By PATRICK MEIGHAN, Telegraph Staff
meighanp@telegraph-nh.com

MERRIMACK - A man barricaded himself in a condominium and threatened suicide.

Police officers commandeered a nearby unit to serve as a command center during the standoff, temporarily displacing and inconveniencing the family who lived there.

That incident happened recently, Acting Police Chief Paul Stavenger told selectmen Thursday.

At other times, because much of the town is rural, police may stage a search for a missing person in rain and snow without a sheltered place to coordinate officers’ actions.

“If a child is lost in the woods, we have to gather someplace. We need a command post,” said Bill Mulligan, the police chief who has been serving for the past half year as acting town manager.

The Police Department took a leap toward getting such a command center when selectmen approved spending up to $40,000 to convert a used ambulance owned by the Fire Department into a crime scene investigation vehicle.

None of the cost would be paid through tax money. Instead, it would come from a fund paid through property seized in drug arrests - the same fund that paid for the exercise equipment police officials purchased last year to help keep officers in shape.

The Fire Department was set to trade in the vehicle, a 1995 Ford F350 with 98,000 miles, because of concerns that maintenance costs would escalate as the ambulance aged.

That raised a red flag for Selectman Tom Koenig, who asked why fire officials wanted to dump the vehicle, while the police department didn’t worry about repair costs.

The reason, said Assistant Fire Chief Dave Parenti, is that as an ambulance, the vehicle would be used a lot harder than as a mobile command post.“We’re running that vehicle every day,” Parenti said. “It’s always on the road.”

Police would use the vehicle less often, and it wouldn’t be driven as hard, officials said. Because it has a diesel engine and rust-resistant aluminum sides, the vehicle should have a lot of life left, officials said.

It could be used to set up a command center at scenes of crimes such as bank robberies and threatened suicides, but it could also be useful during missing-person searches and major traffic accidents, police said.

One of the big advantages of having a mobile command center is it could hold various tools needed for collecting evidence, police said.

“Over the past several years, we would have used this vehicle on 23 occasions,” Stavenger wrote in a memo to selectmen. “In the year 2004, we would have used the vehicle four times.”

The trade-in cost is estimated at about $8,000 to $10,000, Parenti said. Stavenger said the Police Department would reimburse fire officials for that cost out of the $40,000 the selectmen approved.

To make the transformation from ambulance to crime scene command center, the vehicle would be repainted, emergency lights would be changed and an 11-foot side awning would be added.

The drug forfeiture account has about $40,000, Mulligan said. Police officials figure that by putting items out to bid, they could come in under the total. Even if the project eats up all the money in the drug forfeiture account, it would be worth it, Mulligan said.