Police Academy
Los Angeles Police Department

The Police Academy site in Elysian Park is the LAPD’s historic classroom and firearms training area. It was established in the late 1920’s as a private shooting range for officers, and evolved into the LAPD’s main training campus for over fifty years. Though it has long been staffed by LAPD employees, the grounds and the buildings are still owned by the private Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club. Several years ago most recruit training moved to the new Ahmanson Recruit Training Center in Westchester, and now the Academy is used just for continuing police education, officer training, and graduations.

The Academy grounds have a swimming pool, café, dining club, rock garden, gymnasium, athletic field, classrooms, three firing ranges, two electronic simulation training rooms, and two outdoor tactical training areas. The situation simulation “SIT SIM” village is on a hillside near the Rock Garden. It was built in 1975, with help from Universal Studios volunteers. It consists of a series of facades (detail 1 , detail 2 , detail 3 , detail 4) with individual doors. The interior rooms (detail 1 , detail 2)are all connected by doorways, enabling a continuous search scenario to be played out from one end of the complex to the other. Props inside are minimal, and the building is fairly simply constructed. Only simunition is used in this facility.

The other tactical training area, located between two shooting ranges, is the Practical Combat Range at the Tactical Training Center. This is a small “Hogan’s Alley” – type facility (a name which comes from the FBI’s training town in Virginia), with a number of alleys and corridors that terminate at fixed and moving targets ( detail 1 , detail 2 , detail 3 , detail 4, detail 5 , detail 6 ) This is a live fire range, with a large bullet trap consisting of piles of shredded tires, faced by a painted rubber mat. It was improved and modified following the notorious 1999 North Hollywood shootout involving heavily armed and armored bank robbers that alarmed police with their firepower. Additional props include vehicle targets (detail), facades, and obstructions (detail.)