Eugene Police Special Operations and Tactics (SWAT) is using the abandoned PeaceHealth Sacred Heart University District Hospital for training. In an email to Eugene Weekly, SWAT Lt. Chuck Salsbury writes via an EPD spokesperson that the SWAT team has partnered with the hospital for several years. 

Salsbury says that the purpose of the training is to simulate police tactics such as hostage rescue and active violent incidents, commonly known as active shooters. 

“EPD SWAT trains monthly in order to keep up with industry standards and training protocols and to better prepare our officers for real world incident situations that we may come across,” Salsbury writes. He confirms that SWAT utilizes a special kind of ammunition during these training sessions called “simunition.”

Simunition is a type of non-lethal training ammunition used to realistically simulate real weapons fire in a safe manner. Simunition is used in regular semi-automatic firearms, but requires specially modified components to work correctly. It allows officers to train with the same weapons they would use in the field.

This kind of ammunition is typically used during force-on-force training, which involves two opposing sides firing real, non-lethal projectiles at one another. “We do often have our officers participating in training at this location in scenario-based simulation training utilizing simunition in order to facilitate our officer’s training in the most realistic force on force training,” Salsbury writes.

Salsbury writes that the unused hospital is used by the entire police department as needed for the training department. EW reached out to PeaceHealth for comment but received no response.