The Fight Against Crime: Notes From The Front : LAPD Ready to Roll on Driver Training Center

Coming soon to the San Fernando Valley: high-speed chases, screeching spin-outs and hairpin turns on two wheels.

No, it’s not business as usual on the Ventura Freeway. This kind of hot-dogging will not only be legal, it will have a serious purpose.

The Los Angeles Police Department will soon begin constructing a driver-training center in Granada Hills, making it only the second law enforcement agency in the state to have such a facility.

The 44-acre center will be encircled by a high-speed track where officers will practice freeway driving, complete with on- and off-ramps. For city street simulations, there will be a fake business district, with gas station, liquor store and barber shop.

“When we get done, there will be nothing like it in the world,” said Sgt. Bill Dolan, the LAPD’s project manager for the facility,

Last week, the Los Angeles Board of Public Works approved $22.5 million for the project, to be located on city-owned land near the old Van Norman Reservoir. The facility is scheduled to be ready for its first class of LAPD recruits in early 1998.

“We teach our officers how to use the techniques the race car drivers use,” said Dolan, “to negotiate corners at high speeds, handle skids and other situations.

“We’ll be preparing them for whatever they might have to face out on the streets.”

The high-speed training is required for law enforcement officers by the state’s Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training.

“We have a list of specifications,” said Jody Buna, commission course coordinator in Sacramento. “They have to demonstrate the ability to maintain control of the vehicle in a front-wheel and rear-wheel skid. They have to experience all-wheel braking systems, with the loss of steering during a skid.”

The problem is, almost all police departments end up doing this training in places that lack real-world conditions. “They end up in parking lots, airports, anywhere they can get a stretch of pavement,” Buna said.

For about 15 years, the LAPD trained drivers at Reeves Field, an open area at the Port of Los Angeles. In 1984, classes moved to the county fairgrounds in Pomona, where sheriff’s deputies are also trained--site of the worst driver-training accident in LAPD history. Not long after the facility opened, a rookie lost control of his car, crashing into a bridge abutment on the property, Dolan said. The instructor and another passenger were seriously injured.

“The new facility will be mostly open, so if you run off the road you won’t hit anything,” Dolan said.

In 1991, the classes moved to the present site, an unused runway at Ontario Airport.

San Bernardino is the only other city that has a facility exclusively for officer driver training, but Dolan said it does not have such features as the simulated city street. “You’ll be driving on our street when suddenly, there will be a robbery staged at the liquor store, and you’ll have to chase the suspects,” Dolan said.

Also on the property will be classrooms and nondriving training sites, including three firing ranges.

But it’s the high-speed stuff that will probably get the most attention. Veteran officers--like Dolan, who trained in 1971--will not just be onlookers. They’ll probably be sent back for refresher courses.

Is he nervous about going through high-speed training again?

“No, it’s a lot of fun,” Dolan said with a laugh. “You get to put your foot on the accelerator all day long.”