A grand opening ceremony for the new Joint Firearms Training Center on Brookwood Business Park Drive in Winston-Salem was held Friday morning. The nearly $8 million project includes indoor firing ranges and classroom facilities and will be used by the city’s police department and the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Department.
Scott Cunningham, Chief of the Winston-Salem Police Department, said the center will enable the departments to provide training throughout the year.
“It's not just a warehouse that we are shooting in. It is a state-of-the-art building with massive air control systems, so no one gets bothered by it indoors or outdoors. You can stand immediately outside of the building when they are shooting and you can barely hear it. We wanted to make sure that it fits well in the neighborhood and is going to be a good neighbor for whatever comes along in the future,” said Cunningham.
Forsyth Technical Community College will also use the center to help train students in law enforcement-related programs. The money to build the facility came from city, county and federal funds. Cunningham said the center will benefit the entire community.
“The reality is that everyone has to travel out of the area to go shoot and it's bad for for travel costs because they have to take the officer out of service. The sheriff's department went to Mt. Airy to shoot, and we always went to Thomasville. Now we can go in [the center] and in two to three hours, depending on what we are doing, they can be done and back out on the street,” said Cunningham.
Chief Cunningham said the new firearms facility will help train more than 800 police officers each year in Forsyth County alone.
