Editor’s note: Off Target: A legacy of neglect at county rifle range is a multipart special report exploring the county’s operations at Plantation Rifle Range, one of two publicly owned ranges in the state. Part III describes how law enforcement utilize the range, contributing to environmental and health challenges.
On a hot, smoky day last August, police officers and trainees were moving up and down the tree-lined, 300-yard high-power range at the Plantation Rifle Range, practicing drills and safety maneuvers with their firearms in tow.
Then the range caught fire.
It had been months since rain had showered nearby woods, and an errant bullet in the trees smoldered for hours before igniting.
“I was on my way home from work and I saw smoke,” Whatcom County Parks Operations Manager Christ Thomsen said during a tour of the facility in January. “I thought, ‘Huh, that’s pretty close to the range.’”
Not 60 seconds later, Thomsen said, he got the call: the high-power range was burning. The fire was quickly extinguished, but employees had to go on fire watch every night after that, and six months later, blackened trees and scorched earth remain.
Law enforcement agencies are among the most frequent users of the Plantation Rifle Range, participating in simulations and trainings at hours of the day and night when the range is closed to the public. Officers from police departments and sheriff’s offices across Whatcom and Skagit counties, as well as federal employees from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, train heavily at Plantation.
“Officers use the range to complete state-mandated firearms training, which is a yearly qualification,” Bellingham Police Lt. Claudia Murphy said.
Murphy said officers train in skills, weapons proficiency, moving and stationary targets and live fire, among other things. Bellingham Police Department is one of the heaviest users of the range, and when Plantation fully closed the outdoor range in November last year, Murphy said the city had to look elsewhere.
“While we were able to adjust our training to allow our officers to remain qualified each trimester, the inability to use Plantation range has affected the efficiency of our training,” she said.
“Plantation offered a space big and versatile enough for us to be able to have firearms training, defensive tactics as well as the less-lethal training all on the same day [at] the same facility,” Murphy continued.
In recent years, hundreds of Bellingham police officers have passed through the gates at the range. Even during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when mandated shutdowns closed most indoor facilities, Bellingham police officers used the indoor range for training.
And, they do it all without facility employees on site.
“We’re not staffing the building when they’re training,” Thomsen said in January. “They have times that they’re scheduled to come, but those times can be any time of day, as long as we don’t have public hours, and they go late into the evening at times.”
In November, Whatcom County hosted a community meeting to discuss closure and cleanup plans at the gun range. Neighbors of the range, many with homes within a quarter mile of the outdoor facilities, reported officers shooting at all hours of the night in recent years.
“As development has been occurring around the range, we, of course, get more complaints about nighttime use,” Thomsen said during the November meeting. “We have worked with law enforcement on their schedules, and that’s something that we’ll continue to work on.”
Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office moved their training to other facilities, including the Custer Sportsmen’s Club, years ago.
“I think it was in the early 2000s when we switched,” said sheriff’s office Lt. James Triplett. “Although we have been using the Custer Sportsmen’s Club for our training, we are hopeful that we can begin using the Plantation Range again once it reopens later this year.”
