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Leaders hope to build a center for sheriff’s deputy training that includes meeting and training spaces, an indoor firearms range, an armory, quartermaster’s space, an emergency vehicle track course, office space, locker rooms, classrooms, storage rooms and briefing spaces, according to agenda documents.
The study will cost more than $108,000.
The sheriff’s office’s training facility is housed inside a different department’s building, and the sheriff uses Tarrant Regional Water District property as a shooting range.
Commissioner Manny Ramirez, the former Fort Worth police union president, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the current building is worn down and not conducive to law enforcement training, notably because of its lack of space.
The sheriff’s office has more than 1,400 positions that require Texas Commission on Law Enforcement training, and the number of people who are trained each year fluctuates depending on staffing, a sheriff’s office representative wrote via email.
Fort Worth Police Department’s 570,000-square-foot, $101.5 million facility is nearby but sharing isn’t viable. Ramirez said the sheriff’s office can’t use it because that would take city resources.
Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks told the court ahead of the vote that just because commissioners were voting did not mean they were moving forward with building the training center.
©2023 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
