$9.3 million police training center set to open in former Cary village hall
Police agencies in McHenry County will be able to train together at a new facility opening next week in Cary.
The 20,485-square-foot building, at 655 Village Hall Drive, previously housed Cary village hall.
Renovations on the building were kept to the interior, since it's important to preserve the historic exterior aspects of the building, Cary Village Administrator Erik Morimoto said.
"It's another great example of the effective use of revitalization of an existing space but, more importantly, a great public partnership," he said.
The McHenry County Regional Training Center will have three training areas: two classrooms and a tactical training room. One classroom will fit 100 students, and a second 40-person classroom will be in the lower level former village board meeting room.
The McHenry County Sheriff's Office provided crisis intervention training at the new facility last week. The 40-hour class involves actors role-playing different crises so officers can identify what a person may be going through and act accordingly, Sheriff Robb Tadelman said.
Police departments including Cary, Algonquin, Lake in the Hills and McHenry are expected to participate in training at the new building. Other departments are in talks, Tadelman said.
"We've had a good number of agencies that are going to participate in this training facility," he said.
Previously, police officers would have to commute to training centers in the South suburbs, which can mean more than an hour of commuting, Tadelman said. There also are plans to offer training that officers can complete during their shifts, including overnight.
"So they don't have to take a day off to sleep and to change their life cycle so that they can get these trainings," he added.
The sheriff's office bought the building for $1 in 2022. The $9.3 million project has been a plan for the sheriff's office for years, Tadelman said.
About $6.2 million will be paid for through federal coronavirus relief dollars, and the rest from the sheriff's office's discretionary funds, sheriff's Sgt. Eric Ellis said in February.
Tadelman said the training facility also will be a way for officers to address new mandates created under the state's new SAFE-T Act.
"That's one of things that this training facility is going to do is make sure that all the mandates for each officer are met not just at the level that the state has set, but we're going to exceed those expectations," he said.
Since multiple police departments typically respond to calls together, it's important for officers to be on the same page and "not talking different languages," Tadelman added.
"We'll have top-notch, top-level, unified training so that when we support each other on calls, we're able to come from the same training background," he said.
The facility also allows the sheriff's office to form a training committee. The purpose of the committee would be to find ways to update and change training based on the needs of the county.
"As opposed to getting generic training from the state that is almost like a big-box store, we really are addressing what the needs are from our community locally and handling it from there," Tadelman said.