Tarrant County explores new law enforcement training center for sheriff’s deputies

Tarrant County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with a feasibility study for a new law enforcement training center.

County leaders hope to build a center for 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 be conducted by Fort Worth-based architectural firm Komatsu Inc. and will cost taxpayers more than $108,000.

The sheriff’s office’s 22,00-square-foot training facility is housed inside the Resource Connection building on Circle Drive. The office uses Tarrant Regional Water District property as a shooting range.

Commissioner Manny Ramirez told the Star-Telegram before the meeting the current building is worn down and not conducive to law enforcement training, notably because of its lack of space. It results in sheriff’s deputies not being able to get the training they need, he said.

Emphasis on law enforcement support was to be expected on the new commissioners court. County Judge Tim O’Hare ran his campaign on supporting law enforcement, and Ramirez is the former Fort Worth police union president.

Tarrant County commissioners set the sheriff office’s budget, which makes up 25% of the county’s budget.

The sheriff’s office has a deficit of 260 deputies, Ramirez told the Star-Telegram. The sheriff’s office has over 1,400 positions that require Texas Commissioner on Law Enforcement training, and the number of people who are trained each year fluctuates depending on staffing, a sheriff’s office representative wrote in an email.

Just down the road from the current center is Fort Worth Police Department’s Bob Bolen Public Safety Complex, a 570,000-square-foot, $101.5 million facility that serves as the headquarters and training academy for the city’s fire and police departments on West Felix Street. It has many of the same features Tarrant County wants in its center, like a driving track and firing range.

Ramirez said that the sheriff’s office can’t use Fort Worth’s center for sheriff’s office training because it would take resources away from the city’s department. The city would also have to open its doors to allow the county to use the the center, Ramirez said.

A representative with the Fort Worth Police Department said in an email it was currently working with the sheriff’s office to fulfill a request to use the public safety’s complex’s firing range. The representative said the Fort Worth Police Department would evaluate any other requests from the sheriff’s office based on their available resources.

Tarrant County sheriff’s deputies patrol only the county’s unincorporated areas and Edgecliff Village and Haslet.

Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks told the court ahead of the vote that just because the commissioners were voting on the study did not mean they were moving forward with building the training center. Ramirez hopped in quickly after — he called the study a “critical first step.”

“In my opinion, law enforcement around the country right now tends to be controversial, and for me that’s unacceptable,” Ramirez said. “Law enforcement won’t be controversial in Tarrant County, Texas.”