Intense training for Lodi SWAT
Lodi Police Department’s special team trains in old General Mills office
It’s 2:30 p.m. in Lodi, and the afternoon sun brings the temperature to a toasty 104 as officers of the Lodi Police Department’s SWAT Team wait to learn what their training exercise will consist of. The team runs a different exercise each month, with their superiors keeping the details a secret until the last possible minute to keep the officers on their toes.
With their gear loaded into the white equipment van, the team heads out to their first stop: the old General Mills office building on Turner Road. Officer Mark Werdon drives the Ballistics Armored Tactical Transport, affectionately called the BATTmobile, with some of the officers riding on the two benches in the back. The rest of the team rides in a patrol SUV, and their leader, Sgt. Kevin Kent, drives an unmarked sedan.
The officers unload their gear from the van, donning tactical vests and helmets, strapping on protective knee pads and securing their rifles to their vests, helping one another with those hard-to-reach places. After gearing up, the team enters the abandoned office building, where Officer Robert Rench ensures that their weapons are unloaded and safe. This exercise will focus primarily on the footwork involved in clearing rooms, according to Kent, and no ammunition will be used.
A few paper targets, some featuring images of armed gunman and others showing suspects surrendering with handguns in their waistbands, are taped onto cardboard, but only to give officers an idea of where suspects may be located in a room.
The officers line up beside the door to an office, three at a time, to practice executing search warrants. Once in place, each officer taps the shoulder of the man in front of him to ensure that the correct number of officers are in place. Although each room is different, the process remains the same for these drills:
Shouts of “Police, search warrant!” echo through the building as the first officer through the door sweeps the center of the room, followed by his teammates who each check a corner.
The officers keep their fingers off of the triggers at all times, exercising proper safety procedures even with unloaded firearms.
The three-man teams move room to room, repeating the process until Kent is satisfied with their performance.
The next exercise involves the entire team, with the first officer holding a ballistics shield followed by his teammates armed with rifles. Once the officers have entered the door, the shield-bearing officer drops his shield and draws his handgun, staying by the door to act as a rear guard in case a suspect attempts to enter or exit the building. The rear guard typically uses a handgun instead of a rifle to keep his hands free in the event that he needs to pick up the shield again.
For the next exercise, the SWAT team removes their vests, helmets and rifles, leaving only their sidearms and kneepads. The officers are preparing to practice rescuing hostages, with this reporter volunteering to play the hostage role. While the hostage waits anxiously in a small office, staring down the barrel of a two-dimensional paper revolver, the officers move quickly to the door, making as little noise as possible to avoid alerting the suspects and endangering the hostage.
The officers quickly file into the room, loudly instructing the hostage to keep his hands in the air as the gun-wielding paper perpetrator falls to a hail of imaginary bullets amidst shouts of “BANG! BANG! BANG!” The hostage is then led out of the room with his hands behind his back, while the unarmed cardboard criminal is apprehended alive. The hostage is then checked for weapons, as criminals have been known to pose as hostages, before an officer inquires if there were any other suspects in the room.
The SWAT team ends this portion of their training with “slow methodicals,” simulating a search for three robbery suspects in the early morning hours with little to no sunlight. Moving carefully from room to room, an officer with a radio describes the area from behind the ballistics shield, reporting the number of suspects in each room, whether they are armed, injured or otherwise and advising a course of action to his teammates. With this final drill complete, the team breaks for lunch before resuming their training at the gun range.
Lodi PD has its own private range located underground, where the team practices regularly. According to Cpl. Carlos Fuentes, the team runs various practice drills during their monthly training, as well as making use of the range whenever they choose to during the rest of the year. Detective Mitchell LeStrange adds that they also complete a bullseye course once a month, and that each officer has 30 rounds of ammunition to obtain a score of 270 or higher from a distance of 25 yards.
Once everybody has eye and ear protection, Kent explains the first shooting drill: two shooters at a time step up to a red line, with an officer behind each of them placing a hand on their shoulders to ensure that one does not move too far ahead of the other.
Once the shooter receives the “Threat!” command, he fires two rounds at a silhouette target. All the while, the officers walk first toward the targets, then backwards. The shooters drop to one knee to reload, yelling “Cover!” to alert their teammates. Kent explains that, during a real firefight, the officers take a knee to reload to present a smaller target while their comrades provide covering fire.
The smell of gunpowder quickly fills the room, and metal shell casings are swept to the side as Kent sets up the next challenge: the officers split into two teams, and one member of each team at a time will run down the hall to a cardboard box containing pieces of paper bearing shapes that correspond to the new targets. After handing the paper to Kent, the shooter must fire two rounds at either a rectangle, square, diamond, circle or pistol shape before tagging their next teammate.
After this first timed event, the two teams then compete in a similar event, only this time the shooter must be pulled on a two wheeled cart to retrieve the paper, and the corresponding target is only three inches in diameter. Additionally, the shooter is not allowed to touch the floor of the hallway, nor are his teammates pulling him allowed to touch the box or the papers.
The losing team cleans up the range, before the entire SWAT team adjourns to smaller rooms to clean their firearms.
They finish their training day with physical training, as they do every year, as well as debriefing from an operation they ran last week, apprehending multiple suspects for narcotics. The debriefing is not part of the monthly training, but rather something they do after each operation to evaluate what they can do the next time to ensure the safety of everybody involved.