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arinkers. I remember the sergeant telling me that the father told him that he hadn't seen his son in so long, to which he replied, 'He's right there in the next cell, if you want to see him.' Apparently, both the father and son were locked up in there that night," laughed Hall. He could not be sure but thought that there might have been about two dozen staff members in the city police force at the time. "We had four sergeants. We also had one detective working at one time as a rule and if there was a serious break-in or something, which weren't many when I first began working there, you'd have to phone him at home and he'll come in." Those days the police force had only two cars. The detectives had one and the rest of the force used the second one. "I remember they never had a car going in the daytime at all. If there was an accident they'd ring the bell at the city hall and a constable would call in, get the car at the station and go to the accident site." The force boasted two motorcycles as well. While the staff members used one regularly, the other one, he said, was mainly used to participate in parades. It would seem that, even while working within the constraints of what began to be considered, in the 1950s, as 'less than adequate working conditions' and within what a city alderman was once saifl to have described as "a coop with poor ventilation and poor accommodation for constables," the Belleville Police services was still a well-run system looking after the local community's safety. In 1964, the city finally bought the old YMCA building on Campbell Street and renovated it to house the city police. "I have to admit that the one on Campbell Street was so much bigger," said Hall who continued to work at the new location for another decade or so. "You had lots of room to put four cruisers inside the basement parking lot. When you come in with a prisoner, you could just drive inside through this electronically operated door which shuts down once you were inside. This made it a lot better for us since you're not out there in the public eye when you were dealing with prisoners." The detectives had offices upstairs, he said. "The chief and the deputy chief had their offices on the main floor. The constables had a room upstairs where they could eat lunch or do a report on the typewriters right off where the dispatcher sat. "Where the swimming pool used to be, it was converted into an indoor parking for the cruisers." The old building at the Market Square was torn down in May 1965 and police services continued to operate from the Campbell Street location until they moved to the current Dundas Street location two decades later. The Campbell Street building was demolished and is now a parking lot. Contact Benzie Sangma at: bsangma@cogeco.ca _· . ._._ .. . I" ate H . Af< <