House Homeland Security chair tours ‘amazing’ Long Island police training center: ‘A very special place’

Nassau County officials on Tuesday wowed US Rep. Andrew Garbarino, giving the new chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security an exclusive tour of their state-of-the-art cop training center.

In fact, the Empire State Republican lawmaker can’t wait to tell his Capitol Hill pals about it.

“I have never seen something like this,” Garbarino told reporters. “This was amazing. I didn’t know what to expect today and even my dreams could not have reached what I saw today. This is a very special place and it’s a place where we should bring law enforcement from all over the country.

“It’s something that I’m going to bring back. I’m going to speak to the chairman of the Homeland appropriation subcommittee,” he said.

The one-of-a-kind Nassau County Police Department Intel Center and Training Village — unveiled last month with a ribbon-cutting by US Attorney General Pam Bondi — is a fully developed neighborhood designed for a full range of law enforcement training scenarios, including active shooter drills.

The sprawling facility has a simulation church, police precinct, bank, a gas station, private homes and even a train station with actual trains, allowing for a variety of training options.

Nearly 20 years in the making, the facility coincides with Nassau’s efforts to beef up law enforcement capabilities, including a recent deal to train with federal immigration agents.

Tuesday’s tour was led by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and county police Commissioner Patrick Ryder, who also showed off the department’s high-tech intelligence center.

“The hub is right here,” Ryder told Garbarino. “Everything you see on the board is what is running out there in the police department and what they are doing every single day. What you’re looking at right dead smack in the middle is a drone that we have detected that’s up in our airspace now.”

The intel center even links more than 450 school buildings to police through an alert system called the “Rave app” that can get cops there faster than even 911, Ryder said.

“We have it in our yeshiva’s, our private schools, and our colleges,” the commissioner told Garbarino. “That gives us the access to reach them if they have a problem, they push the button, we’re coming and it bypasses the 911 system.”