Firing Range Triggers Neighbors’ Complaints

Standing in the frontyard of her Granada Hills home, Lorraine Phillips can hear a barrage of gunfire. The incessant pop, pop, pop of handguns and the louder explosions of shotguns go on some days from early morning to late in the evening.

“It sounds like firecrackers, like someone set off a whole slew of them--pop-pop-pop-pop,” said Phillips. “If you go out in your yard and sit to read the newspaper, it’s very distracting. You can’t enjoy yourself.”

So call the police, right? Wrong. The Los Angeles Police Department is doing the shooting.

A year after the LAPD opened a $29-million training center in Granada Hills, some neighbors have had enough.

“At 7:20 this morning, in my backyard, it sounded like ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ” said John Moranville, president of the 500-member Knollwood Property Owners Assn.

“It’s a war zone,” added Frank Kohler, a four-decade resident of the area. “It sounds like when I was in Okinawa in 1945.”

Nick Kurek, a 32-year resident of Granada Hills, said it is annoying to have the peace of his neighborhood shattered by gunfire several times a week.

“When you have guests and you are sitting down to dinner, and all of a sudden gunfire breaks out, you have people ducking for cover,” Kurek said.

The firing range in Granada Hills, and another one at the old Police Academy in Elysian Park, is essential to make sure police officers are well-trained in the use of deadly force, officials said.

Every one of the department’s nearly 10,000 officers must requalify with a handgun every other month, and recruits use the ranges to train.

“There is a critical need for ranges at both locations,” said LAPD Cmdr. Dave Kalish.

Kalish said the department has received so many noise complaints that it has decided to to address the neighbors’ concerns.

The city plans soon to seek bids to revamp the firing range in an attempt to reduce the noise filtering out into surrounding residential neighborhoods.

“We think this will mitigate that problem,” said Kalish.

The Edward Davis EVOC Firearms/Tactics Training Facility opened Oct. 26, 1998, on 44 acres at the base of the Van Norman Bypass Reservoir.

The state-of-the art training ground, where officers can practice high-speed vehicle maneuvers and use mock villages to learn tactics for taking down criminals, has been lauded by police officials.

But the three firing ranges, which can be used by 72 police officers at a time, have been the focus of neighbors’ complaints. Some say they have heard shooting until 9 p.m., although LAPD officials maintain the range is open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The firing ranges were added late in the project, which started out as just an emergency vehicle operations center where officers could use a four-mile track to practice driving in difficult circumstances. Some neighbors said they were not aware the firing ranges were included until the project was built; others who attended public meetings on the project said city officials promised the ranges would not be a nuisance.

The firing ranges were built with a roof and three walls, but the back, where officers stand while firing, is open.

Kalish said nearly $100,000 has been set aside to install large sound-absorbing panels at the firing ranges.

Kohler is skeptical. He wants the firing range closed.

But even as LAPD officials are talking about retrofitting the center, there is increasing pressure to expand its use.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who can hear gunfire from her home near Elysian Park, recently sent a formal request to the LAPD to significantly reduce the hours of operation at Elysian Park’s outdoor firing range.

If the soundproofing in Granada Hills works, she said, more officers should travel to that location for weapons practice.

“If Granada Hills is soundproof, it won’t matter,” she said.

The noise problem has upset many Granada Hills residents who already feel they have had to take more than their fair share of nuisances, including two oil pipelines, several freeways, the flight path for Van Nuys Airport and the proposal to reopen a section of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill nearby.

Kurek said when he isn’t hearing gunfire from the LAPD facility or airplanes flying overhead, he often has to shut the windows of his house against the foul smell of the county portion of the landfill already in operation.

“We feel dumped on,” he said.