By Amanda Codispoti
Roanoke Times
ROANOKE, Va. — The Roanoke sheriff first defended and then distanced herself Friday from a controversial sniper training exercise that involved putting officers downrange during live fire.
When first questioned by reporters at a hastily called news conference, Sheriff Octavia Johnson said that the instructor was highly qualified, and that she may permit that type of training again, despite her earlier acknowledgment that it had violated department policy.
But when later pressed on whether the training would take place again, she said it would not.
“We are not going to be shooting downrange. It is not our policy,” she said.
She called the news conference after The Roanoke Times published an article Friday outlining an October training session at the Dixie Caverns firing range. Johnson had declined to answer questions about the training before the story published.
During the voluntary training, officers took turns standing a few feet from a target as another officer, a football field away, took aim and fired. No one was injured.
Roanoke County owns the shooting range and for the past decade has had an agreement that allows city law enforcement officers to use both it and the adjacent driving range.
County officials this week said they were shocked by the account of that training session, which they maintain was organized by Johnson over their objections.
Now, the county wants to ban city officers from using the range. City and county officials plan to talk about the matter at a future meeting.
Johnson disputes that the county objected to the training and said Friday that the training was approved by the board of the Regional Firearms Range.
Lt. David McMillan, who represents the Roanoke County Police Department on the board, said Friday that he and the county sheriff’s representative voted against the training. Representatives from the city police and sheriff’s office also sit on the board.
Johnson said she was unaware of the sniper exercise until Roanoke County police Chief Ray Lavinder heard about it and came to her office to talk about it two weeks later.
“I was rather surprised,” she said.
But when asked if she would allow it to happen again, she responded: “We would have to look close at the whole situation as to what’s going on. I mean, they are trained to be snipers, and Mr. Castle [the trainer] is an expert and I feel that the snipers know what they are able and capable of doing.”
But later, asked again if she would permit such training to occur in the future, she changed her stance, saying it would not be allowed.
Paul Castle, who led the exercise, has done training at the Dixie Caverns range several times. He was paid $3,500 for last fall’s five-day session, which was attended by officers from seven agencies, including nine officers from the city sheriff’s office and two from the Roanoke Police Department.
Johnson said she did not know whether Castle has done this exercise with city or county officers in previous training.
But an officer at the news conference who had trained with Castle before the October session said that last year was the first time it had happened.
When Roanoke County police tried to look at footage of the training from surveillance cameras, they discovered that some of the cameras had been pointed toward the sky or disconnected, Lavinder said. He does not know who tampered with the cameras and said it may have been a coincidence.
Lt. Chuck Ferguson of the Roanoke Sheriff’s Office said Lavinder’s statement was politically motivated, adding that the cameras are inoperable.
“Why would we intentionally tamper with cameras that were inoperable? This was an obvious political move to make it appear that we intentionally tampered with cameras.”
Ferguson also said that the cameras were not on the range but in the shoot house, a building used to train for hostage and similar situations.
Lavinder said Friday that the cameras were on the range officer’s towers, and that both those and the shoot house cameras are operable.
Several members of the Roanoke Sheriff’s Office Tactical Team were at the news conference, which was held in front of the city jail, and some defended the training.
“A sniper shot is something entirely different than anything else we do,” said Ferguson, the head of the team. “That’s why it’s trained differently.”
But even John Gnagey, the executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, said Friday that he does not know of anyone in the industry who does that type of training.
“The liability issue would just be huge,” he said.
Copyright 2009 Roanoke Times