The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new training facility.
The 40-acre Public Safety Training Complex behind Sandhill Recycle Center on County Road 108 has been in the works for years, and the first phase of the project involving the initial infrastructure, gun ranges, range towers, bathrooms and a temporary parking lot is now completed.
Wednesday’s event highlighted the completion of the public safety training gun range. Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper fired the first shot there.
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As calls for law enforcement and fire and rescue services increase, according to the Sheriff’s Office, “a training facility capable of matching the future public safety needs” is required.
“Our county is growing, whether we like it or not,” Leeper said. “If we don’t keep one step ahead and plan for the future, we can get caught up in a crisis situation. So we must continue to be proactive, not reactive. Public safety for our citizens should be our No. 1 priority.”
So ground was first broken on the complex, which also accommodates training for Nassau County’s fire department, in March 2021.
“Once we built our new administration building, we had to move our gun range. We found this property the county owns,” Leeper said. “It allows us to not only build gun ranges here but do so many other things with public safety, especially, with fire rescue and the police. We are looking forward to making sure we train more often, we train better and make our citizens safe.”
With phase one complete, phase two of the project will consist of a training classroom building. Leeper said he hopes it will be complete within the next couple of years.
Eventually, the Sheriff’s Office said, the complex will also include a fire training tower, a canine training and tracking area, and a special response team obstacle course.