The city of St. Charles has opened a new police training center to serve around 35 law enforcement agencies throughout the region.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for the St. Charles Police Department Public Safety Training Center on Monday evening, where officials said the $1.2 million facility was funded through donations and grants, not local tax dollars.
“The high levels of professionalism and training exhibited by our police are the defining features of our department,” St. Charles Mayor Lora Vitek said at the ceremony. “The Public Training Center will further advance the department’s service to our community and region while also providing excellent training opportunities for all those who participate.”
Those who attended the ribbon-cutting toured the center’s classroom and virtual training simulator, which some tried out.
St. Charles police led those who participated in the simulations through the same scenarios that officers will go through at the center. Participants stood in front of three large projector screens and were shown situations that a police officer may find themselves in, such as a traffic stop or workplace shooting.
Based on what the participants said or did, the police officer controlling the scenario would pick from a variety of ways the situation could play out. If things got violent, participants used a simulated gun to defend themselves, and the virtual simulator tracked the participant’s shots.
Other equipment was also available for use in the simulation, such as an assault rifle, a Taser and flashlights.
The simulator took video of the participants as they went through the scenario so that they could watch it back later.
The center is on Karl Madsen Drive just off of Route 38, where the St. Charles Police Department already had a shooting range used by a variety of regional law enforcement agencies, according to St. Charles Police Chief James Keegan. He said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony that the range and the materials used to create it were donated to the city.
It was always the city’s intention to put a building on the same site as the shooting range, and that plan was kickstarted when the city received a $150,000 private donation from The Kara Foundation and Paul DeMoon, he said.
The rest of the funds came from $1.1 million in state funding secured for the project by state Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, an additional $100,000 in state funding from state Sen. Don DeWitte, R-St. Charles, and other private donations, according to Keegan.
“It is so exciting anytime I get the opportunity to see a project from the groundbreaking — and in this case, actually, even prior to that — and then to see it for a ribbon-cutting and to know how much this is going to benefit the community,” Holmes said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
One of the major factors leading to the creation of the training center was its regional approach to training and public safety, according to Holmes.
Right inside the front door is a wall displaying insignias from the various law enforcement agencies that are partners in the training center.
Those agencies include nearby police departments like Geneva and South Elgin but also include specialty units like the Aurora Police Department’s Special Response Team and further away agencies like the Morton Grove Police Department.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
