Officers practice skills, teamwork at training exercise
DARBY TOWNSHIP » As dozens of SWAT officers from around Delaware County queued, joked and geared up in preparation for the annual competition held at the Delaware County Emergency Services Training Center, thoughts of the real-life applications of the skills practiced Thursday were on the minds of those involved.
Past the midnight hour in May, a barricaded subject’s failed robbery attempt at the CVS on Baltimore Pike in Media had SWAT teams from across the county intermingling to diffuse the situation calmly and peacefully.
Or last year, when Folcroft Officer Christopher Dorman was shot by a man who barricaded himself in an apartment after the assault, the swift response by a piecemeal team of SWAT officers was the result of their familiarity with each other.
Timothy Boyce, Delaware County’s director of emergency services and emergency management, said the competition Thursday could be thanked for the cross-department rapport.
“The training of the officers together is one component, but the comfort level with each other is another,” Boyce said. “To have confidence for someone to take a role from a different department is important, and this builds on that.”
Thursday a variety of events forced officers to act both swiftly and precisely, as they competed in shooting drills, an obstacle course and clearing a mock drug house with student volunteers from Delaware County Technical High School sitting in as “junkies.”
Haverford Patrolman Michael Flynn, who staffs the Haverford SWAT, said the camaraderie helps when staff working with multiple departments, but the competition keeps them sharp.
“The aspect of the time, shooting for score, not just to do well but to beat the other guy raises our stress level, our heart rate,” Flynn said. “It allows us to do that interaction in a way we can’t simulate elsewhere.”
In the extraction of the barricaded subject in Folcroft, Flynn said he was a part of a squad of six men, all from different departments. “Here interacting with each other allows us to know we’re working on the same techniques, using the same language, using the same motions, so that when we do get together on a real job (they’re comfortable),” Flynn said. “It allows us to resolve the job as quickly, efficiently and as safely as we can.”
Boyce said new to the competition this year was the introduction of scenarios including administering narcan to overdose victims and situations where officers might be exposed to a deadly dose of fentanyl during a sweep.
“(It) can render an officer incapacitated quickly, or their K-9 unit, so the officers have to take protective actions against that, treat a person, while also engaging suspects,” Boyce said. “It adds that degree of difficulty and makes them focus dynamically across their team.”
Tori Scharf, 15, a student at Strath Haven High School, was given the task of playing the overdose victim during a “Shoot House” raid that saw a SWAT team breach entry to a house, eliminate a hostile threat, detain further combatants, resuscitate a downed officer and then treat the victim with narcan.
“Don’t do drugs,” Scharf said when asked what she learned Thursday, her face painted pale white.
“When she becomes an EMT she’s going to have better insight of the process from beginning to end and also have some empathy for the patient and empathy for the responding crews, said William Richard, the instructor of emergency and protective services at DCTS. “You don’t judge, we’re not there to do that, we’re there to help. “Our enemy is death.” While the competition the last two years has gone between Upper Darby and SWAT and Haverford SWAT, it was Central Delco that took the prize in an “across the board” victory. But, regardless of the result, many of Delaware County’s finest would agree that the spirit of competition was the highlight of the day.
“It’s really about the bragging rights,” Boyce said. “You have to be confident in your skills to do this job, and to put yourself in front of your peers in an obstacle course where if you don’t make the hurdle and you trip, you’re going to pay for it, but when you make that hurdle, you hear everybody cheer.
“We want everyone to succeed in this, but the hometown pride sure comes through.”