Anyone in Portsmouth who needs a police report or a background check has a new door to knock on. The Portsmouth Police Department’s records bureau has reopened at 805 Gallia St., on the city’s Esplanade, after a move into the former Fifth Third Bank building, the department announced in a post reported by the Scioto Valley Guardian.
The bureau closed Wednesday, Nov. 11, for the Veterans Day holiday, and reopened Thursday, Nov. 12, at the new Gallia Street address, with the department’s records housed in the basement of the building, according to the department.
The move changes the address but not the phone book: phone numbers for the records bureau remain the same despite the relocation, the department said.
The records bureau is the department’s public counter. It handles requests from residents and businesses for police reports, background checks and other department records — the paperwork that follows everything from a fender-bender to a job application.
The new home puts that counter on Gallia Street, Portsmouth’s main downtown thoroughfare, in a building many residents already know from its years as a bank branch. City offices have been consolidating services along the Esplanade, and the records bureau’s move puts police paperwork within the same downtown cluster.
Residents who saved the bureau’s old address should update it: requests now go to 805 Gallia St. The department has not announced any change to the bureau’s regular hours, and anyone unsure where a request belongs can call the bureau’s existing number — unchanged by the move — before making the trip.
Photo: Vasiliymeshko, CC BY