County’s Far Reaches Are in SWAT’s Reach

They came jumping out of the Sikorsky helicopter like a force of Green Berets.

A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team was airlifted some 40 miles onto a busy road in Canyon Country two weeks ago while stunned motorists looked on.

They were dispatched to deal with a man who had stuck a rifle out of a second-story window and shot his estranged wife in the thigh. The couple’s 3-year-old son was believed to be with him.

“He had a child, owned high ground and was a hunting enthusiast,” said Lt. Cathy Taylor, one of three team commanders of the SWAT team, which the Sheriff’s Department calls the “Special Enforcement Bureau.”

“He also had a very powerful rifle. We needed to get there fast.”

But how does the Sheriff’s Department react rapidly to crises that require specialists in the far reaches of the county? How does it function as Santa Clarita’s police force, when its headquarters is 40 miles away in downtown Los Angeles?

Enforcement bureau officials say that, in most cases, they can reach within an hour any of the 39 cities that contract with the Sheriff’s Department for police service, including areas as far away as Lancaster and Walnut.

Taylor said the 36 deputies in the enforcement bureau are stationed throughout the county. When there is an emergency, those who are closest drive immediately to the area while others may retrieve equipment at their headquarters and be transported to the scene later.

“[Enforcement bureau members] are not just sitting in an office somewhere,” Taylor said. “They’re out in the community. We stand a better chance of having someone close enough to respond in minutes. Those people will then help us assess the situation.”

On that day in Canyon Country, Taylor said the first member arrived on the scene within 15 minutes after the call came in because he lived in the area. He reported to her and she authorized the use of the department’s Sikorsky helicopter to fly a four-deputy team to the scene.

In other cases the team may have driven together. Each case is handled differently .

George Caravalho, Santa Clarita city manager, said his city of 130,000, which pays the Sheriff’s Department $10 million a year, couldn’t afford to provide the same services on its own.

The Sheriff’s Department also provides Santa Clarita and other cities with homicide detectives, child abuse investigators, mounted police--any program the department offers. But those services also are centralized.

“We found the department “responsive and . . . able to react on a regular basis,” Caravalho said. “The price is good too. We couldn’t afford a SWAT team standing by even if we had our own police force.

“They come out here all the time to see what we need. I’ve been a city manager in other parts of California for a long time and the Sheriff’s Department has worked harder for [Santa Clarita] than some police forces do for their own city.”

Trying to ready themselves for the many different problems that come with operating in many different areas is a one of the department’s main concerns. The Special Enforcement Bureau might be called upon to rappel down the side of a mountain in Angeles National Forest one day and down some dark elevator shaft on another.

But for all the copter-borne speed and specialized techniques, they realize they cannot be everywhere at once. By the time the deputies arrived two weeks ago in Canyon Country, Calvin Manuel Stanfield had shot to death both himself and his small son.