Preparing for everything

There are many things in life that people have but hope they never have to use: life insurance, savings accounts or perhaps a first-aid kit stowed in a closet at home. Cities have items that fall in that category as well. For example: a tactical team.

Composed of members from the city’s police and fire departments, members of the Mountain Brook tactical team work to be prepared for just about anything.

Sgt. Chris Thompson said the tactical team was first formed as part of the police department with the purpose of handling “anything that could be high risk due to the nature of the crime that’s being investigated or criminal history.”

Training

In many cities, the tactical team is responsible for responding to high-risk situations, which can include apprehending or arresting individuals and also situations in which individuals have barricaded themselves in a building or taken hostages. And to keep themselves and the public safe, members of the tactical team go through intense training in addition to the classwork, fieldwork and training they went through to become an officer.

After attending Alabama Peace Officer Standards and Training, or APOST, officers go on to complete an approved tactical officer’s course. From there, they are selected to be a part of the tactical team, Thompson said.

Much like the standard police force, there are officers on the tactical team who specialize in what Thompson called “special interests.” Those officers then attend specific training courses, during which they learn more about certain equipment, firearms, tactics or other elements of the tactical team. They then return and help cross-train others during their monthly training session.

The training session isn’t just about learning new equipment, however; the one-day session goes over different scenarios, such as active shooter cases, hostage situations and room clearing, with both classroom and practical exercises. Thompson said they tend to train with and implement less lethal equipment, like beanbag rounds and pepper spray, and all officers must stay in physical shape.

The fire department’s tactical medic team also joins the training. Although it may have altered initial scenario training to include more people to cover, fireman and medic team member Josh Belcher said it is beneficial for everyone to have medics on-scene.

Medic team

Because the tactical team trains for high-risk scenarios, Belcher said their job is to take care of police officers, civilians and anyone else who may need treatment on the scene. The medics joined with the tactical team about two years ago.

“I was in 100 percent [when the idea was presented],” Belcher said. He has a military background and served overseas, so he said the tactical side always appealed to him. Other members of the tactical team are veterans, too.

All members of the medic tactical team attended SWAT school, he said, and they work with the police tactical team for monthly training.

“But, we also take advanced separate medical training to keep our skills specific to a level of that environment,” he said.

Belcher said the medics also attend medic-specific training, such as the Tactical Medical Essentials Course, annual conferences through the Alabama Tactical Officers Association and the National Tactical Officers Association, and learning how to properly treat wounds or extricate victims from a potentially harmful area. The team works to stay on top of medical or technical advancementsas well.

“We’ve really got some of the newest hemorrhage control equipment,” Belcher said, adding that they help train officers in tourniquet use to help prevent potential deaths from blood loss. 

Recently, they added training for the abdominal aortic junctional tourniquet, or the AAJT, to their resume, which can help stop life-threatening blood loss from abdominal or high-pelvic injuries, Belcher said.

But much of what the tactical team doesn’t necessarily have to do with immediate life-threatening situations — it’s preventative.

In the community

Thompson said in addition to high-risk situations, the tactical team is in charge of dignitary protection, special event security and assisting other agencies that may need it. Oftentimes religious organizations will request security advisement.

“That’s a call I get fairly frequently, is ‘What can we do to make it more secure?’” Thompson said. “That’s a legitimate concern that a lot of organizations have across the board.” 

Typically, the tactical team will speak with organizations about what plans they may already have in place and then suggest improvements to make their existing plans safer or more beneficial.

The team will help cross-train other agencies and work with arrest and search warrants.

Belcher added that having the two departments work together on a team is beneficial to the public.

“I think it provides the community with really the highest level of excellence because it combines two worlds into one,” he said: the law enforcement side and the medical side. This gives members of the two departments the chance to get to know one another and trust each other over time, which can be advantageous during other scenarios when police and fire may work together.

Belcher said it is nice to know the person you’re working next to and to know they have your back. 

“Everybody puts in 100 percent; everybody is dedicated to it, has a passion for it,” he said. “It makes it fun to work in those situations when everybody’s onboard.”

When the team gets a call, Thompson said all team members — those both on- and off-duty — are subject to call-out, although there are some potential scenarios where it may not be prudent for all officers to respond.

And although the tactical team may look a little more “militaristic” as Thompson said, with bigger vests and equipment, that’s only to be prepared for any number of scenarios that could happen when they are called in. 

“We are generally only activated when high-risk critical incidents expand beyond the training, experience and capabilities of individual patrol units,” he said. 

And by having that presence in high-risk scenarios, Thompson said it greatly reduces the threat of injury or death to all those involved.

“We are simply a team that is trained to respond to on-going critical and high-risk situations with the goal of reducing the risk of injury to anyone involved,” he said. “Fortunately, we are not activated very often ... We want to train and be ready for when [something happens]. Because there will be a time and place where we will be called out, and the citizens depend on us to live up to that.”