Cheektowaga, N.Y. (WBEN) - It was a special day for the Cheektowaga Police Department on Wednesday with a ceremonial groundbreaking for a new Police Training Facility located on Scott Place.
This new facility will serve as a 50-person classroom, as well as an office space and weapons cleaning area at their shooting range. It will be also operational all year round.
"When you're hosting training for out-of-town instructors, oftentimes we're looking for a classroom that holds more than the typical 20-person," said Cheektowaga Police Chief Brian Gould. "So we went with a 50-person classroom, we'll have an office for our rangemaster, who's out here daily, overseeing training about weapons cleaning area, an indoor garage area that we can pull patrol cars into to do feel a car stop training. We'll also do defensive tactic training in that area, as well as the next technology of training that includes virtual reality training."
Chief Gould mentions that Scott Place has been utilized as a shooting range and will continue to cater to multiple policing agencies.
"About 20 years ago, the Cheektowaga Police Department started developing this land here at 325 Scott Place into an outdoor shooting range. We worked with our highway department to clear the land and to create a dirt berm that officers would shoot into for their firearms training. In 2011, we upgraded the range to include a bullet trap system that would replace the dirt berm and a target turning system to make the training more realistic. In 2015, we added a cover to the range we added lighting and we added a baffle system," said Chief Gould.
"The town so far has invested over $1 million into our shooting range, not only the Cheektowaga Police Department but our partners with the Central Police Services Police Academy, the Buffalo Police Department, the West Seneca Police Department, and various federal agencies all use the shooting range for police training."
The total cost of this project is $1.2 million with $500,000 of those funds coming from Erie County. The rest is being accrued from the Cheektowaga Town Board and asset forfeiture funds of the Cheektowaga Police Department.
The project should officially get underway come Monday, with hopes of completion sometime in February.
