Stray bullets irk neighbors of gun range
BALTIMORE — The police chief who runs the villageowned police shooting range in this Fairfield County community is taking steps to improve safety after neighbors complained about stray bullets hitting a pole barn, a tractor and a house.
Neighbors, however, say Baltimore Police Chief Michael Tussey hasn’t done enough, and they want the firing range shut down.
“In the beginning, we would have liked to see the safety built up, but now I don’t think they can operate it safely. I would
say shut it down,” said Rusty Mock, who found a 9 mm bullet that had sailed through one side of his metal pole barn and lodged in the opposite side.
Baltimore police and other departments use the shooting range to fulfill the annual firearms training and qualification required by the state. Deputies from the Fairfield County sheriff's office and officers from the Millersport, Carroll and Lithopolis police departments use the range for free. The Whitehall, Groveport and Madison Township police departments in Franklin County pay $500 annually to use the range. Eastland Career Center and Columbus State Community College, which each run police academies to train students for law-enforcement careers, pay $500 per academy class to use it.
Police have been shooting there for the past 30 years or so.
Tension between the police chief and the shooting-range neighbors has been building since the fall.
That's when Mock found the bullet lodged in his pole barn. He and his wife, Jamie, live with their two young children along Leonard Road on property that's been in the family for 150 years, and lies just over a half-mile southwest of the shooting range's dirt backstop. His parents, Jerry and Barb Mock, live nearby.
Tussey denies the bullet came from the police shooting range. He also disputes the claims made by other neighbors that stray bullets that hit a farmer's tractor and a house came from the range.
A state-certified firearms instructor and a member of the county sheriff's SWAT team looked into Mock's complaint, and after mapping and measuring the distance at 3,320 feet, just over a half-mile, “they couldn't see any way that bullet came from our range,” the police chief said.
Mock said he had two gunsmiths conduct an analysis, and they concluded that a 9 mm bullet could travel up to 1.4 miles, so he believes it likely did come from the range. Mock also has flown his video drone over the firing range to document how many people are out shooting. Besides the stray bullet at issue, the Mocks also are upset with noise from the range, which they said has grown worse. The day before Easter, the gunfire was so intense that it ruined the egg hunt the Mocks hosted for their children and others.
“We don't go outside when we hear shooting,” said Jamie Mock.
Tussey said he has made changes, and plans more. Among them, as of July 1, the range now is closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Before, it was open on Saturdays.
He plans to elevate the dirt backstop to 20 feet, up from its current height range of 11.7 feet to 14 feet. Fairfield County commissioners haven't responded to Tussey's suggestion that the county help pay the estimated $10,000 cost to build up the backstop.
Tussey also plans to add more no-trespassing signs, and is considering adding more fencing to keep out trespassers. He believes that the stray bullets that neighbors have complained about have come from trespassers who have crept onto the range to shoot, or from people shooting on private property.
Mock doesn't think trespassing civilians are to blame for the stray bullets. “Nobody in their right mind would trespass on a police shooting range. I wouldn't,” he said.
Tussey, who was hired as Baltimore's police chief in 2007 after he retired as a captain from the Westerville Police Department, said he is confident the shooting range and the neighbors can co-exist.
“We are doing everything in our power to be good neighbors,” he said.