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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Officer Marshal Clifford aims for victory during this year's 'Best of the West' SWAT competition hosted by the Santa Clara County sheriff's office. The contest was held at its practice course near Morgan Hill.
'Best in the West'
SWAT competition trains officers for real-life situations
By Pam Marino
"Bang!"
A shot rings through the air.
A six-man team of SWAT officers in full riot gear and gas masks approaches to the building in a straight line, rifles 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 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 at a frantic pace through the building. Suspects wait around every corner. Another flash bomb goes off. 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. They hoist one, then two, up over a small wall.
Sweating and panting, the officers think their operation is over.
"You forgot a hostage--go back inside!"
The "hostage" is a life-size toddler doll, hidden in the maze that serves as a building. Within seconds officers find it and bring it out again, throwing it unceremoniously over the wall. The last of the seven-man team jumps over the wall.
"Clear!" he shouts. The SWAT operation is officially over.
Of course, the operation is only a test. The first two hostages are 185-pound dummies of heavy-duty material sewn into a generic body shape and stuffed.
But the ammunition the officers use to shoot the bad guys, or targets, is real. The chance for injury to the officers is very 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 officers' only chance all year to practice the skills necessary to save people's lives under the most realistic of conditions.
The test, called the Live Fire Team Assault House, is just one of seven events at the "Best in the West" SWAT competition, held by the Santa Clara County sheriff's office. More than 300 officers from the county, the rest of the state and two other states--Washington and Texas--gathered two weeks ago to compete in a sort of SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) Olympics. It is one of the most anticipated events of the year for these officers.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Officers begin the Live Fire Team Assault House competition where they have to rescue hostages while the enemy shoots live ammunition at them.
"It's billed as a competition, but more than anything, though, 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--do not get called out to many real-life situations, a fact officers say they are grateful for. With little live experience, however, the competition becomes an important training event.
"Everyone benefits," says Pugh--teams, individual officers and, back in their own cities, the people they are paid to protect.
Sunnyvale's SWAT team commander, Lt. Mark Stivers, agreed.
"It's extremely valuable," he says. "And the reason behind that is the preparation." The Sunnyvale team spends approximately 100 hours in personal time preparing for Best in the West, and it shows--the team consistently places near the top. This year the team finished seventh out 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, including deputies from the Westside Substation in Cupertino, 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 was saying there was any favoritism happening, but there was concern that deputies had a home-field advantage. The Santa Clara deputies graciously bowed out and played hosts only, taking on a mentoring role. Smaller, less-experienced teams rely on what they can learn from the SERT members and what they can observe watching other teams.
During the two-day competition, the San Jose Police Department SWAT team is on call in the rare case a situation occurs in county-patrolled areas such as Cupertino.
The combination of the sheriff department's large, experienced SERT team and its unique practice course, nestled in the hills between oak trees and cow pastures 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.
"Nobody in this county would have the facilities to put it on," he says.
The training grounds include 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 type of maze with rooms.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Dean Baker of the Santa Clara County sheriff's office explains the rules of the course to the participants. Law enforcement officers throughout the county and state and in Oregon and Washington use the 'Best in the West' event training for real-life SWAT situations.
And then there is the dreaded Endurance Hill Run.
The Endurance Hill Run is a steep, forbidding dirt road that officers must run up while pulling one of the 185-pound dummies along with them. At 7:30 a.m. on 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, a former Westside Substation officer who now serves in the community services department and as a reserve coordinator.
"Everybody hates the hill run," Sunnyvale's Stivers says. But it can make or break the competition. "The teams win and lose based on how they do in the hill run."
Besides the Live Fire House and the Endurance Hill Run, other events at Best in the West include the Two-Man Combat Course, the Sniper Course, the Combined Weapons Course and a shotgun competition.
Each police or sheriff's department that sends a team holds its own competition or election to decide who is the most fit and trained to serve on the team. Six-man teams are sent, with a seventh man 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.
There have been no women in the competition, officers say. Very few women ever qualify to be on SWAT teams because of the strenuous physical requirements. The sheriff's 30-member SERT team does include women, but usually as technical support.
Not every police or sheriff's department can send a team to the Best in the West competition, Hirokawa says. Only those departments with permanent, well-trained members can attend, in part because of the safety factor, since live ammunition is used in the competition.
Besides speed and accuracy, teamwork and communication are paramount to success in the competition--and in real-life situations, officers say.
In addition to the Live Fire House, teams have to work together on other courses, such as the Jungle Course. On the Two-Man Combat Course, pairs of officers must run through an obstacle course together, helping each other over tall walls and up ropes. In one part of the course one officer puts his back to a tall wall and braces himself, while his partner climbs up on his shoulders to shoot targets on the other side of the wall. The man on the bottom has to stay perfectly balanced or the man on top, firing live ammunition, will come tumbling down.
Even with bullets and flash bombs, there have been no major injuries, officers say.
Campbell police officer Campbell Ducan crosses the monkey bars.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Most injuries involve things like pulled muscles, bruises and scrapes. Santa Clara County SERT team members serve as safety officers on each of the courses. Protective eyewear is required even by visitors in some areas, and everyone has earplugs to muffle the sound of frequent gunfire and flash bombs going off on the different courses. Paramedics and a helicopter are on standby in case of a major emergency.
The event is free to the teams, thanks to the Maxim Corporation, which underwrites the event, and two dozen other local contributors, including Cupertino Electric and Cupertino businessman Richard Lowenthal, who was asked to help by Sheriff Laurie Smith, he says.
Officers interviewed say they are grateful for the community support. The training gives them a unique chance to prepare themselves and to forge new relationships with competing teams. While teams take the competition very seriously, they also appreciate the opportunity to talk with opposing teams on the sidelines.
"We may have to wind up working with them if there is a large operation," says Campbell police Chief David Gullo.
Gullo and other officers say that, all in all, the long training hours and preparations for Best in the West are all worth it.
"[The competition] is a lot of work, it's a lot of discipline and it's a lot of commitment," says Stivers, "but that's what they do as members of a SWAT team."
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
