ACC President and CEO Richard Rhodes, speaking at the opening ceremony, said that the PSTC was built to prepare students to become first responders in law enforcement and emergency medical service roles.
“This is a state-of-the-art facility,” Rhodes said. “ACC takes pride in bringing the very best to all of the people that we want to educate and train.”
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who spoke at the opening ceremony, said the PSTC will build on ACC Hays’ existing programs and allow the college to better serve students.
“We have a more impressive program here for all that choose to go into first-responder careers,” Doggett said. “Law enforcement, first responders, and firefighters play a critical role in natural disasters, gun violence and school safety.”
The facility is also available to law enforcement agencies for training, which means it will also help many communities in Central Texas, Doggett said.
“In boosting the training and the level of competence of our law enforcement officers,” Doggett said, “it will assure us not only that we have jobs and a stronger economy, but that when we go home at night or are traveling during the day, that we’re safe.”
Expanding ACC Hays
The ACC Hays campus opened in 2014, four years after Hays CISD voted in favor of joining the college system’s taxing district. According to ACC. last year it enrolled nearly 1,700 students in transferable core curriculum courses and college-readiness classes that are meant to improve reading, writing, mathematics and computer skills. ACC Hays also has a co-enrollment program with Texas State University.
“When Kyle and Buda voters recognized the need for more educational opportunities, ACC responded,” Doggett said. “Today, building on the success of the existing criminal justice program here to keep us safe, we have ACC responding to the first responders.”
The PSTC, designed by the architecture firm Brinkley Sargent Wiginton, is the second phase of the campus and part of a $386 million bond that was approved by voters in 2014; that bond also funded new facilities at the Elgin campus, expansions at the Round Rock campus and established a new San Gabriel campus in Leander, giving the ACC system a total of 11 campuses.
“In less than four years we’ve been able to put to use those funds that were approved by the voters and bring this type of educational training facility to the public and students and future students of ACC,” Rhodes said.
Two buildings, with a combined 40,000 square feet, and an outdoor driving course make up the facility.
“Students who major in criminal justice and those working toward obtaining their state peace officer license will greatly benefit from the PSTC,” said James Molloy, a criminal justice professor at ACC, in an interview. Molloy said the new facility will also help students on the emergency management path, a degree program at ACC that began in the fall 2018 semester.
In addition to classrooms, Building 1 has a 7,000-square-foot tactical-training room that, as operators demonstrated at the opening, can be made completely dark and filled with smoke to replicate real-life scenarios. Students or trainees can practice defense techniques, emergency response calls or active-shooter scenarios in rooms made to look like offices or classrooms.
Building 2 features a 50-yard, 12-lane indoor firing range that is capable of handling all the standard law enforcement weapons such as handguns, shotguns and rifles; the range is outfitted with alternating targets, flashing lights and loud noises to imitate potential scenarios that law enforcement or first responders may encounter.
The range is also designed to be environmentally responsible; as guns fire, one-way ducts pull air from inside so that every 90 seconds the building is filled with completely new air. Spent bullets are also collected at the end of the range for recycling.
Adjacent to the buildings is a 19-acre emergency vehicle operator course, or EVOC, built to test and improve driving skills.
“I was overwhelmed by the level of detail that was considered with every nut and bolt in this facility,” said Kyle Mayor Travis Mitchell, addressing the crowd gathered for the opening. “Nothing is without design and intention, all of it coming together to provide a world-class first responder training facility that really has no peer.”
Law enforcement training
Though it was originally proposed to support ACC students in criminal justice, law enforcement, emergency medical or emergency management fields, after ACC surveyed local law enforcement and received community input, officials decided to turn it into a regional public safety resource; EMS, fire or police departments will be able to use PSTC resources through contracts with ACC.
“If there’s ever an area where it’s important to have continuing education and retraining on the latest developments it’s in law enforcement and emergency medical services,” Doggett said. “Our community is growing at such a rapid rate that we need that kind of training.”
Although there are other training centers in the region, such as Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, Molloy said he believes what makes ACC’s PSTC different is its holistic approach, with space for multiple types of training.
In an interview, PSTC interim Director Dale Toler said that training local law enforcement will be an important part of the facility’s mission.
“Law-enforcement agencies are most interested in the EVOC,” Toler said. “It’s our bread and butter of this operation, because they might not otherwise have the capability of practicing driving techniques.”
Designed for speeds up to 60 mph, the EVOC runs for about a half mile with various curves and banks, a railroad track section and a skills pad that is a little over 300 square yards; the skills pad is made with a special slick material that keeps the section slippery. These specially incorporated features of the track are meant to recreate real-life events where high-speed driving can cause vehicles to lose control and slide off the road. Other training scenarios, such as traffic stops or driving violations, can also be simulated on the course
Toler, who spent more than 20 years working with the Austin Police Department, said he believes there is a significant need for this kind of driving track within the local law-enforcement community.
“Immediate reactions skills are valuable in driving situations,” Toler said. “I don’t know of another track like this one at ACC; it was engineered specifically for this type of training. Most agencies use an airport runway, but those can’t give you these built-in features.”
Beyond ACC
The future of law enforcement was a theme at the PSTC opening.
“All of us in this room,” Hays County Sheriff Gary Cutler said, “we all know that the future is coming out of here. A lot of the future leaders are coming out of this facility right here.”
The Hays and Travis County sheriff offices, as well as the Austin, Buda and Kyle police departments are among the law-enforcement agencies that have expressed interest in establishing contracts, according to Toler.
Barbara Mink, chairwoman of the ACC board of trustees, spoke of the importance of highly trained law-enforcement officers.
“We live in an era when this kind of facility, this kind of training is extremely important,” Mink said. “I think ACC is going to do a yeoman’s job in training the technology as well as the cultural competence to really make a difference in Central Texas.”
