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Essentially, Underwater Recovery Team members investigate and gather evidence at underwater crime scenes. They wear thick rubber dry suits and about 50 pounds of gear and dive in 20 to 60 minute intervals, depending on conditions. They must be as meticulous and clean as an officer at any other crime scene, even though the environments in which they work are filthy and unforgiving.

“You want to know what it looks like under that water?” asks diver Daniel Hale. “Here you go.” He holds up a “blackout mask.” The lenses have been painted opaque black. “That’s what you see down there.”

Low-to-zero visibility, one of myriad challenges faced by underwater investigators, forces officers to feel for the targeted object.

“When you are down there, it is difficult to tell the difference between a foam seat cushion and a human body,” notes Northwest patrol officer/Senior Dive Officer Scott Harn. And there are a lot of foam seat cushions in White Rock Lake, remarks another officer attending a recent certification class.

For our benefit, Bragg asks the group, which also includes Lewisville divers, how many dead bodies they had touched. “I lost track,” one says. “Too many to count,” another notes.

Logistically, training for public safety diving is formulaic and precise.

In the copy take out the dash - after the word backlot.

Imagine a job in which getting your hands on a dead body or a body part means success.

In the picture, Replace the copper piece with the plate.

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It is a Wednesday morning in August when dive-team members gather at a Lewisville Fire Department scuba pool for class. Lewisville is home to one of the country’s more sophisticated dive teams, due to the proximity of Lake Lewisville, Bragg explains. Dive officers are learning to use new equipment including surface-supply air tanks, which, compared with scuba tanks, will allow longer dives, and a communication box that allows divers to speak with and hear an operator on land. Until now, communication between diver and his colleagues on the boat and shore has been conducted via a coded system of rope pulls — one pull means, “all is well” while three means, “we found the body,” for example.

Before applying to Dallas’ dive team, an officer must be, at minimum, an International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers (IANTD)-certified rescue diver. Police divers-in-training then follow a strict curriculum of schooling and certification that is in line with national standards.

Every dive-team member learns every position.

“Everyone knows every step of every operation,” Bragg says, “and it has to happen the exact same way as it will in the field.”

The team formed less than 10 years ago and operates on a limited budget. “We are not a dedicated unit so we get about $5,000-$7,000 of the SWAT budget and beg for grants and money,” Bragg says. Over the years, usually through grants or donations, they have acquired advanced equipment, but they cannot dive with new gear until they are properly trained and certified to use it. So they continually are brushing up on their skills and learning new practices.

“The dark side of why we have to do all this training is that [police departments nationwide] have killed so many divers,” Bragg says. “The last thing I want to do as a dive team commander is send a live person after an inanimate or lifeless object and lose him. Guys have been hurt. One of our dive captains had a lung embolism that ended his diving career. We do everything we can [to narrow every chance of injury], even though sometimes you can do everything right and still have something go wrong.”

Bragg lifts his pant leg to reveal a severe burn-like scar, the result of a cut that be-

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Team members pride themselves on operating pragmatically even in the most outrageous situations.

In summer 2010 the dive team launched a hunt in a Preston Hollow pond for evidence linked to a 1983 murder.

“In that little pond, we found six or eight motorcycles and motorcycle parts, a safe, and several weapons including assault rifles and a handgun,” Bragg recalls. “None, by the way, were what we were looking for.”

The job demands painstaking levels of patience. It requires a deeply rooted understanding of procedure and the critical thinking skills necessary to apply it to an infinite variety of high-stake situations, Bragg says.

“We are very methodical. We are grandmas when it comes to collecting evidence slow and meticulous. We aren’t going to be the reason some guy gets off because evidence was mishandled.”

The psychological demands of police diving, one could argue, are as grueling as the physical requirements.

Senior diver John Boucher is smoking a cigar. He says he finally quit smoking cigarettes, but he still likes the occasional cigar, and sometimes a drink or two, to help quiet his mind, especially after a tough underwater search.

“The worst, for me, was the first body I personally found. It was a few years ago at Lake Ray Hubbard. Party Cove. The guy jumped off a boat and never came up. I was the second diver and I found the body. When I touched it, at first I thought it felt like a roll of carpet. Then I realized it was the kid. There was an initial rush of anxiety but then the training kicks in and you go right into action.”

Sometimes, due to the darkness, divers experience what they call “mind monsters” that is, the anxiety and dread that threatens rational thinking, Boucher says. Only a large dose of mental toughness can slay these beasts.

Usually, because of their high levels of skill, experience and training, divers like Boucher are able to launch into action even in the face of horrific circumstance — this Dallas dive team has located a murdered baby, drowned children and a bucket containing a human head, to name a few particularly disturbing cases, and all of these operations were handled perspicaciously and by-the-book, Bragg says.

Sitting at home, alone with his thoughts after long hours in dark waters looking for a body or a murder weapon, however, Boucher sometimes feels haunted.

“I’ll tell you, it messed with my head,” he says recalling the drowned man at Lake Ray Hubbard.

Like war buddies, divers often turn to one another for support.

“There are always two divers that bring up a body,” Boucher says. “That night we texted each other back and forth.” It doesn’t take much, he says, because each under-

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stands what the other is feeling.

Captain Jack’s worst day has to be the day, last May, when the dive team got the call about former assistant police chief Greg Holliday.

“Greg was a friend,” Bragg says. “I worked with him for 35 years. That’s about as close as you can get to having to look for your own family.”

Holliday, 63, had been missing for days. Police, in a Critical Missing Person alert stated that Holliday was possibly suicidal.

Bragg’s men, along with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department divers, found Holliday’s body, with a self-inflicted gunshot to his head, in a shallow creek near the Preston Trails Golf Club.

“Of course every guy out here has a different worst day, but I’ve gone through some of our police photos from that day, and you can see the stress on our guys’ faces. That day was hard.”

“The police department has psych [-ological counseling services], but this work is not typical,” Bragg says. “Regular patrol officers, they don’t really understand exactly what our guys go through.”

Several members of the team concur that the bonds they share among themselves are therapeutic.

“We are all friends. They have to be comfortable with and trust the other guys they are down there with,” Bragg says.

“Body recovery is stressful,” Boucher says, “and you get home and try to talk to your girlfriend about it, she doesn’t want to hear it. So you text the guy who was [on the job] with you. That’s sometimes how you get through the night.”

PRIVATE DONATIONS Captain Jack Bragg says he works hard to secure grants and donations and that the team frequently borrows necessary equipment from Dallas Fire-Rescue or from other nearby departments such as Lewisville. The sidescan sonar equipment used to recover Jeremy Daughtry, for example, was borrowed from Dallas Fire-Rescue, Bragg notes. He says private donations — which go directly toward purchasing equipment and training that makes public-safety diving more effective and less dangerous — always are welcome. For more information, email jack.bragg@dpd.ci.dallas.tx.us.

See more photos online at lakehighlands.advocatemag.com.

On Oct. 11, the Fresh Food Day Community of Hope event brings together several of these problem-solving neighborhood charities, businesses and individuals in an effort to raise awareness and to educate families about food, health and fitness. Specifically, attendees will receive pointers on eating healthily, in a way that will prevent obesity and related illnesses, and on how to find and utilize social and charity food programs, explains organizer Dabney Dwyer, who also serves as the external ministries director at Lake Highlands’ Episcopal Church of the Ascension.

“We want people to improve their lives, educate themselves, get jobs and to be good and involved parents and contributing members of our community — but some of these basic tasks and behaviors are tough to carry out when you are hungry or ill. Food, shelter, safety — these needs must be met first. Then we build on them,” Dwyer notes.

While she hopes to increase public consciousness about nutrition and serve Lake Highlands residents in need, Dwyer says she also wants outreach efforts like this one to bridge the gap between apartment dwellers and homeowners.

“We can make more progress when we work together,” she says.

Ascension church, Lake Highlands Public Improvement District, Feed Lake Highlands, Kids-U, Lake Highlands UMC, New Room community center, Children’s Medical Center, Consumer Credit Counseling Services, children’s author Carol Brickell, Dallas Police and Dallas Fire Department all will be on hand, offering demonstrations and information.

PepsiCo, which is embarking on a popup community-market movement around Dallas-Fort Worth, also has signed on to bring one of its pop-up farmers markets to the event, Dwyer says.

Attendees to the free event also can expect fitness expositions, gardening sessions, music and other entertainment, and face painting and a bounce house for the kids.

The Oct. 11 event runs 11 a.m.-3 p.m. at the Skillman Crossing Shopping Center on Whitehurst west of Skillman.