Marksmanship
The Marksmanship team conducts fundamental refresher training courses such as Semi-Automatic Pistol 1, Patrol Rifle, and Shotgun Skills training. These courses are designed for the officer who has recently graduated from a Basic Mandate course and needs to enhance marksmanship skills, as well as for the veteran officer who needs a refresher in fundamentals of marksmanship.
This team also offers a wide variety of classes to broaden an officer’s skill level with pistols, rifles, shotguns, and submachine guns. Course offerings include Semi-Automatic Pistol II & III, Concealed Carry Handgun, and Submachine Gun training. These classes greatly improve an officer’s knowledge, skill level and confidence in their ability to shoot their weapons.
As part of its initiative to offer advanced specialized training, the Marksmanship team teaches Counter Sniper (Levels 1 and 2) courses. Officers attending these training classes must be members of a Special Reaction or S.W.A.T. team or be assigned to a Counter Sniper team. Additionally, we offer an 80-hour Firearms Instructor class and a 40-hour Shotgun Instructor course.
The Marksmanship team maintains multiple training ranges. They include two 25-yard pistol ranges with 26 targets each, a multiple purpose range with 28 target frames and a running man target system, a reactionary steel range, a crime scene range that includes a live fire house, a 50-yard shotgun range with 44 target frames, a rifle range with 200-yard targets and a long rifle range with targets out to 600 yards.
The Firearms Training unit at GPSTC is one of a limited number of training facilities in Georgia to teach the ‘reactionary shooting’ concept with a four-day advanced training block that is taught as a segment in our Semi-Automatic Pistol III course. All shooting within this block is conducted on our reactionary steel range.
Tactical Operations
The Tactical Operations (TacOps) team develops and delivers an intense and challenging training curriculum that provides public safety officers with the critical skills necessary to conduct individual daily operations as well as tense and rapidly evolving high risk tactical team events. This team teaches Judgmental Use of Force, Officer Survival, Criminal Apprehension for Patrol, High Risk Warrant Service and Arrest tactics, Basic S.W.A.T, and offers a Shoot House Instructor course.
TacOps coordinates the Counter-Terrorism Program designed to enhance the state’s first responder community, offering general, tactical, and investigative counter-terrorism courses to help build essential and critical skills responders need to effectively identify potentials and intentions and respond to mass consequence events.
Additionally, TacOps oversees operations within GPSTC’s mock village. The mock village consists of a classroom and six buildings modeled after structures found in a typical Georgia town—a bank, an office building, a convenience store, a motel, a warehouse and a residence. Training courses that take place in the mock village include: Active Shooter, Counter Sniper II, Officer Survival and S.W.A.T. training. During this training, students learn building entry, searches, and building clearance and use “role playing” scenarios that represent situations an officer might typically encounter. These scenarios enhance training for students because they best replicate the real world.