Inside an old building on a Franklin Masonic Home campus, police dogs are practicing how to sweep for drugs, pull people from cars and navigate gunfire.
For the next couple months, the Franklin police and fire departments can train however they best see fit inside an old Compass Park building that’s fate has been sealed.
Compass Park volunteered its old health center, which is slated for demolition later this year, to local public safety agencies on the hunt for a large vacant space for training.
Last week, the Franklin Police Department used the facility to train two K9 dogs to serve dual purposes — narcotics investigations and patrols, said Tim Coy, an officer and trainer with the department.
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On Wednesday, the dogs were learning vehicle extractions, Coy said, shouting above the barking and commands in the background.
In the coming weeks, the Franklin Fire Department will use the building for various fire drills. Last week, the local SWAT team used it, said Jenna Butler, executive administrative assistant at Compass Park who helped facilitate the trainings.
"One of the hardest things for us to do is find buildings like this to use," Coy said.
Usually, Franklin police will travel to Camp Atterbury in southern Johnson County to conduct trainings, or use much smaller dorm rooms at Franklin College during the summer.
With a space that size, the officers can teach the dogs how to search a large building for people, drugs or man-made devices.
"They’re learning everything from vehicle extraction to track to bite. Next, we’ll work on gunfire," Coy said.
"Without the use of this building, this would almost be impossible to teach these dogs. Really, nobody wants to offer up buildings that they’re using."
This summer, Compass Park opened a new $35 million health center.
The old health center was outdated, Butler said. The Indiana Masonic Home, as it was formerly known, opened its doors in 1916, first as a retirement center, then an orphanage. Now, Compass Park is an ever-growing senior living community.
The new health center is a modern, state-of-the-art facility that includes a therapy gym, and private rooms with baths and showers for patients. The two-story, 125,000-square-foot facility consolidated the nursing and rehabilitation services offered in a scattered collection of buildings elsewhere on the campus.
"Since the new building is taking over, we had to think of feasible ways to keep a building we didn’t need anymore." Butler said. The plan of action right now is to demolish the old building.
"We were just thinking of the timeline and our empty abandoned building and wondering if it could be useful. The mayor suggested we reach out to other city departments to see if there was any need."
Butler has been instructed to keep residents and outsiders away from the building while public safety officials are using it.
"Whatever they’re practicing is definitely serious," she said.
