ODESSA, Texas — Police recruits must go through hours of training before officially making it onto the force.
All of that training takes place in the OPD training facility, which is next door to the police station.
The building, which used to be a firehouse, now allows the department to train their recruits and other officers in-house instead of at another facility.
“Having a facility like this has been incredible beyond words. Not only are we able to have our own academy in-house for our own recruits and our own officers, we can now use this facility to train our own officers and any officers in Texas and even nationwide,” said CPL. Marshall Williams, background investigator and recruiter for OPD.
The recruits will go through physical training, as well as learning how to defend themselves and others, but a lot of their time will also be spent in classrooms.
In the garage, they made space for a workout station for recruits and other OPD employees.
The training facility even has a Virtra simulator that allows recruits to go through training scenario simulations in a 360-degree angle.
All of this just makes the recruits’ experience all the better.
“Every recruit that’s gone through the academy with this new building has absolutely loved it. Just the technology that we have, the ability to provide so much more than we have in the past to make sure we’re training the best officers that we can for the city of Odessa,” CPL. Williams continued.
Even with its up-to-date facility, OPD will still always be looking into ways to improve training for recruits and officers.