COVER STORY
Always on duty: Mobile’s elite officers discuss life on the SWAT team
T
JASON JOHNSON/REPORTER dation factor” can often resolve engagements before they start, bringing hardened criminals to quiet compliance. Police Officer Justin Billa was shot and killed, “Believe it or not, some of the biggest guys — these Officer Daniel McCarthy was the first person ‘oh, I’m never going back to prison, let ‘em come in here through the door of the home the shooter barand take me’ types — those are the ones that scream the ricaded himself in afterward. loudest,” he said. “Once you hit the door, it just explodes As a breacher with the Mobile Police Department open. What was a wall is now an opening, and you see (MPD) Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team, Mceverything before anybody else does. It’s almost like time Carthy knew suspect Robert Hollie was willing to kill slows down.” a police officer, but other details about the situation he While Terrell said the intent of the SWAT team isn’t to and his team were about to storm into on Avondale Court be intimidating, he acknowledged their presence somewere unclear. times has that effect. He prefers to describe the team’s de“I remember turning the corner, and the very first thing ployment as MPD making a “show of force.” Either way, I see is a shotgun sitting on the edge of the couch pointed he’ll take a peaceful surrender “any day of the week.” directly at the door,” McCarthy recalled. “It turned out “If you see us, it means the department is ramping up. [Hollie] had taken his own life before we’d made entry, It’s getting serious, you can come on out or you can not,” but we didn’t know that at the time. Knowing that he’d he said. “We don’t just roll on everything. This is a whole already taken one of our brothers from us and then seeing other level of force.” that gun sitting there right when we made entry, it was a The weapons and tools a SWAT officer may have in humbling experience. It really puts their loadout depends on their role everything into perspective.” in the team and the situation they’re The circumstances of that night confronting. All of the officers have were no doubt extraordinary, but the a standard-issue Glock 17 9mm tactics and movements McCarthy’s pistol and a MK18 assault rifle, but squad used to enter the home were snipers and less-lethal gunners can second nature. Fluid, precise and IT’S VERY MUCH A CHESS carry additional weapons as well. almost choreographed, it was the The team also has body armor, GAME, AND THERE’S NO same routine the team had perballistic shields and armored performed hundreds of times before. sonnel carriers at its disposal. EMOTION IN IT … FOR US, The familiarity of those individThey may look the part of any ual roles comes from from repetiTHERE IS NO DRAMA. IT’S primetime cop drama, but Terrell tive and near-constant training — a unlike those shows depicting necessary part of the job because A MISSION. IT’S A JOB, AND said SWAT teams in a constant barrage most every scene the SWAT team of gunfire, the overwhelming majorEVERYONE KEEPS THEIR is called to is extremely volatile. ity of calls in his 17-year career Whether confronting armed susHEAD IN THE GAME. have ended peacefully and without a pects, hostage situations or high-risk single shot being fired. warrants for violent offenders, the In fact, out of hundreds, he’s SWAT team does the work patrol only seen four encounters end officers cannot. fatally for a suspect. “It’s very much a chess game, and there’s no emotion One was Corey Hicks, who was shot and killed by in it,” MPD SWAT Commander Lt. Leland Terrell said. SWAT officers in July 2010. He was believed to have “Now, that doesn’t mean we’re not human and it doesn’t killed his mother in Florida, and when confronted by affect us, but we have to turn that off — table it and focus police at a hotel on the I-65 Service Road, he allegedly aton whatever is going on in that moment. For us, there is tacked them with a hatchet. no drama. It’s a mission. It’s a job, and everyone keeps In 2012, after Lawrence Wallace Jr. stabbed MPD Oftheir head in the game.” ficer Steven Green to death in transport to Mobile Metro Jail, he led police on a manhunt that concluded when ‘A whole other level’ members of the SWAT team killed him during a shootWhen a six-man team of highly trained, heavily armed out as he hid beneath a house on Daytona Drive. Terrell officers kicks in a door, most suspects tend to comply didn’t recall the other two suspects offhand. with their orders. McCarthy said the “surprise and intimiAll told, MPD’s SWAT team responds to eight to 15
HE NIGHT IN JANUARY 2018 THAT MOBILE
Photo | Dan Anderson / Lagniappe
24 | L AG N I A P P E | Fe b r u a r y 1 3 , 2 0 1 9 - Fe b r u a r y 1 9 , 2 0 1 9
The MPD SWAT team deploys lethal force as a last resort when a suspect poses a threat to the public, to bystanders or to the officers themselves. calls in an average month. In all of 2018, the team helped execute 84 arrest warrants — mostly for high-risk narcotics suspects — and responded to 36 unplanned incidents. While MPD’s SWAT team is fully prepared to use lethal force when necessary, Terrell said his men are not anything resembling a “kill team.” Lethal force is deployed as the very last option when a suspect poses a threat to the public, to bystanders or to the officers themselves. “In the end, we save a lot more lives than we’ve ever thought about taking, and most of the time what we’re actually doing is saving people from themselves,” Terrell said. “We deploy every tactic and every tool we have to resolve things peacefully, quietly and safely — safely for the guys on the team, safely for whoever else is around and also safely for the suspect.”
‘War stories’
Last June, 23-year-old Levy Washington caused a four-hour standoff with members of the SWAT team during which he allegedly used his 4-year-old daughter as a human shield. Ultimately, Washington surrendered without incident and his daughter wasn’t harmed, but that call in particular is one that stood out to a team member who asked not to be identified. “I have a soft spot for small children and the elderly, and I watched him hold that child at gunpoint for several hours, both through the camera on the robot and multiple times in person, because I had to place the robot in the room and remove it manually,” the officer said. “He and I made contact multiple times before we made entry that day.” Officer Tanner Whipkey is tasked with using less-lethal weapons including tear gas, pepper spray, bean bag rounds and what are known as foam batons — what he described as “basically a doorknob” fired from a 40mm launcher at around 300 feet per second. “More than likely, it’s going to make you want to change your mind,” he added. Whipkey recalled one notable call that required firing more than 30 gas rounds into a home a suspect had barricaded himself in on Fairway Drive in Mobile. The incident led to the death of 20-year-old Brandon Davis in 2015. At the time SWAT arrived on the scene, Davis had already shot one man multiple times, taken his own girlfriend hostage and fired upon the responding patrol MPD officers. Though the woman was able to escape, Davis retreated inside the two-story house and SWAT had to confront him.