Machine-gun fire pierced the air and helicopters circled
overhead as more than 150 SWAT team members
– strapped with fully-loaded weapons and clad in camouflage –
descended on the eastern hills north of Morgan Hill.
Machine-gun fire pierced the air and helicopters circled overhead as more than 150 SWAT team members – strapped with fully-loaded weapons and clad in camouflage – descended on the eastern hills north of Morgan Hill.
But their targeted suspects and the threats they were there to diminish Thursday were not real.
It was the first day of the Best in the West SWAT team competition, hosted for the 19th consecutive year by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.
Participating in this year’s event, which continues today, were 26 SWAT teams from police departments, sheriff’s offices, state and federal agencies from throughout California and parts of Nevada, according to Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Sgt. Rick Sung.
Morgan Hill and Gilroy police, who combined to form a South County regional SWAT team in 2008, competed at Best in the West, which is held at the Sheriff’s Range law enforcement training facility.
Best in the West is designed to test the skills and training that individual SWAT units possess, under simulated yet stressful conditions.
“We consider this more than a competition,” said Gilroy police officer and SWAT Cmdr. Kurt Ashley. “It creates an opportunity to get in some training that adds a stress element, which is hard to duplicate” in normal training exercises.
SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams approach high-risk crime threats – such as hostage standoffs and bomb threats – that require specialized teamwork and firearms training, and sometimes more firepower than police require on a daily basis.
Even though the threats posed at the competition are fabricated, Ashley said because colleagues from other agencies are watching and the obstacles and scenarios require intense physical output, the pressure runs high at Best in the West.
During the two-day event, each team will compete in seven exercises – all but one of which involve the use of live ammunition, and some which set out fictional incidents of criminal encounters. Teams are timed and judged on a point system to determine the winning SWAT unit when it’s over.
“The (scenarios) all revolve around things we might be called to do,” Ashley said.
One challenge simulated an armed robbery inside a commercial building, with a getaway car outside. Officers had to determine the origin of the threat and accurately subdue cardboard cutouts of bad guys with their weapons.
The sniper course tested the accuracy of each team’s best marksman under a mimicked hostage scenario. The “vehicle assault” course tested the team’s ability to respond to an attack on a foreign official escorted by friendly vehicles. SWAT members had to shoot the attackers and protect the good guys – each represented by human-shaped paper targets.
Aside from the training benefits of the Best in the West competition, the event allows SWAT teams from neighboring agencies who might one day work together in a large-scale incident, to network and share ideas and strategies, Morgan Hill Detective Kyle Christensen said. He added that the scenarios are designed to improve team members’ ability to think quickly, and devise unique solutions to potential threats “on the fly.”
“It’s very rewarding,” said Christensen, who has competed the past four years.
The Sheriff’s Office described Best in the West not as a competition but a “workshop” for SWAT teams to learn from each other and to “raise camaraderie” among SWAT officers statewide, Sung explained.
And because the local SWAT members are also patrol officers and detectives, Ashley attributes their specialized training to the infrequent need for SWAT services in Morgan Hill and Gilroy.
“They’re going to carry this training out on their patrol jobs and avoid SWAT callouts,” Ashley said.
Results from this year’s competition will be posted online Monday and in Tuesday’s edition.
