What started as the Madisonville Police Department’s attempt to renovate a building for local officers’ continuing education efforts has turned into a regional law enforcement training resource.
Leadership with the western Kentucky police department wanted to create a new space to host in-service trainings, yearly courses that officers are required to take. They first looked at expanding the agency’s footprint at its firing range, until it became apparent that the site was built atop the old city landfill and that construction there would be difficult.
Then, Chief Steve Bryan worked with the mayor to secure the entirety of a city-owned property that became the Madisonville Police Regional Training Complex.
“I was like, ‘That's way more than we need, but I mean maybe we could offer some regional training because of where we're at regionally.’ It's easy to get here, and so that kind of started the conversation and it snowballed in a good way,” Bryan said.
The Madisonville Police Regional Training Complex, completed in 2024, houses a variety of law enforcement training spaces: two classrooms; two virtual reality simulators for officers to train on different interaction scenarios, including armed altercations; an adjustable “shoot house” for trainees to practice going into an uncontrolled environment; exercise space; and a 1,500-foot mat for hand-to-hand training.
The facility will play a big role in the early stages of the new police academy as well as regional training opportunities and MPD’s Citizen Police Academy.
“We bring in law enforcement trainers from around the country to come here and in a variety of different disciplines – defensive tactics, active shooter, firearms training, de-escalation…accident reconstruction, all different kinds of things,” Bryan said.
The department will allow trainees from other departments to use the space, as the state works to remedy a decades-old problem. Until recently, officers in most Kentucky police departments could only be trained at a state facility in Richmond, a more than three-hour drive from Madisonville and farther for many in other western Kentucky cities.
That distance can take a toll on officers and departments, who then have to foot the bill for the mileage and other associated costs.
Bryan said his department isn’t the only one facing impacts from those delays – and that lawmakers were looking for a solution during this year’s General Assembly.
“We went to meet with some legislators just to say, ‘Hey, is there some funding available for us through the state to fix this up, since we're going to be doing regional training?’” Bryan said. “And almost every legislator that we met in Frankfort, they kept asking one question, ‘Is this going to be an academy?’”
Bryan also said that Kentucky officers only having one location to train at has bottlenecked the process, creating a nearly seven-month backlog of cadets.
“I think if you look at 10, 20 years from now, people will be pretty used to their police officers going to Madisonville instead of Richmond to get trained,” Bryan said. “It's just going to be common knowledge. ‘Well, if you get hired, you're going to go to Madisonville for your basic training.’ So it's very exciting.”
The first class of trainees from across the state started at the police academy in Madisonville in February. The new facility can only host one class at a time, but a new state-run facility is in the works. Kentucky lawmakers approved $50 million to go towards a full new training academy nearby in 2024.
Before this, every new police officer had to travel to Richmond for around 20 weeks at the police academy with the Department of Criminal Justice Training (DOCJT).
“As far as agencies and local governments are concerned, it's going to save millions of dollars in the years to come,” Bryan said. “Our department, we spend about $50,000 a year just sending people to the in-service training, to their 40-hour training in Richmond, between the overtime, the gas, lodging, meals – it's expensive.”
Other police departments in west Kentucky have also been facing difficulties with the location of the state’s facility and the long turnarounds to get new recruits trained.
Andrew Wiggins, captain of the Community Services Division of the Murray Police Department, said it can be a big strain on the department just to get someone new in uniform.
“Up until pretty recently, if we said we're hiring someone, it takes quite a long time to get someone – an officer – trained up and ready to go,” Wiggins said. “I'd like to anticipate that we're looking at cutting that training time down from about a year to, realistically, it could [be] about six months.”
The state legislature and the DOCJT don’t have a set timeline for when the new academy building will be completed. Bryan said it will take “at least” two state budget cycles to complete the project based on what he’s been told.
