By Dariush Shafa
Messenger-Inquirer
OWENSBORO, Ky. — Members of local law enforcement have long anticipated the day they would have a modern training center, and that day is about to arrive.
The Owensboro Police Department will begin construction on a new training center in the next several weeks at the current location of the OPD firing range at the old city landfill off Kentucky 298 south of Owensboro.
OPD Chief Glenn Skeens said $1.8 million facility will bring some substantial improvements to the way his department trains, and the department anticipates making it a hub of police learning for the area.
“We’ve been working on the training center for the past eight years and it’s come full circle,” Skeens said. “We have an opportunity to build a state-of-the-art facility that will provide the ability for officers, not only OPD officers but officers throughout the region, to be able to do reality-based training. Reality-based training is basically making the real-life scenarios that an officer would possibly face in their career. It will place the officer in situations they would most likely encounter. Our current facilities do not off those opportunities for us.”
Currently, the firing range at the landfill offers officers the chance to hone their shooting abilities in a limited fashion. They are dependent on whatever props they can bring to the range and the constraints of the layout, with officers constantly on guard to make sure they discharge their weapons safely into a berm used as a backstop.
The new facility, which will be built in two phases, would add the ability to automate some parts of training and to create more realistic simulations. One part would be a modern range, complete with computerized timers for certain types of training and targeting drills.
The other part of phase one would be a “shoot-house,” a building constructed entirely of ballistic armor steel that officers enter and use their weapons in without fear of stray bullets posing a threat outside the training area.
“Officers would be able to enter into a simulated house and face deadly force situations,” Skeens said.
Phase one is already in progress. Skeens said ground should be broken by the end of August or the first of September.
Phase two would bring the construction of a driving pad for officers, allowing them to train in driving and pursuit techniques, which they can’t do locally now.
Skeens said they’re especially enthusiastic because they will be making good use of city property without undue expense to taxpayers.
“The city owns the landfill and can never sell it,” Skeens said. “We’re enhancing the property for a very good cause.”
The new facility is also causing a buzz among other agencies that OPD has invited to use the current range. Lt. Ottaway Kirby and Cpl. Morgan Palmiter, two firearms instructors with the Daviess County Sheriff’s Department, said OPD’s intention to make the new facility as open as the old is encouraging.
“We’re blessed that OPD has this good of a range (now),” Kirby said. “But I am ecstatic that they are building a new, more modern range.”
Palmiter said it’s a fortunate progression for the sheriff’s department to be located where such a new center will be, just as they were excited to be able to use OPD’s current range when it was new.
“I’ve been really happy about being allowed to use this facility. It’s head and shoulders above what (we had) when I came here in 1995, when we roamed around like nomads looking for a range,” Palmiter said.
Skeens said his department is enthusiastic about making the training center open to other departments and playing host to classes and courses.
“There’s no other training center being developed west of the I-65 corridor that will have such a facility,” Skeens said. “We have a great opportunity here in Owensboro to lead the way in the region and the surrounding states.”
Copyright 2009 Messenger-Inquirer