STORY
Above: Sgt. Paul Mayer hauls Officer Brandon Stocking in a downed officer rescue. Below left: Two officers do a 30-yard low crawl. Below right: SWAT team member Chris Thompson does pull-ups. All the drills are part of the joint SWAT team’s physical training qualifications.
easanton & ore merge members working out and constantly staying ready,” Cox said. The East County Tactical Team is made up of three separate units: the SWAT Team, Sniper Team and Crisis Negotiations Team. “Although we are three separate units we work together to solve critical incidents. The SWAT team is responsible for containment and crisis entry, the Sniper Team does over watch, covers the SWAT Team and intelligence gathering and the Crisis Negotiations Team is trained in verbal communication and is primarily responsible for communicating and attempting to coming to a peaceful resolution of any situation,” Cox said. The team also has dispatchers who respond to a call and handle communications directly between the officers without disrupting normal operations. Now, the merged team is hoping for an armored vehicle. The team currently uses a 1980s-era transport van and unmarked police cars to transport SWAT officers. Cox pointed to an October shooting spree in Cupertino that left three dead and seven others with gunshot wounds to the head. “In order to be able to send SWAT officer to go in and rescue downed citizens (and) downed officers — that’s happening more and more — that’s one of the main reasons we need an armored vehicle,” he explained. “The nearest one is in the county. They usually have theirs in San Leandro or Union City. By the time you get a driver, it would be upwards of an hour.” The East County team recently competed in Bay Area Urban Shield competitions, a 50-hour preparedness exercise for SWAT teams and other responders, including firefighters, Hazmat teams, EMS and bomb squads. The local team may be new, but it came in at sixth place in a contest that drew teams from across the bay area as well as an FBI team and a team from Israel. N
LPD Team Advisor
PPD Team Advisor
Lt. Mike Elerick SWAT Commander Sgt. Brian Martinez Tatical Commander
Sgt. Josh Ratcliffe SWAT TL
Sgt. Keith Graves Sniper/Observer TL
Sgt. Penelope Tamm CNT/TD TL
John Rynolds SWAT ATL
Larry Cox SWAT ATL
Sgt. Mayer SWAT ATL
Steve Goard Sniper/Observer ATL
Keith Tse CNT ATL
Leslie Prado TD ATL
(5) Operator
(6) Operator
(7) Operator
(3) Sniper/Observer
(3) Negotiator
(2) TacDisp/Negotiator
(8) Operator
(9) Operator
(10) Operator
(4) Sniper/Observer
(4) Negotiator
(3) TacDisp/Negotiator
(11) Operator
(12) Operator
(13) Operator
(5) Sniper/Observer
(5) Negotiator
(4) TacDisp/Negotiator
(14) Operator
(15) Operator
(16) Operator
(6) Negotiator
(5) TacDisp/Negotiator
(7) Negotiator
(6) TacDisp/Negotiator
Command & Control (2) SWAT (16) Sniper (05) CNT/TD (14) TOTAL = 37
COMMAND STRUCTURE
(8) Negotiator
Pleasanton WeeklyÊUÊDecember 2, 2011ÊU Page 17