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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Combat Ready: Campbell police officer, Campbell Duncan, works to complete the two-man combat course at the Best in the West SWAT competition sponsored by the Santa Clara County sheriff's office .
Friendly Fire
Campbell PD's SWAT team finishes eighth out of 25 at this year's Best in the West competition
By Pam Marino
'Bang!"A shot rings through the air. A six-man team of SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) officers in full riot gear and gas masks approaches the building in a straight line, weapons at the ready. Officers in the front of the line carry a battering ram. Inside are bad guys holding hostages.
"Bam! Bam! Bam!"
The door is broken down. More shots are fired.
"BOOM!"
A flash bomb thrown into the building by officers to confuse the suspects blows up. The officers disappear inside.
What follows are muffled shouts as the officers race through the building. Suspects wait around every corner. Another flash bomb explodes. Hostages are in danger. Every second counts.
Within a few minutes, the officers reappear at the rear of the building. A couple of the men are dragging hostages out the door.
Sweating and panting, the officers think their operation is over.
"You forgot a hostage, go back inside!" someone yells.
Within seconds officers bring the remaining hostage out.
"Clear!" the last man out shouts. The SWAT operation is officially over.
The operation was, of course, only a test. The first two hostages were 185-pound dummies, just heavy-duty material sewn into a generic body shape and stuffed. The last hostage was a life-size toddler doll, hidden in the maze that serves as a building.
But the ammunition used by the officers to shoot the "bad guys," or targets, was real. And the risk of injury to the officers was also real.
"This is live fire, not doctored ammunition or paint balls," says Santa Clara County Sheriff's Sgt. Luther Pugh.
As potentially dangerous as it is, it may be the only chance for SWAT teams, including the team from the Campbell Police Department, to practice under such life-like situations.
The test, called the Live Fire Team Assault House, is just one of seven events at the Best in the West SWAT competition, sponsored by the Santa Clara County sheriff's office. Campbell's team, along with more than 300 other officers from around the county, the state, and Washington and Texas, gathered two weeks ago to compete in a sort of SWAT Olympics.
"It's billed as a competition, but more than anything, it's really intense training for these guys," Pugh says.
Most local SWAT teams (the sheriff's office calls its team the Sheriff's Emergency Response Team, or SERT) don't get called out to many real-life situations. Campbell's team, with a total of 18 officers, may only get two calls a year, for example.
Campbell Police Chief Dave Gullo says his team members find the event very valuable as a life-like supplement to their own monthly trainings.
"We train a lot, but it always helps to have some surprise training," Gullo says. He adds that meeting with teams from around the county and getting a chance to share information is important. "We may have to wind up working with them if there's a large operation," says Gullo.
Campbell's team finished eighth in this year's competition, out of a field of 25 teams. A team from Dallas placed first, with the Santa Clara Police Department and the Fremont Police Department finishing second and third.
The sheriff's office began sponsoring the competition seven years ago. At first the county's own SERT team competed, but in the first few years it always finished as one of the top three winners.
No one inferred there was any favoritism going on, but there was concern that deputies had a home field advantage. Now the Santa Clara deputies play hosts and mentors to the visiting teams.
The sheriff department's unique practice course, which is nestled in the hills above Highway 101 on the way to Morgan Hill, makes it one of the few agencies that could sponsor such an event, says Sgt. John Hirokawa, one of the organizers of this year's competition.
The training grounds include at least three gun ranges, a couple of different obstacle courses, the Jungle Course--which takes officers down into a ravine through heavy brush, past booby traps and back up another hill--and the Live Fire Team Assault House, a structure made of recycled railroad ties shaped into a maze of rooms.
And then there is the dreaded Endurance Hill Run.
The Endurance Hill Run is a steep, forbidding dirt road that officers must run up pulling one of the 185-pound dummies along with them. At 7:30 a.m. the first day of the two-day competition, teams take turns running up the hill and going over and under obstacles. The fastest time wins. It is not for the faint-hearted, officers say.
"Quite a few participants got to revisit their breakfasts," says Pugh.
Each police or sheriff's department that sends teams has its own competitions or votes to decide who is the most fit and trained to serve on the team. Six-man teams are sent, with a seventh sent along to serve as an alternate in case of injury or illness. The swiftest officers and most accurate shots are what is needed to win the competition; as in the Olympics, scores can be affected by fractions of a second.
Chief Gullo and others say that all in all, the long training hours and preparations for Best in the West are worth it.
"[The competition] is a lot of work, it's a lot of discipline and it's a lot of commitment," says Sunnyvale SWAT team commander Lt. Mark Stivers, "but that's what they do as members of a SWAT team."
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Campbell, California
