Papillion police officers finally have room to breathe. The department unveiled a renovated and expanded station this week that adds more than 10,000 square feet of new space, including a dedicated K-9 unit, a wellness and fitness room, and a real-time crime center that streams drone footage straight to officers' screens.
The new crime center gives officers a live map of where their colleagues are stationed around the city, a tool meant to sharpen coordination and shave time off response calls, according to 3 News Now. Officers can also pull up drone footage of areas throughout the neighborhood from the same hub, part of a broader push to put more real-time information in front of patrol staff before they arrive on scene.
Chief Whitted called the project generational, telling the station it required careful planning and a willingness to do more with less in the years leading up to the ribbon-cutting. Before the expansion, the department had no dedicated space for much of its daily operations, with staff making do in interview rooms, closets and evidentiary areas that were never designed for those functions.
A Station Built for a Smaller Force
The cramped quarters trace back to the building itself. The existing station was built in 2005 to serve 49 officers and six civilian workers, a footprint that a 2023 study found no longer matched the department's needs, per KETV. That study recommended a list of fixes that reads almost exactly like the new addition: a dedicated K-9 workspace, a mother's room, more parking and a stand-alone evidence storage garage.
The fixes came with a price tag. The total projected budget for the expansion came in at $9 million, with the city covering about half through cash reserves and the rest through a bond of up to $4.5 million, the station reported. Construction broke ground in April 2025 and was on track for a summer 2026 completion, according to the Papillion Post News, with crews putting finished sections to use as soon as each one wrapped.
The Woman Who Started It All
No one appreciated the new K-9 space more than Cathy Glesmann, who started Papillion's first K-9 unit about 25 years ago before retiring in 2013. The station's report says Glesmann called the new canine facility impressive and predicted the renovations would streamline operations and help the department recruit new hires in a competitive hiring environment.
That hiring push has immediate stakes. Chief Whitted reported that the department's application window for new recruits had just closed, with the next recruitment cycle not set to reopen until next spring.
Drones and Data Across Sarpy County
The crime center's drone capability did not emerge in isolation. Papillion, Sarpy County, La Vista and Bellevue formed the Sarpy County Consolidated Drone Team through an interlocal agreement, according to the City of Papillion. Pilots on that team must hold a valid FAA Part 107 remote pilot certificate, show platform proficiency and complete two hours of annual authorization training. The agreement does not create a separate legal entity and leaves each agency responsible for its own personnel and equipment costs.
Papillion's new setup fits a wider trend among law enforcement agencies investing in real-time crime centers. Information that might once have taken hours or days to track down is often available in minutes with these systems, StateTech Magazine notes. In Norfolk, Virginia, video evidence captured by that city's real-time crime center has been credited with increasing the solvability rates of both violent and property crimes, and its setup includes a 15-by-5-foot video wall feeding off 172 Flock license plate reader cameras, officers' body-camera footage and a network of Axis Communications cameras.
Closer to home, Omaha's Real-time Operations Center relies on more than 1,000 cameras to monitor traffic hazards, assist responders and track suspects, pulling in live footage from across the metro, per Nebraska Public Media. In 2025 alone, that center assisted with nearly 4,000 calls for service, helped cancel more than 450 patrol responses and supported calls that led to 91 arrests. Omaha has also leaned on a Drones as First Responders program that sends aircraft to assess emergency scenes and streams the footage back to its operations center before officers even arrive.
