Have you ever seen a police department’s Special Response Team in action? These are the guys dressed in black with helmets, face shields, and very large guns. I’ve seen them up close and they’re very intimidating, no good if you’re a criminal.
Have I been a host? In a manner of speaking. I belong to a volunteer group that works with my local police department. One of our “advantages” is to participate in scenarios, an exercise that simulates a real-life situation. In this case, yes, I have been a host.
So what exactly does a special response team do? They are a very specialized and important branch of the police department. They are called upon in hostage situations, armed barricade incidents, high-risk search or arrest warrants, and any crisis situation deemed necessary for the use of a specialized unit. They can also be used in the event of an individual’s suicide, civil disorder, natural disasters, riot control, bomb threats, and surveillance. Essentially, they respond to any incident that requires additional resources, equipment, and training that cannot be handled by traditional police response.
Tactical teams require members to go through intense and specialized training. It is a volunteer position, but officers who are interested must pass a rigorous screening to be considered. This often includes, but is not limited to, an oral review board, obstacle course, firearms competition, and various work scenarios.
Teams will conduct bi-weekly or monthly training exercises in hostage rescue, dynamic forced entry, covert or stealth clearing of a building, weapons training, and of course, the scenarios.
Teams also attend external training courses offered throughout the country. They learn and update their training in areas such as shoot-or-don’t-shoot decisions, securing a perimeter, threat recognition, officer-down situations, building searches, and the use of less-lethal weapons.
To keep their lineup fresh, they will run one or more scenarios per year. I’ll explain the first one I was involved in. The setting was a hostage situation in an office building. One person fell, the number of hostages and suspects was unknown. This is all the information that is given to the team. The team was made up of officers who were trying to become members. In this case, we had two suspects and four hostages. Our suspects were cops from the real team. I was the last remaining hostage, so I had a complete inside look at how a tactical team works. My captors found a room with a view of the front door so we could watch the team’s progress. It is a very slow, arduous process. The officers have no idea what they will find or where, so they move at a snail’s pace. In this case it took them forty-five minutes to get into the building!
Once inside, the slow task continues. We had two hostages hidden in different rooms. When a team finds a hostage or a hostage is released, they must treat them as suspects until they are sure they are not. Once they discovered the two hidden hostages, they moved on. The next step was to free a hostage. He ran screaming down the hall, only to be told to stop, turn around, put his head in his hands, and then walk toward the team. They then gather what information they can about what still awaits them. He now he turned to me as the remaining hostage. My captors decided that they would “put” me around the corner, threatening to harm me. This was my first close up view of the equipment. To say that the sight before me was intimidating is an understatement! The team was dressed head to toe in black, their flak jackets making them look larger and even more imposing. They were armed with high-powered weapons and were very close to each other. I wanted to turn around and say to my captors, “Guys, you must surrender now.”
This tactic didn’t work, so my captors and I retired to a room and waited. And she waited. Suddenly, the door was flung open and the men yelled “get down!” and “bang!”, the latter because they weren’t even allowed to paint bullets. I was tackled by a member of the team to get me out of the line of fire. And, just like that, it’s over. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to think. That is exactly what they were meant to do. The element of surprise. Congratulations everyone, the remaining hostage is safe!
After such a drill, the team meets and discusses what went wrong, what they did right, and how something could have been done differently. After experiencing this drill and the others I’ve been in, I know all the hard work from the team has paid off. I feel much safer knowing that there are men like this in the case of a real life situation.