The Miami-Dade Police department reached out to Commercial Acoustics to provide soundproofing between interrogation rooms in their office. Numerous instances have occurred over the years when suspects or witnesses had been interviewed, and were able to hear adjacent conversations in the next door over police interview room. This can tarnish the interview, or worse yet, allow suspects to align alibis because they can hear each other’s stories.

Interrogation Room Soundproofing & Acoustic Treatment

Commercial acoustics offered a turnkey solution to the Miami-Dade Police department, including:

• Sound masking above the interview rooms, to make conversation between them inaudible.
• Adding mass loaded vinyl to the walls to improve the STC between the interview rooms.
• Adding a stretched fabric wall system on the walls to reduce reverberation time in the space, allowing the audio-visual equipment and microphones to better pick up audio recordings.
• Adding sound proofing door seal kits on each individual door, so that noise from the police bullpen would not spill over into the interview rooms.
• Lastly, adding FRP wall board on the non-fabric walls. Although not an acoustical or soundproofing material, since Commercial Acoustics was already working on the walls, the client requested this scope be added to the contract.

Interview Room Soundproofing – Sequence of Work

Four sets of rooms were treated, including homicide, robbery, special victims, and human trafficking crimes. Each set of rooms was treated over a 3 week period, to allow other interview rooms to be used by the various departments.

As in many sheriff departments and police stations, speech privacy is critical. It ensures the interrogations interviews are untarnished, and that the audio quality is acceptable.