New sheriff’s shooting range coming to Clay County. See how it will look, where it will be

The Clay County Sheriff’s Department released renderings of a planned new training center this week. The department confirmed a new spot for the facility — which will include a shooting range — in Kearney after getting pushback from residents about a previously planned Liberty location.

The department shared its plans for the new Law Enforcement Resource Center (LERC) on Thursday in posts on X, formerly Twitter , and Facebook , after the Clay County Commission approved a special use permit for the site last month.

The 13,000-square-foot center will feature an indoor firing range, a classroom that holds about 50 people, space for virtual, decision-based training and space for defensive tactics training, according to the sheriff’s department.

The site will be located on county-owned land at 16414 NE 116th St. off 33 Highway, which is adjacent to the Clay County Road and Bridges Department.

The shooting range will be “for public safety use only and will not be open to the public” according to the county permit.

The county will pay for the construction of the facility with about $6 million of federal American Rescue Plan money and a federal grant, according to the sheriff’s department.

“We’ve grown a lot as Clay County has grown a lot over the years,” said Sarah Boyd, a spokesperson for the department. “We don’t have space to train and we want to be a highly trained law enforcement agency.”

The department will use the facility to train its deputies, “as well as law enforcement at other local, state and federal agencies, in decision-making, crisis intervention and de-escalation through scenario-based training,” per its permit.

The announcement comes after community pushback when central Liberty residents were notified about plans to build a center with an outdoor shooting range last year. Residents in Liberty largely opposed the center, arguing against having an outdoor range, said Boyd.

But she said the sheriff’s department learned its lesson.

“We realized that the need for community input was really important and so we worked with them,” she said.

She said the department knocked on doors around the new site in April and attended a community meeting at a local church to hear concerns. The feedback was mainly about making sure the facility does not look out of place in the community, resulting in a more rural outdoor look, said Boyd.

The current training facilities were built in the mid-1980s and do not include a shooting range. The department has turned to local schools and neighboring police departments for training spaces and rents out a nearby outdoor shooting range to train its deputies and other officers, which is required by the state of Missouri each year.

“We want to be able to have more offerings,” Boyd said. “But right now, we’re trying to squeeze into places or find conference rooms and that kind of thing, and we won’t have to do that anymore, once this facility is constructed.”

Verbal and physical de-escalation training for various workers including officers working at detention centers and medical transporters for incarcerated people in Clay County will also happen at the center.

The department will start construction bidding next month with hopes to break ground in the early spring of 2025. The project is expected to take a year.