SUMTER, S.C. — More law enforcement officers will be able to get trained as a new training facility prepares to open in Sumter County. The sheriff’s office has been working on renovating a building for nearly a year to serve Sumter and other communities throughout the state.
“I think it’s the greatest thing,” Sumter resident Ardene Tucker shares after learning about the new facility. “I think it’s very important. We need all the training and you know, make everybody do their jobs better. If they trained well, we’re all see aspects of that. It’s great.”
Residents like Tucker can expect Sumter County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) to receive that training at the new facility, which is wrapping up construction.
“It's been a year in the making,” Lt. Lenell Allen with SCSO’s special operations unit says. “We're getting bigger. We're expanding more deputies. We're bringing in more students from other counties.”
Allen says from the lowcountry to the upstate, SCSO helps train law enforcement from all over the state who belong to smaller agencies.
“We have the time and resources to give as much as we can,” Allen explains. “And when our officers are better, they serve the community better. And when they're happy, everybody's happy.”
This new facility, which Allen says comes from state and county funding, will feature office spaces, conference rooms, showers and a kitchen. Allen tells me the department can better serve communities by making sure officers are knowledgeable on everything from defense tactics to diversity training to bloodborne pathogen safety.
“We want to make sure that every single officer that comes out of this building is trained to the highest level of training,” Allen says. “It's important to me because like, I'm a servant of the community. If my community says, ‘Hey, I want you guys to be this level,’ you know what? I'm going to reach that level because that's what we do. So they set the mandate. We're here to show, ‘Hey, we mean business about it. We took you guys’ cries and and suggestions and we're running with them.’ We will train our deputies as long as we have to, to make sure everybody reaches a certain level.”
To do that, Allen says a new cadet can expect to go through roughly eight months of training before going out on patrol.
“People say, ‘Why is it so long?” Allen tells me. “Because I want to make sure that when I put a deputy out there, they're 100% ready to go.”
The department is aiming to have that training center open before Thanksgiving. Allen says it might also be used as a polling location and to teach classes open to non-law enforcement citizens.