Hollister Police Capt. Bob Brooks wanted to make one point very
clear.
Hollister Police Capt. Bob Brooks wanted to make one point very clear.
Surveying an arsenal of weapons on a table at the head of the police department’s conference room Wednesday night, Brooks told the seventh class of the Hollister Citizens Police Academy, “None of this stuff is assigned to patrol officers.”
If it were, I thought, we’d all be doing 55 mph on the Bolsa.
Included in the ordnance was an AR-15 assault rifle, a .308 sniper rifle with a telescopic sight, a 12-gauge shotgun, an M-16 sniper rifle, an MP-5 machine gun and a 37-millimeter gas grenade launcher.
In other words, enough firepower to take out just about anything.
But Sgt. Mike Bogosian, assistant team leader with the HPD’s Special Weapons And Tactics unit, said the purpose of a SWAT team is not, contrary to what Hollywood would have the public believe, to blow large holes in the baddest of the bad guys.
“We’re a trained unit of officers committed to saving lives. We’re not out there to put anybody down,” said Bogosian, a 5 1/2-year veteran of the HPD.
“Our job is to come in when everything else fails (and) bring the situation down to a lower level, not storm in and take (a suspect) out in a blaze of gunfire.”
In the years since their birth, SWAT teams have come to use negotiation as their primary tactic, particularly in hostage situations when gunfire must be prevented at all costs. Hostage negotiators played a key role in January when a Hollister man, distraught because his wife was leaving him, held her hostage in their ranch house off of San Juan-Hollister Road.
Prior to 1965, SWAT teams didn’t exist. It was during that summer that three days of rioting broke out in the Watts area of Los Angeles, catching the Los Angeles Police Department completely unprepared. But as with many other police innovations, it was the LAPD that developed the nation’s first Special Weapons And Tactics unit from its experience with the Watts riot.
SWAT came too late to Austin, Texas, when a year later Charles Whitman, an ex-Marine and Eagle Scout – and an expert marksman – shot 45 people, killing 14, during a 96-minute psychosis-fueled assault from the top of a 26-story building at the University of Texas.
In 1969, the LAPD had its first chance to put its SWAT team to practical use in a shootout with the Black Panthers. Five years later, the unit was again put to the test against the Symbionese Liberation Army, which had kidnapped and brainwashed newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.
The most memorable tests of SWAT teams came in 1997 and 1999. The former involved the LAPD again when two heavily armed gunmen wearing body armor held up a Bank of America in North Hollywood, wounding three private citizens and 14 of the 350 police officers who responded to the scene.
The latter episode stunned the nation like nothing before as two teenage boys virtually held an entire Littleton, Colorado high school hostage with a war chest of weaponry, burning forever the word “Columbine” into America’s mind.
“Can that happen here?” Bogosian asked the class. “Yes. Are we a target? Yes. Are we prepared for it? Yes.”
Bogosian, who’s had high-risk duty on drug searches with the Unified Narcotics Enforcement Team, said the horror of Littleton put a new twist on the types of situations SWAT teams respond to, since the young gunmen planned their attack largely through Internet resources.
“Internet technology is creating a big problem for us,” Bogosian said. “You’ve got stuff you can buy (online) to make bombs. They show you how to make a nuclear weapon if you want to.”
Bogosian said the Internet is also a resource for instructions to make chemical and “brown bag” bombs – gasoline and soap carried inconspicuously in paper bags. When ignited, the mixture is similar to napalm. Bogosian said gang-bangers and drug manufacturers have been known to use these weapons.
“These are the threats we have,” he said. “When we make an entry into a house, we’ve got to worry about booby traps.”
Bogosian said that while on a raid of a methamphetamine lab, UNET encountered a 5-gallon gas drum into which an electrical cord had been placed. The meth makers could destroy the evidence, lab and all, simply by plugging the cord into a wall socket.
Each time a SWAT team is deployed, what it will encounter is anyone’s guess. Once on the scene, the situation must be evaluated and a plan developed quickly. Uncertainty is the biggest enemy.
“We train and train and train for situations,” Bogosian said. “Columbine – those poor people didn’t know what they had there.”
And, he emphasized, using the team’s vast weaponry is a last resort.
“The last thing on our mind is to go in there and be shot at,” Bogosian said.
“We have wives; we have children. We want to go home to them.”
Little glamor to Explorers’ duties
They stood before us, a line abreast of six, resplendent and officious in their blue uniforms.
“Ten-hut!”
Sgt. Barbara Timpanaro glanced down the line to see that her fellow Hollister Police Explorers had snapped to attention. Officer Paula Muro, who’s worked with the Explorers almost since their inception seven years ago, beamed.
“Be nice to them,” Muro told the class. “They work very, very hard.”
There’s little glamour to the Explorers’ duties, though – not that “glamorous” is an adjective normally used to describe police work.
The one time when the Explorers – junior officers, age 14-20 – get to stand near the spotlight is at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. For the past four years, the Explorers have worked traffic control at the star-studded golf tournament and have received commendation from the Pebble Beach Company for the past three.
Yet, they say it’s their least-favorite detail.
It poured throughout the 2000 tournament but the Explorers held their posts along Pebble Beach roads while getting drenched – and occasionally dodging cars driven by the likes of actor Bill Murray.
“I’m having a heart attack… but they’re handling it,” Muro said. “Scott’s (Det. Sgt. Scott Kindred, the Explorers’ other advisor) crying… but they’re handling it.”
The Explorers have the deportment of their elder officers. They take their work seriously, and many of them do it in addition to after-school jobs and/or extra-curricular activities.
At the San Benito County Fair, the Explorers work 14-16 hours a day in two shifts on parking and traffic control. They work at safety fairs, fingerprinting children for identification in case of abduction, and make appearances at local schools to promote the program.
“We give them the opportunity to take responsibility in their own hands to be junior police officers,” Muro said. “They’re our extra hands. They know what we do and why we’re doing it.”
For work details, the Explorers are paid. The money goes into an account they draw on for “rewards” – among them trips to Disneyland, whitewater rafting adventures and a day of paintball war gaming.
The program also offers funding for college, from $1,000 to $5,000. The community service hours don’t look bad on a college application, either – particularly for an administration of justice major.
There are 14 active Hollister Police Explorers. Three are in college; one, Don Thul, son of HPD Sgt. Greg Thul, will enter the California Highway Patrol Academy.
Timpanaro, 18, has been an Explorer for five years. She said she first learned of the program on public access channel 34.
“Before I joined, I didn’t have much contact with (police),” Timpanaro said. “My mom encouraged me to get involved. They’ve been my friends since. I don’t think of them as cops.”
Muro said Timpanaro has taken Explorers by the horns.
“When she started out, she was this little girl who didn’t say much,” Muro said. “Now she runs the whole darned program.”
As a matter of fact, Muro said the Explorers did more to get the program going than she and Kindred.
“We didn’t do anything,” she said. “Scott and I tried in the beginning and we failed. We put it in the hands of the Explorers and they took it and ran.”
Explorers must maintain a C-plus grade-point average. They don’t work after 10 p.m. and, unless deployed in a wide-spread parking or traffic detail, are never out of the sight of a Hollister Police officer.
Among current HPD officers who graduated from Explorers are officer David Godoy and Capt. Richard Vasquez. But the program isn’t a minor league for the department.
“We don’t really ask them (to be regular officers),” Muro said. “We don’t push it on them. It’s a social skills program; we teach them responsibility.”
Safety on the range
Range Safety Officers Jeff Goodwin and Kelly Burbank demonstrated for the class the basic operation of the HPD’s standard-issue handguns – the Smith and Wesson 9-millimeter semi-automatic pistol, which is being phased out in favor of the more reliable Glock 9-millimeter.
Their lesson had one firm objective: safety on the firing range.
Next week, the class will be on the range, firing live ammunition.
I hope we learned well.
