La Salle County Sheriff Tom Templeton plans to open an unmanned substation in the county's populous northeast corner.

Templeton said the two main goals are to decrease deputy response time and to provide more availability of deputies.

Hopefully, he told The Times Thursday, the substation will be opened by the end of the month in office space donated by Lake Holiday in Northville Township.

"Lake Holiday is the obvious choice to start with because of the huge population area up there, how far it is from Ottawa and how long it takes to get there.

"But it will decrease response times not only to Lake Holiday, but throughout the patrol area."

Templeton said a typical problem is after an incident the responding deputy returns to the sheriff's office in Ottawa and no sooner gets started on the report when he is called out again.

Once the substation computer hook-up is complete, officers will be able to use the remote office to complete reports.

"Then, if they get a call to, say, Sheridan, they can leave and get there a lot quicker."

He stressed the office will otherwise be unmanned.

"No one is going to be sitting there answering the phone. We need the cars out on patrol."

Templeton said another advantage of the substation is it will be a place for citizens and deputies to meet in cases where a marked squad car in the citizen's driveway may not be desirable.

Templeton said the move has been planned for a long time. Ideally, he said, it will be the first of four substations.

"We're going to see how it works. The alternative is you hire a whole lot more people. We think this is the right thing to do."