"Old Timers" Qualify At Whitfield Sheriff's Office Shooting Range

Whitfield County Training Instructor Phillip Herren will be on the other side of the classroom next year.

 

After 15 years in that position at the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office, Herren will be retiring in a few months, but not before he supervised the annual Old Timers Shoot one last time on March 31.

 

“I’ll be sitting in the classroom with these guys next year instead of standing in front of them,” Herren said with a smile, noting that once he’s retired, he also plans to spend more time taking care of his 10 hives of honeybees.

 

About 30 to 35 retirees attended the annual Old Timers Shoot at the county’s shooting range on Old Prater’s Mill Road to renew their federal concealed weapons carry permit.

 

Under the guidance of Herren and other active members of the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office, all the retirees qualified for their licenses after shooting several rounds at targets from several distances, including 25 yards, 15 yards, 7 yards, and 3 yards.

 

Ordinarily, the retirees attend a one-hour class on the use of deadly force, then head out to the shooting range to shoot a qualifying score on the Georgia Qualification Course with the type of weapon they’re going to carry.

Because of the threat of rain, though, they reversed that order this year and shot first, then  attended class, and closed the day’s activities with a grilled hamburger and hot dog lunch.

 

Other ranges often charge a fee for using their facility, but Sheriff Scott Chitwood believes that law enforcement officers who have served their communities for decades shouldn’t have to pay.

 

“Sheriff Chitwood said it’s going to be free, we’ll feed you lunch, and we’re doing something new for the first time this year,” Herren said. “The retirees used to have to send in paperwork and pay $25 to the Police Officers Standards and Training to receive their permit card, but this year, they won’t have to pay that because the sheriff’s office is completing the process in-house for free.”

 

Many agencies took part in this year’s Old Timers Shoot, including lawmen from the Department of Natural Resources, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Patrol, Atlanta Police, Murray County, Walker County, Catoosa County and Gordon County sheriff’s offices, and U.S. Marshal’s Office - “pretty much the entire gamut of law enforcement,” Herren said.

 

It’s an exciting time for the shooting range, located for nearly 30 years on 10 acres owned by Marcus and Susan Boring.

 

“The county has leased the land from the Borings for about a dollar a year for the past 27 years,” Herren said. “But because it wasn’t our property, we couldn’t expand the facility, so Mr. Boring said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, how about we just give you the 10 acres, make it county property, then you can do with it as you please.’ ”

 

With the land now in the county’s name, the sheriff’s office is moving full steam ahead on construction of a 100x50-foot multi-purpose training room that will seat about 100 people. Utility poles in the way have already been relocated, and the building should be completed this summer on the site of the current parking lot. Once construction is done, a new parking area will be paved towards Old Prater’s Mill Road.

 

That’s not the only construction going on at the site, though.

 

Inmate work crews have been busy painting and renovating the old training room on the site, and Herren says another new building is in the works late this year or early next year.

 

“Up here to the right of the shooting range, we’re going to build an open building that we can use as a  picnic area or open-air classroom,” Herren said, “and then in the near future, we’re going to enclose it and make it into a simunitions house where we can change the configuration  of the interior walls to create the different kinds of houses we might have to go into during a real incident.”

 

Simunition was created in the late 1980s with the goal of providing more realistic training to military and law enforcement agencies. The projectiles are filled with colored water-soluble marking compound, similar to a paintball, and break upon impact, marking the target and allowing trainers to assess the accuracy and lethality of the hits.