HOUSTON – Houston will become one of only a handful of cities in the United States to have a tactical village to train its police officers in realistic settings.
Ground was broken Monday on a $10 million facility that will allow officers to train on a myriad scenarios in as close to real-world settings as is possible.
“If there's any time in this country that we needed a facility like this, it's right now,” said entrepreneur Tilman Fertitta.
To understand what Houston is getting, Channel 2 Investigates traveled to Fort Worth in 2017 to visit the city police department's tactical village. What we saw was a massive space designed to give officers real-world training on everything from routine traffic stops, to hostage situations to school shootings.
Almost every conceivable scenario officers face on the streets can be recreated inside these villages.
“Since Columbine, it's no longer we sit out there and try to figure out what's going on in there, we attack immediately,” Fertitta said.
As chair of the Houston Police Foundation, Fertitta was instrumental in helping raise the money needed to build this facility in Houston. Fertitta believed in the concept so much, he donated $2.5 million of his own money. The 44,000-square-foot, two-story facility is being built on the grounds of the HPD’s training academy near Bush Intercontinental Airport.
“I promise you we're going to save lives,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo.
The Tilman Fertitta Family Tactical Training Center is expected to open in December and will be one of only four tactical training centers of its type in the U.S.