Quick Start for Regional SWAT

Though most police departments have SWAT teams ready when needed, they rarely get called into action. Fullerton, for example, hadn’t suited up its Special Weapons and Tactics team in more than a year.

So when Fullerton joined three other cities in north Orange County to form a regional SWAT team, its members thought it might be months before the new concept was tested.

It turned out to be just about a week. Then a second SWAT call came that same month.

Both September incidents involved several hours of talking suspects out of barricaded houses--one in which a parole violator held a knife to a hostage. No shots were fired in either case.

“Our response was flawless,” said Brea Police Chief William C. Lentini. “It shows what you can do when you pool your resources and give your people the right training.”

In August, Fullerton, La Habra, Placentia, and Brea formed North County SWAT, one of a growing number of regional SWAT teams in California. The formation of such regional teams was recommendedthis year at public hearings by Atty. Gen. William Lockyer’s blue-ribbon commission on SWAT performance. Lentini and Fullerton Police Chief Patrick McKinley both serve on the commission.

McKinley was an original member of the country’s first SWAT team, for the Los Angeles Police Department, the one on which Hollywood based the “S.W.A.T.” TV show in the 1970s.

Lockyer created the commission after an 11-year-old boy was fatally shot by accident last fall in a SWAT raid on a Modesto home thought to have had a methamphetamine lab.

When chiefs in the four North Orange County cities decided to put a regional team together, Lentini said, they agreed not to proceed if it couldn’t be done right: “We wanted to make sure our people didn’t get substandard training just because we are smaller cities.”

Fullerton already had a SWAT team; the other three had tactical response teams. But North Orange SWAT members all headed to San Jose for a new round of training, then to Camp Pendleton in August for a week of intense tactical lessons, which included high levels of physical agility testing. There, they also got to know each other.

“Everybody got along really well,” said Lt. Geoff Spalding, a SWAT leader from the Fullerton Police Department. “We really became a team, not just four police departments put together.”

Fullerton brings to the team a SWAT van, lined with rifles, flak jackets and other equipment for quick deployment. Placentia will soon have an armored personnel vehicle known as a “Peace Keeper.” Because it can withstand bullets, the vehicle can rescue injured officers from a dangerous scene, or send a team of officers into an area where suspects are shooting.

Paramedics also are included. Dr. Mark Song, a 25-year emergency room veteran from St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, will oversee the medical response of the regional team. He gets a helmet and flak jacket, and has volunteered to serve without pay.

Altogether, the new team has about 80 members, counting specially trained dispatchers, hostage negotiators and medical personnel.

The Fullerton SWAT van was designed four years ago by that department’s Sgt. Doug Cave, who calls it “my baby.”

SWAT gives him a chance to see police work at its most intense--and at its best, he said. While most emergencies end with good results, some can be sobering experiences.

Two years ago, SWAT Officer Gary Potts was part of a team that broke out a window of a garage to find a suspect. The suspect opened fire, but Potts’ protective vest saved his life; the suspect was later killed by SWAT bullets.

Potts is still on the SWAT team. But it’s something Cave says you just don’t forget.

Suspects in the two September incidents may have been surprised at the police turnout. More than 60 SWAT members were at both scenes, most armed with rifles and handguns.

But in the team’s first two cases, it was the hostage negotiators who brought matters to successful conclusions. When the suspects walked out with their hands up, SWAT officers said, there was euphoria and relief that no one was hurt.

“We’re all relieved,” Cave said, “but mostly, we’re just all tired.”