Shooting range in C-Falls boasts high-tech simulator

A woman is held at knife point at the ATM. Kalispell Police Capt. Tim Falkner points his 9 mm Glock handgun at the assailant and tells him to put the knife down. The man flees, but not before two of his buddies in a getaway car shoot Falkner from an open window.

That scene played out last week in Columbia Falls, but Falkner’s demise wasn’t real — it was part of a new state-of-the-art crime simulator at Northwest Shooter on U.S. 2 being used to train officers from across the Flathead Valley.

The VirTra simulator was funded by a $750,000 federal Community Oriented Policing Services program grant package that also brought a modern shooting range to the facility.

The $225,00 simulator has been operating for a little more than a year now, and Sen. Jon Tester toured the firing range and the simulator last week. Tester was instrumental in helping the company obtain the grant, Northwest Shooter owner Bob Hughes said.

“This is one of the finest law enforcement training centers west of the Mississippi,” Hughes said.

Personnel from the National Park Service, Montana Highway Patrol, Forest Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, Kalispell Police Department and Columbia Falls Police Department all use the simulator regularly for training.

The officers use real guns that have been retrofitted so carbon dioxide cartridges replicate the recoil of a weapon without actually firing a round. Training modules offer various scenarios, including a school shooting and a DUI stop. Officers can videotape their own scenes and import them into the simulator, Hughes said.

To add to the realism, a device that clips on the back of an officer gives them a rather violent 50,000-volt electrical shock to simulate being hit by a round.

“The officer learns they must continue to fight, even though they’re injured,” Hughes said.

The separate firing range allows shooters to hit targets from a variety of distances using live rounds. It’s large enough so officers can pull a vehicle inside to practice shooting from a patrol car.

Tester was impressed by the systems.

“Obviously these situations unfortunately are going to keep occurring. I think, hopefully, they never occur in Montana,” he said afterwards. “But in the rare case that they might, I am confident that these police officers are going to be as equipped as we can possibly make them to deal with an incredibly difficult situation.”

The simulator and the shooting range are open to the public, but some law enforcement training modules are not available to the public. The simulator is also used by shooters working on target range skills who don’t want to waste ammunition.