK
The Shiprock Police Department building has basically been left to rot. Only the command center is operational as the rest of the building is closed.
During the Navajo Nation Council’s recent special session, delegates asked for a letter to be sent to New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham requesting her support in funding a new Shiprock Judicial/Public Safety Facility.
The estimated facility cost is $79 million, of which $3.1 million has been allocated from the Navajo Nation Judicial Public Safety Special Revenues. “Everyone knows that the building there is pretty unsanitary and old,” said Jesse Delmar, director of public safety, in an interview with the Times. “I understand there are parts in the building where it’s covered with plastic bags, so debris would be falling,” he said. “It’s that bad.”
The letter to the governor states that after a recent inspection of the building by the Northern Navajo Medical Center Office of Environmental Health & Engineering, the district sanitarian determined that the facility is unsuitable for continued operation and should be closed.
Delegate Edmund Yazzie, former chair of the Council’s Law and Order Committee, said last year the committee toured the facility, which included the police department, courts and the jails, and it was alarming to them just how bad it had become.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow