SAPOL Academy Firing Range Closed For Months After Safety Failures Sparked Fears For Lives
SAPOL is always finding new ways to screw up and confirm its status as the world’s most useless police force.
Thanks to an FOI request, we now learn the gun firing range used to train SA Police recruits was urgently shut after ammunition penetrated bulletproof walls, sparking fears “catastrophic” safety failures risked lives.
The three decade-old Fort Largs Police Academy’s weapons training facility was closed after routine inspections missed “bullet damage to infrastructure”, a six-month Advertiser investigation found.
Confidential police documents, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, detail a catalogue of “catastrophic” safety failures that caused the almost five month closure.
An emergency inspection found “projectiles” breached ballistic walls, bullets pierced air-conditioning vents, bullet traps 15 years out-of-date and building structure integrity risks.
Rank-and-file officers feared possible stray bullets put police and civilians in danger amid claims academy visitors, including a private coffee barista, reported hearing “pinging” noises.
While senior police were “concerned”, in true dishonest and anti-transparent SAPOL tradition they downplayed public safety risks and denied shrapnel left the range outside a restricted store room.
They also said no near-miss accidents had occurred despite official complaints about “ricochet” and “particles” in a controlled area.
The high-level FOI documents, which police partly redacted to protect law enforcement and safety, details a working group’s scramble for a long-term solution.
As is the case with all SAPOL screw-ups, the taxpayers are left to foot the bill. It’s time the idiots at SAPOL were made to personally foot the bill for their own stupidity.
SAPOL declined to reveal an overall taxpayer bill due to ‘secret procurement rules’ and no decisions occurring on a long-term solution.
The papers warn a potential rebuild cost of between $5 and $20 million.
Taxpayers will spend up to $1.5 million to install a temporary “rubber gran trap” borrowed from Victoria Police that allowed the range to reopen on March 4 this year.
It also includes paying for upgrades to a second Adelaide Hills firearms building.
More than 600,000 Smith and Wesson 40 calibre semi-automatic pistol rounds were fired each year at the 25 metre, 10-lane indoor Fort Largs firing range built in 1993 with ‘state-of-the art’ safety barriers, ballistic backstops and bullet traps.
But an extra 100,000 rounds a-year “accelerated wear and tear” as more cadets were hired to solve the force’s recruitment crisis, according to briefing papers for Commissioner Grant Stevens, an inspection report and risk management plan.
“Over time, the projectiles had sufficiently damaged the concrete structure to form a significant hole, allowing exit into the maintenance room,” an inspection report stated.
“It should be further noted that complaints have been made regarding ricochet and particles falling up-range and being found in the maintenance room opposite the existing hole.”
Sources, who said it was lucky no one was seriously injured or killed, told how the barista reported “pinging” noises while operating a mobile coffee shop with his wife.
The man, a former policeman who has moved overseas, did not respond to inquiries while his Adelaide-based wife also would not comment.
Fort Largs hosts operational “static” – or stationery – shooting and moving exercises while STAR Group and Security Response Section officers also conduct drills.
The FOI papers reveal a Firearms Branch officer and a senior facility inspector ordered the outer northwestern suburbs site be closed on October 10 last year.
Projectiles were “leaving the range” behind a damaged 10mm “toughened steel plate”, which damaged building walls and air filtration padding, the FOI papers revealed.
Inspectors concluded a flawed design “hindered” building fatigue checks.
An October 16 urgent check found it in “ballistically unsafe condition as clearly evidenced by recent ballistic failures”.
The documents, circulated among leadership officials including Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams and heads of infrastructure, business services and human resource, noted “concerns … as to the safety of the range for trainees and instructors”.
The papers outline 10 safety failures including a special deflector plate becoming detached, which allowed projectiles to hit walls.
Others included “multiple” rounds penetrating a “defence zone”, catastrophic failure to side walls around the bullet trap, the catcher more than double a 10-15 year service life, “structural integrity” concerns and “partly destroyed” duct work.
Bullets also damaged electricity cables while acoustic foam posed a “high” fire risk.
Sources said maintenance schedules could not be located. The report “highly recommended” inspections not exceed a 12-month interval.
Training was transferred more than 30 km to an Adelaide Hills range at Echunga.
While more than 2000 officers were told about the Fort Largs closure, it was not publicly announced.
Sources said blunders mirrored a similar incident at the Hills facility where police failed to complete routine checks on a walk-in freezer before Debra Summers, 54, died in 2016.
Predictably, police commissioner Grant Stevens got angry at the revelations. Stevens is a delicate little flower who always throws a tanty whenever anyone criticizes SAPOL or asks him hard questions. He gets paid a ridiculous and totally undeserved $600,000 per year to run SAPOL into the ground, yet believes him and his rubbish police force deserve immunity from questioning and criticism.
In 2016, when he took over as police commissioner, he made an awful police force even worse with his failed District Policing Model. The DPM is so bad it has caused record levels of attrition among SAPOL officers, despite being grossly overpaid.
His other achievements include praising serial thug cop Benjamin Higgins for cowardly assaulting handcuffed and restrained people, and being so scared of peaceful protestors that he ordered over a dozen officers to hold his hand on the way to court in 2022, where he was to be questioned about his role in the Covid fraud.
Stevens said on Wednesday morning the force had “advised SafeWork SA and they don’t intend to conduct any further inquiry in relation to it”.
Of course they don’t. Government agencies are all complicit and help each other cover up their incompetence and malfeasance.
Source
SA Police academy firing range closed for months after gun safety failures sparked fears for lives. The Advertiser.
SA Police Academy gun flaws ‘left taxpayers to foot bill to fix preventable problems’. The Advertiser.
