Hot Springs police cite noise in ending drills at city gun range

HOT SPRINGS — In response to years of complaints, firearms training will no longer be conducted at the municipal firing range on Park Avenue adjacent to DeSoto Park, effective immediately, Hot Springs Police Chief Jason Stachey said Wednesday.

“There will not be any more shooting, at least by law enforcement officers, in that area, and we won’t be conducting any kind of training exercises there anymore,” Stachey said.

The exact date the range was built is uncertain, but Stachey noted that it has been there since the mid1940s and “there have always been pretty consistent complaints of noise coming from the sounds of gunfire or from our other training activities.”

He said the number of complaints intensified in the past couple of years, which he attributes in part to “the revitalization that’s going on in the downtown area and the new businesses that are coming in. There’s just a lot more people moving into the [Park Avenue] area.”

Because of the complaints, the decision was made to discontinue firearms training there and to use a private range “out in the county” until a permanent location for a new range can be found.

Stachey said the private range will give the department more training opportunities than it’s had at the existing location.

“At the old range, we were restricted in the number of shooting lanes, the length we could shoot and some of the training we could conduct,” Assistant Police Chief Chris Chapmond said.

The interim location has several different ranges with different distances and more scenario-based shooting opportunities, Chapmond added.

Chapmond said a goal for the new facility is to have a range that would be capable of hosting regional training.

“We want it to be the goto place for law enforcement in our area and not only afford us the opportunity to enhance our training capabilities but also provide that for others,” he said.

A free-standing building will be constructed at the new range to house a training facility that would allow K-9 training and less lethal training like Tasers, bean bags, pepper spray and defensive tactic training.

“This will also free up space at the department, because we currently do a lot of training upstairs and in the back parking lot and they are not really designed for that,” Chapmond said.

Stachey said officials will meet with a local Realtor within the next week about prospective locations.

“It will be in the county and away from any existing neighborhoods or residences,” Stachey said. “That would be a top priority, an isolated location.”

The department plans to construct a new building at the current firing range site that will be used as a storage facility for property and records.