ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Law enforcement agencies go through many hours of training every year, and the Hugoton Police Department likewise spends much time learning and relearning ways to do the best job protecting the public.
Hugoton Police Chief Courtney Leslie said, though, some of her department’s training is done in some unique buildings in the Stevens County community.
“We’ve done this in the past when we’ve learned of a building that’s going to be torn down by the city,” she said.
One of HPD’s most recent trainings, in fact, was done at a church owned by the Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum scheduled for teardown in the near future.
“We asked for permission to do some training,” Leslie said. “We think it’s important to train on building searches and maneuvering through buildings. That’s what we did – building entry, clearing the building, etc.”
Leslie said such trainings are done with mock weapons.
“Anytime we do training like that, we never take our duty weapons or any ammo inside the building as a safety precaution,” she said. “We have some training handguns we use. We also were donated some training simulator guns, and we have these small targets we can practice on. The guns fit into our holsters. They look just like our regular duty weapons.”
With trainings such as the most recent one, targets are placed throughout the building, and officers practice approaching the building as if they were actually responding to an incident.
“We practice radio traffic, communications amongst one another, entering the building and tactically maneuvering throughout the building, searching for a known threat,” Leslie said.
Leslie said she feels these type of trainings are essential for ensuring safety of both officers and the public.
“These types of situations are calls we may respond to, involve unknown threats, armed suspects, hazardous conditions, so it’s important to have the proper training so we can handle these calls methodically and safely,” she said.
All police officers in Kansas are required to complete 40 hours of continuing education each year, and Leslie said some of this training is somewhat up to the officer themselves.
“I think it’s important officers attend trainings of topics that are of interest to them,” she said. “There’s more buy in there. There’s a wide range of training we can attend, but I think it’s important to attend the training that’s important to you.”
HPD regularly trains at the shooting range with handguns, and while it is necessary to have regular police training, Leslie said she feels it is also important to attend de-escalation training report writing education.
“Officers also attend conferences,” she said. “Interviewing skills, role playing scenario-based training is also very important to law enforcement.”
Buildings are not often torn down in the Hugoton community, and Leslie said HPD likes to take advantage of opportunities to train in them before they are demolished as well as other buildings around town.
“Prior to this one, I think it had been a more than a year since a building was scheduled for teardown,” she said. “We did it then. Our school is very cooperative with us and allows us to train in the building when it’s not in use as well. We have trained in our elementary school and our high school.”
As for the most recent training, Leslie said the church building worked adequately for her team.
“There is no ideal situation, but we like buildings that have different types of entrances, buildings that have different room layouts,” she said. “Our approach to a room with two doors or one door or a door in the middle of the room is different. We like a building that has a little bit of everything.”
Overall, Leslie said the training went well.
“It allows us to identify our strengths and weaknesses, and we can continue working on those,” she said. “We have a couple of new officers in the department, and it allowed us to have that conversations about some the buildings they would like to see. In the near future, we’ll make arrangements to go through some of those buildings as well.”
