The Castle Rock fire and police departments have been using their new Public Safety Training Facility quite a bit since it opened last month, a facility made necessary by the population boom in Castle Rock.
As the population of the town expands past 50,000, the need for more public safety personnel grows, as does the need for more regular training. The new 5,000-square-foot training facility at 1335 Park St. enables the fire and police departments to train more employees at the same time with the same instructor in a large classroom setting.
“I have the opportunity to bring in a speaker from outside the department and touch more firefighters and public safety officials at one time,” said Chris McCarthy, acting division chief for training at Castle Rock Fire Department, who organizes training. “I can have a bigger draw.”
But Castle Rock Fire Chief Art Morales said the new building the fire department is leasing for about $6,700 a month from the owner of Douglas Lumber is just a stepping stone to a larger facility the town plans to build in 2018 at the old water treatment facility.
“There’s things that we do all the time that are low risk, such as car lockouts,” Morales said. “But where people get hurt is in the low-frequency, high-risk events: technical rescues, structure fires, car extractions. So those events that they don’t get to see all the time that are extremely dangerous we’ve got to train on a lot, so that’s what we do.”
Still, McCarthy said the new, leased facility is a lot better than what the department had before. The fire department headquarters downtown allowed for meetings of 25 people. The new facility can seat about 90. There are currently 80 firefighters and 65 sworn police officers working for the town.
The space is also open to use by other town departments, Morales said.
“It’s huge — it’s invaluable in more ways than I can say,” said Commander Tim Gorman with the Castle Rock Police Department. “It’s got enough space where we can store our training materials, our mats, our other materials for arrest control.”
Gorman also echoed the need for more robust training among officers as the community grows.
“Continuous training makes the officers more efficient,” Gorman said. “We’re here to serve the public, and the public expects us to be trained thoroughly when we contact the public, so we’ll have the best resources and education on current laws and procedures. We all strive to do the best we can.”
Castle Rock Mayor Paul Donahue said he feels the fire and police departments provide a high quality of service, particularly because of the regular training they do.
“Obviously, as we’re growing from 10,000 to 25,000 now to over 50,000, different challenges will be coming up both for our fire and police departments and they’ve got to prepare themselves for what may happen with that larger population,” Donahue said. “As long as they can keep up on the latest strategies, tactics to keep themselves safe and our residents safe, we’re willing to make that investment to make that happen.”
Clayton Woullard: 303-954-2953, cwoullard@denverpost.com or
