Well the SWAT team is finally building themselves quite a caseload lately. Aside from the standard hostage/barricaded subject situations, they are being utilized for more events. A few months ago there was a biker gathering at a local Harley store, and the biker gangs in attendance began systematically and methodically attacking a man from a rival gang. From what I understand, one person would emerge from the crowd, assault him, and then fade into the crowd. Another person would do the same thing, so on and so forth. I'm sure there's some crazy name among the gangs for what this activity is called.
The regular deputies on the detail made a point of breaking up the fights as best they could. Apparently one of the deputies kicked out the girlfriend of one of the gang leaders. *GASP* How dare they, right? Said gang leader begins making threats against the sheriff's office. There continues to be scuttlebutt that these gangs are going to 'throw down' at the next biker gathering. So the SWAT team was called in for extra presence. They ended up not using any special tactics because nothing happened. Most of the gangs didn't even show up.
But the drug task force has also been using the team to help with raids and warrants and such. One of the situations that they have been helping with lately is of a rather touchy subject matter, one which I was not given a lot of details, and which I will be sharing even less than I know with this blog. I'm sure you understand. In fact the particular nature of this situation is such that the newer team members weren't permitted to join the team. I'm sure down the road when they have had more training and the team leaders have a better grasp on their skillsets, that will change.
But I bring it up because it is one of those "let's get ready and wait" situations. The nature of having a part-time team is that its members are spread out over the entire county. As of the time and day I am writing this post, the team has been notified four times to be ready and to meet at X time. And all four times the callout has been cancelled. The first and third times it was cancelled when J was fully or mostly geared up but hadn't left the house. The second time they rallied, ran some practice drills and were all together ready to go and just waiting impatiently to go. The fourth time happened to occur while the team had already gathered for routine (unrelated) training.
Unfortunately for J during that 4th time, he was at a separate deputy training, and didn't even get a page.
And boy was he ticked. He's been irritated each time the callout got cancelled. This goes back to that sheepdog mentality, they *want* to jump into the fray. I think he was particularly upset that not only had it been cancelled on him three times, but that the likelihood it would actually go down while he was at the training was increasing.
On the other hand it's something I guess we just have to get used to, particularly if the team is going to be used a lot more.
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4 comments:
that's the worst, that hurry up and wait, false alarm thing...
My wife can sympathise.
When I was on the Team there were times when my pager went off in the middle of the night only to be the batteries going dead. What a let down.
Make a movie date... He will get called out and have to go! Mine is always called when within minutes of purchasing the tickets!
-Dispatcher
Husband's team is part-time as well. They'll go for what seems like forever with nothing, then all of a sudden it's call to call to call. We like that best! ;)
I couldn't figure out your email address. I wanted to ask you a couple of things. I am at meadowlarkgurl. That's a gmail dot com address.
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