Mr. Dick’s Jan. 25 letter accusing county officials of foolishly throwing away money on the creation of a new gun range is a good example of a misinformed citizen (“Gun range: How can county afford new facility?”). The county would be foolish if it did not develop a gun range for its police officers to train in modern tactics, procedures and situations required for them to do their job.
Without the appropriate training, and that takes an appropriate facility, the Sheriff’s Office and many other law enforcement agencies in our county, which will use the facility, could be open to excessive liability from lawsuits for not receiving the proper training when involved in police-related use of weapons. At the present, there are no facilities appropriate in the county for proper law enforcement tactical training, which involves the use of firearms and police vehicles in scenarios that reflect real-life events. The old range at Paine Field was used for many years and became unusable because of the residential and commercial growth, which created danger to citizens in the area. New methods of construction and collection of contaminated material will, in the long run, mean the county pays less to keep the range from being lead contaminated.
I applaud Snohomish County officials for the foresight to develop the range as a multi-use facility, which will offset the cost to the county by charging fees for non-law enforcement use of the range when the range is not in use by law enforcement agencies. The sooner the range is in operation, the better it will be for our county. Some things you just have to pay for. Public safety is one of them.
Snohomish
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