Police request training funds

Effort to join regional SWAT team

EAST HAMPTON — The Police Department is seeking funding to train and arm two officers to become members of a regional SWAT team.

The money would be used to buy special “ceramic body armor and a little different rifle,” Police Chief Dennis Woessner said.

Woessner said he was making the proposal as part of “planning for the future – with the hope you never need it.”

SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics Team.

Woessner provided details this week to support his request for $14,000, explaining it during the Town Council’s budget review.

If the time were to come when a team is needed, “Then you want to have the resources available,” Woessner said.

The two officers would join a team established by the Middletown Police Department and which includes Portland officers, the chief said.

A SWAT team is typically deployed in instances such as where an individual, who is sometimes armed, is barricaded.

A Branford man, for example, was in a standoff with police there on April 13 and indiscriminately fired multiple rounds at random before taking his own life.

Those aren’t the only times SWAT can be called, however, the chief said.

“There could be a situation where there was a demonstration,” he said.

“We’ve been very fortunate here in the state of Connecticut that our protests have been peaceful,” he said.

Woessner, who came to East Hampton in 2018 after a 30-year career with the Glastonbury Police Department, said, “The last time we had a barricade incident in town was nine years ago.”

However, he reminded councilors, “We were the first town in Connecticut to have a meth lab,” a reference to a 2005 incident in which police raided two homes.

Three people were arrested in the multi-agency raids, which were sparked by a tip from an informant.

The Connecticut State Police used to have two SWAT teams, but that has now been scaled back to just one team that is responsible for the entire state, Woessner said.

That could seriously impact response times in an emergency, Woessner said.

“I’m very much a proponent of regionalization,” he said.

“If the need arose,” specially trained officers from Middletown and Portland would respond to assist East Hampton, he said.

In response to question about the town creating a separate East Hamptononly team, Woessner said, “The cost would be astronomical.”

In addition to the officers, a SWAT team would include a trained negotiator, who would attempt to contact the barricaded individual in an effort to resolve the situation.

There are calls now for police to “deescalate” situations, Woessner said.

“I agree with that. The job of a negotiator is to (achieve) a peaceful resolution,” he said.

During his time in Glastonbury, Woessner said the department was a member of a regional SWAT team that included 35 officers and 14 negotiators.

The council took no action on the funding request.

Middletown’s acting chief, Michael Timbro did not immediately respond Thursday afternoon to an email seeking additional information about Middletown’s SWAT team.