Police announced training to make neighbors aware; sounds shouldn’t be loud

The Eagle article that appeared on Sunday titled “Wichita police plan training with realistic gunshot sounds near birth-care center” needs clarification. This type of training is nothing new for us and has been conducted for decades at schools and other properties that are often vacant. This is the way most police train across the country.

On occasion in the past, the unannounced training activities would frighten and upset neighbors because we failed to notify them and they assumed the worst. A year ago, I publicly apologized for not notifying neighbors who were caught off guard by a training; I committed that it would not happen again. As part of this commitment, we began requiring neighborhood notification and signs at the scene for trainings like this to avoid neighborhood frustrations. The signs read “Police Training in Progress.”

Our current training is taking place inside a secure building and uses paintball-type equipment that sounds about as loud as the cap guns we shot as kids. The noise created by this equipment is so low that it does even meet the manufacturer’s threshold for having participants wear ear protection. Neighbors should not be able to hear the sounds unless they are next to the building or room where the training is taking place.

An alternative to using real buildings is to build a realistic training facility where walls can be moved and real-life situations can be created for training. However, such an effort would cost millions and is not necessary given opportunities to use facilities such as this.

This state-mandated in-service training focuses on prevention of injury and best practice tactics to keep officers and community members safe. It is important and necessary training for our staff and consistent with another commitment I have made. Our overriding goal in all of this — to be the best we can be.

The neighborhood notification of this training is a new effort on our part to be more open with the public and not repeat past mistakes. I welcome the open dialog and scrutiny of our efforts as we continue to focus on strengthening good relationships with our community.