Hamilton County Sheriff Austin Garrett told the Rotary Club of Chattanooga on Thursday that he would like to see the police shooting range at Moccasin Bend replaced in the future with a state-of-the-art regional training facility.
However, he said there have been difficulties finding property and they are continuing to look for new possibilities.
“We are actively working on it,” Sheriff Garrett said. He said a recent opportunity fell through, but he is eyeing 300-acre properties with help from state Rep. Greg Vital. The sheriff envisions a complete training center with a driving track, he said.
National Park Partners board member Mickey Robbins had asked the fate of the shooting range during a Q and A.
The State Building Commission approved $260 million in January for construction of a new psychiatric hospital without specifying a location. Governor Bill Lee announced in September 2024 that the hospital would not remain at Moccasin Bend as an archeological study began to unearth evidence of Native American settlement as old as the Woodland period.
Sheriff Garrett took the group through a quick list of accomplishments since his election two years ago.
To the applause of the audience, he said Hamilton County is the first in the state to have school resource officers in every public school and every charter school. His tenure has seen SROs hired for the last 12 schools and all the charter schools, he said.
“Those kids deserve the exact same protection,” he said.
The Sheriff’s Office is sending two existing School Resource Deputies to the training to become instructors in the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program that Sheriff Garrett resurrected after two decades. The DARE police car, a mobile classroom and part of the curriculum, was seized from a drug dealer, and it says so along the side of the car.
Cameras and cell locks at the Hamilton County Jail and Detention Center on Standifer Gap Road were out of order when he inherited the facility, he said.
“Inmates were letting themselves in and out,” he said.
$37 million later, the 1,100-bed facility has been renovated and reinforced with hi-tech cameras with audio and other security amenities, and Sheriff Garrett has more plans for a new kitchen and classrooms. The facility absorbed the 500 inmates from the shuttered downtown facility thanks to new methods that keep low-level offenders out of prison, he said.
“People said we couldn’t do it. Well, we did it,” he said.
Sheriff Garrett said he filled 56 funded vacancies in the Sheriff’s Office with dedication to recruiting and compensation.
“You have to compensate people for doing the job,” he said.
Sheriff Garrett said he was inspired by his father, a Combustion employee who was asked by the local Ruritan Club to serve without pay as a deputy of Bryant, Ala. The nearest sheriff was 45 minutes away in the Jackson County seat of Scottsboro.
Townspeople called his home directly at all hours of the night.
“They would call our home because they were in need,” he said. “He would take that call.”
Sheriff Garrett said his father would leave with his gun, his badge and handcuffs, while his mother called Scottsboro to send a deputy.
“He always put others in front of himself,” he said.