NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. — It's a facility designed to provide one of our fastest growing counties with the latest tactics in law enforcement training.
On Wednesday, the Nassau County Sheriff's Office officially opened their new gun range.
"Once we built our new administration building, we had to move our gun range," Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said. "We found this 40 acre property that the county owns that allows us to not only build gun ranges here but do so many other things as far as public safety, especially with Fire and Rescue and the police. We're looking forward to making sure we train more often, better and make our citizens safer."
This facility more than doubles the amount of shooting space for the Sheriff's Office and will allow multiple agencies to practice and train in one central location.
"A safe community is a great community and a place where people want to live, work and raise a family," Leeper said. "Nassau County is that place."
It wasn't long after cutting the ribbon on the new gun range for the Nassau County Sheriff's Office that Sheriff Bill Leeper fired the first shot on the gun range. This is a massive improvement from the previous gun range used by the department. The new range is considerable bigger with plans for expansion for other training.
"We'll have a designated area to come train now. We're kind of all over the place at the present moment, this gives us 2 ranges where we can do multiple scenarios," Leeper said.
"This is a lot bigger," NCSO Training Division Lieutenant Jeff Stull said. "We can accommodate more people, accommodate more officers, other agencies, we can do training together."
"When we build out the entire project, which includes Fire and Rescue, it's just going to be a facility that is first class and take our public safety to another level," Leeper said.
Public safety is at the forefront for many members of law enforcement after security camera footage from inside of Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas was released on Tuesday.
"When I first saw it, it made me sick," Leeper said. "I was crushed that those officers that were sworn to serve and protect, particularly those who can't protect themselves like children, did not go in there and initially confront this guy."
Leeper said the training he and his deputies receive is to act immediately when a threat is present.
"If you're going to kill me you're going to kill me when I'm trying to save other people's lives," Leeper said. "That's what we're trained to do."
The images that came from Uvalde, TX are horrific; and they are images that training in this new facility will be designed to combat.
"We pray to God it never happens here. But we train just in case it does," Leeper said.
The gun range is just Phase One of the improvements to the new training center. Phase Two will consist of a classroom building on the site that will allow for even more types of training exercises. Phase Two is expected to be complete in about 2 years.