January 27, 2025 • 51 mins
What drives an officer to lead one of the most elite tactical squads in law enforcement? SWAT Commander Chad Staley joins us to share his remarkable journey from aspiring patrol officer to commanding the Arkansas State Police SWAT team. Discover the intense selection process, the critical role of family support, and the team dynamics that are the backbone of this elite unit. Chad opens up about the inspiration that shaped his career and the ongoing training that keeps his team sharp and ready for any situation.
As social media and video games reshape public perceptions of violence, Chad delves into the complexities they add to SWAT operations. Listen as we explore the logistical hurdles and coordination required for statewide deployments and learn about the essential collaboration between tactical teams and negotiation experts in defusing high-pressure situations. From armored vehicles to advanced drones, Chad discusses the technology that equips his team to handle the unpredictability of their missions, offering insights into the strategic planning behind every operation.
We also take a behind-the-scenes look at the mental and physical demands SWAT members face and the support systems that sustain them. Chad emphasizes the importance of accountability, vigilance, and mental resilience, sharing how the team prepares for high-risk scenarios. In moments of urgency, they rely on cutting-edge technology, rigorous training, and each other's strengths to ensure community safety. With gratitude to their support networks, Chad highlights the unsung heroes that enable SWAT teams to perform at their best, reinforcing the unwavering dedication required to protect and serve.
GUEST WEBSITE: https://dps.arkansas.gov/law-enforcement/arkansas-state-police/
OUR WEBSITE/OTC MERCH: https://offtheclockwithbscott.com
HAVOC GEAR SHOP: https://havocnation.com
HAVOC BOATS WEBSITE: https://havocboats.com
HAVOC DEALERS: https://havocboats.com/dealers/
SOCIAL LINKS
Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@OffTheClockwithBScott
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Off-The-Clock-With-B-Scott/61557737220814/
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/OTCwithBScott
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/offtheclockwithbscott/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwu6_wWcXDoBzhpHv4YgZGQ
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-5644782
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2g76hRDp9d609LETevSH2U?si=0ba23ae282c94e88&nd=1&dlsi=d9f84d7699b84724
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/off-the-clock-with-b-scott/id1734265760
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's 5 o'clock and you're off the clock with Beast
Guy, and today we have as ourguest the Arkansas State Police
SWAT Commander, chad Staley.
Now listen, everybody has seenSWAT on TV.
How realistic is it?
We don't really know.
But I do know one thing we'regoing to find out today.
He's going to tell us all aboutthe training, what they do when
they get a call, the kind ofequipment they use.
(00:21):
I mean, he's going to go intodetail about what kind of
situations and what the SWAT ismeant for.
So, guys, stay tuned, we'reabout to unravel it.
So, chad, tell me how you gotinto law enforcement and how you
got to where you are today,because right now you're the
commander of the SWAT.
Yeah, I mean, that's a prettyhigh role, I'd assume.
(00:42):
Is that where you shot for itfrom the very beginning, or did
you kind of just work your wayinto that?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
No, honestly, when I started law enforcement, my plan
was just to stay on highwaypatrol with the state police,
retire and be happy.
And then just things happened.
When I went through my troopschool in 1998, the SWAT guys
came and did our firearmstraining and I'm like man, I
(01:09):
want to be like that guy rightthere, and so that's kind of
what got me involved or wantingto be a SWAT team member.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Was the law enforcement side of things,
where you knew you were going toend up where you wanted to be
from the get-go, like when youwere a kid.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
No, I wouldn't say that.
My wife and I were going tocollege together and at just
some point that's just what Idecided.
I thought I wanted to go be afederal agent and then I had a
buddy that went to the BorderPatrol and I'm like man, like we
were very close.
I'm like, golly, this hurts man.
He's not here, so it'd be likethis is going to really hurt me
if I leave everybody.
(01:42):
So, I decided to stay local,worked for the sheriff's office
for a few years and then gothired with the state police.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Heck, yeah, dude.
So how far from that point didyou get to be in the SWAT and
how did you start out?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So after troop school there's a three-year wait
period to be a tryout for SWAT,and so I waited my three years,
tried out and I made the team,which was 2001.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
What kind of requirements do you have to have
to be on the SWAT team?
I imagine it's probably pretty.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, obviously physical fitness is a big thing,
like firearms.
You have to be very, veryproficient with firearms and
that's kind of to get youstarted.
But one of the big things thatwe look at for a team member
those are obvious but is how canthis guy get along with the
team?
Is it about him or is it aboutthe team?
Because if it's about him itdoesn't work out.
(02:41):
Yeah, so we're very picky onthe selection process and that's
like a really big deal.
There's that.
And then you know, most of usare married, right, and like one
of the questions we'll ask inthe interview process is what
does your wife think about this?
And if she's not all in, wewon't accept them.
(03:01):
Really it won't work.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So you take like a team, like team's the number one
thing, right, it's all or none.
it's kind of deal, team yep andthen every once in a while, you
know, somebody might have theright words to say, and then
they, they're not a team memberand that just that doesn't work
out, that it has to be about theteam guys, if you made it this
far, like subscribe and hit thebell for notifications, it helps
us out tremendously and ithelps us push, get more things
(03:26):
in the gear shop, more contentup, and if you like something or
he wants to do something, dropa comment down below.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
All right, we'll get back into it how do you deal
with that when it's after thefact and they're already signed
up and in the field?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
you know, as, as the commander you know, I would
there's probably already beenconversations that's gone on
before I've had the conversation.
Yeah, like, hey, you know, thisisn't.
This isn't what we're wantingfor a team member.
You know, if you want to be apart of this team, you need to
change your mindset, gotcha, andif that doesn't work, then
they're not going to stay on theteam.
So just a really short leash,but yeah that's very, very rare
(04:04):
because our selection process isso physical and rigorous and
it's a very thorough.
It is and it's oriented arounda team mentality that, if
probably, more than likely, ifyou don't have that team
mentality, it's probably goingto come out during the trial
process more than likely Kind ofweeds themselves out in the
process.
Yeah, you'll see things, you'lljust see that.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
You're like I don't know about him.
Yeah, so, being a team, youknow set, when y'all do your
training, like say you're not ona call, you're not going out on
a mission, or whatever it maybe what kind of training does a
team go through?
So just the training in general?
Yeah, is it more like teamtraining or is it?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
individual focused Well when we're with a team,
it's team training, and thenwhen you're not with a team,
then you have to focus on yourindividual skills.
But yeah, anytime we train it'salways team related.
We just train for what?
The majority of the calls thatwe would go on because there
there's you know there'sdifferent types of calls we go
(05:06):
on.
We train for that, thescenario-based training,
firearms training, and then withthe state police, we have so
much equipment and gear thatwe'll also have to have just
specialized training on thatgear throughout the year.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
I didn't even think about that because as new
technology comes out, obviouslyyou'll have to be trained up.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, even if it's not new technology, some of the
things that we do and train withthe gear requires a lot of
repetitions and you know whenyou need it.
You want to be very familiarwith it and you know not have to
really think about it for surebut, um, yeah, yes, a lot of
that gear.
You just have to get a lot ofreps on, yeah, and if you don't,
(05:47):
then you're going to get tocall them like uh what do we do
here?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
yeah, and that's never good especially when you
throw on you know uncontrollablevariables, like you know bad
guys in there.
It's like need to have it alltogether yeah definitely.
So you talked about trainingfor like what you see most.
What is it that you think thesituation y'all get called out
for the most is?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I would, generally speaking, the call we get the
most of would be police officersbeing shot at either shot or
shot at, or they may have like amurder suspect barricaded in a
house, but generally speakingit'll be something bad has
happened and the suspect'sbarricaded with weapons and they
(06:30):
say they're not coming out.
So y'all do a lot of breaching.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, we do a lot of breaching.
Yeah, a lot of breaching.
Do you seem like it's more ofthat nowadays, or maybe the game
has kind of shifted and thethings y'all are dealing with
now is a little bit differentthan what it has been?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
yeah, that's definitely true.
When I first got on the team,um, I mean, things would happen
and there was obviously, youknow, we were there for violent
suspects, but uh, I've seen overthe last six or seven years
that they become a lot more, um,violent and a lot more willing
to fight.
Why is that?
Honestly, my opinion is we'rein a, we're in a, we have a
(07:10):
culture of it's all about me.
You think so.
That's just how I feel about it.
It's all about me.
I mean, if you, you know, ifyou think about, like for me,
when I grew up, you know, wedidn't have cell phones, we
didn't have all this informationpouring in on us, and I think
that factors in, but I reallyfeel like that a lot of people,
it's just about me and I don'tcare about nothing else.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
So selfishness, kind of just self Definitely
selfishness for sure, and it'sjust honestly.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
It's just a more violent society than it was.
You know, when I was growing upwe didn't have wars, and since
then we've been involved in afew different things and with
that, you know just, the societyjust becomes more violent, in
my opinion.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So do you think it's?
You know, social media, I mean,obviously I think social media
has a big impact in it, becauseeverybody sees what they, you
know, are interested in orwhatever, and they say it's
fighting or violence, whatever,and they think it's cool.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Or it's video games.
Desensitize to it.
You just become used to it andit just isn't.
You know, just desensitizationis what I feel.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
I didn't even think about it like that.
Yeah, you see it all the time.
You see it all the time.
It's not such a big deal.
It Easier.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Are y'all having to go out on more calls that are
like this, or are they justgetting more violent, the ones
that you're going on?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
No, I would say they're just more violent, the
ones that we're going on, reallyyeah.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So do y'all go out multiple times in a week?
I mean, what area exactly arey'all on call for?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So we're on call for the whole state.
So, generally speaking, youknow there's a lot of smaller
departments that have SWAT teamsright and then if they run into
that guy that's barricaded andarmed, you know they may not
have the the equipment assetsthat we have.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So, generally speaking, that's what we'll get
called for um, and when y'allget the call, do y'all hop in
the.
You know we've all seen theshow SWAT, right that.
And that's what I was talkingabout earlier.
It's like I know how realisticis the show SWAT compared to
what you guys do.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
I don't watch it.
I don't know the few episodes Isaw.
I'm like I'm not watching it.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It's super dramatic.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
You know how it is yeah, no, well, you know, for us
it's a lot different anywaysbeing in the state, so different
anyways being in the state.
So you know, right now there's26 of us and we're spread out
all over the state.
So when we get a call it'sprobably going to be three hours
before we're operational.
Really, okay, yeah and uh,generally speaking, the call's
been going on for a few hoursbefore we even get the call.
(09:36):
And you know, we just it justtakes us a while to get there,
so it's not like.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So you're all kind of dispersed all throughout
Arkansas.
Whenever the call comes in,it's obviously something super
important or dangerous orviolent or whatever, and then
you all kind of just all cometogether.
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And then with us when we get those calls.
We have other assets that rollwith us.
Right, we'll have a crisisnegotiation team.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
We'll have and the negotiation team kind of walk us
through a little bit what theydo.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
So well, they're completely.
They're all state troopers, butthey're a completely different
group than us.
So while we're focusing on thetactical how are we going to
settle this they're going to beon the phone talking to the
suspect, trying to reason withthem.
They'll be getting informationfrom family members, just any
(10:28):
information they can give tohelp us.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Y'all are kind of working both angles, like y'all
are looking more into thephysical.
How do we physically get inhere and take care of it?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
If things get bad and we have to go in for whatever
reason either they're hurtingpeople or we just use everything
we can use and they're notcoming out we've got to go in.
They're still working andtrying to figure out, hey, can
we get this person out?
Or, you know, do we let thefamily talk to them?
You know, I really don't get inthe negotiations part, but I
(10:56):
know they have things that theydo and certain ways of doing
things and they just do it.
They do everything they can tokeep it just to be not a violent
outcome, right, and they justdo it.
They do everything they can tokeep it to just to be a not a
violent out, right.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Kind of just peaceful .
You know, they just give up,walk out, that kind of deal.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
How long is that process usually, where you've
thrown everything out at themand it gets to that point where
you have to move on it.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
They probably already started negotiating before we
even got there, because there'snegotiators all over the state
as well.
So before the whole team'sgotten there there's people.
If there's any communicationwith the suspect, more than
likely one of our state policenegotiators are talking to them.
So there's that.
And then there's other thingsthat we do that we're going to
(11:43):
do tactically before we go in tothe residence.
And you know I really can't getinto a whole lot of that, but
you know we just don't gobusting in on the door.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Right yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Going in after them.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
As an average.
I mean, would it be like 12hours, 24 hours, how long are we
?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
talking.
I would say generally speaking,a lot of the calls happen early
in the evening.
Let's just say 7 or 8 o'clock.
We might get the call at 10o'clock, so it takes us three
hours to get there to get set up.
So you're talking anywhere.
It could be 8, 10, 12 hours forthe whole call.
(12:21):
Gotcha.
Okay, not just us being onscene.
Whole call Gotcha.
Okay, not just us being onscene, right.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Gotcha.
So with you guys showing upnegotiators there, showing up
that kind of stuff, you know,armored vehicles, I mean, do
y'all roll up in armoredvehicles?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Oh, yeah, definitely, or is?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
that a different branch that brings those, that's
us.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, we bring in our armored vehicles.
We've got three of them.
We've got three of them.
We've got two Bearcats which,if you've seen any critical
incidents on TV where there'sarmored vehicles, generally
speaking those are Bearcats.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
That's kind of like the jacked-up van-looking one
that just has a bunch of guys init, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, and then we've got two of those and then we've
got a Bear, which makes thoselook like little itsy-bitsy cars
.
Those things are sweet dude.
I got you those things aresweet dude.
Yeah, yeah, the bear.
It's just it's so big it's hardto use, because if you've got
trees in the yard or hard to getto places, it's just very
difficult to use that.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
What are some of these missions you were telling
us about?
Like you said, there's a fewdifferent departments around the
state that have SWAT teams thatare smaller.
What can they handle withoutyou guys?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Well, it'd be kind of hard for me to speak to that,
but I would guess, you know, Imean each one's going to be
different, but I would thinkmost of them would do warrant
services, okay, gotcha, and ifsomebody's holed up in a house.
But you know, I don't know, youknow, I just I don't really
know, I would imagine y'allprobably get called anytime
(13:46):
there's a hostage situation.
I would say generally speaking,unless it's like a big
department, more than likely wewould get called on that.
Yes, If a state police isinvolved in it, we'll get called
.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
In those situations, are they holding hostages in
there because they don't want togo to jail?
They don't necessarily.
There's no way out kind of deal, so they're just holding
somebody in there just trying tobuy some time.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I mean it's kind of hard to get into their thought
process, but I'll say a lot.
I say a lot.
I've seen times where it'sfamily related, really yeah, and
so I mean I don't know why theydo what they do, obviously, but
generally speaking, we will getthe innocent people out.
(14:33):
They may, or it may even be weget a call for a hostage and
it's not a hostage, it's abarricade that still has family
members in there.
Oh, and they would be considereda hostage at that point because
they're stuck in there.
It just depends on you know whocalled it in what department,
and a lot of times a hostageends up just ended up being a
(14:54):
barricade.
All the innocent people comeout.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So things can happen technically while y'all are on
the way over there.
I would assume.
Oh yeah Is there somebodythat's like updating y'all like
play-by-play kind of what'shappening so that y'all are
super informed.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Generally speaking, there will be a troop commander
or a CID commander which CIDsare detectives and if there's
something significant happen,they'll call me on the phone or
they'll call my major and he'llcall me.
But yeah, if there's somethingsignificant, I'll usually know
about it before.
And a lot of times I say a lotof times, there's been several
times we get a call hey, this ishappening, this is happening.
(15:29):
We get it on the way and then,hey, he came up, he came and
gave up.
Hey, that's great.
So that happens, that happens,some too.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
That's good, I bet.
I mean, is that just a way ofthe world?
Oh shoulders.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, you know.
I don't know that everybodywould admit that, but for sure.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, you never know what you're going to walk in on.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I mean I just have to assume when we go it's going to
be bad.
Right, hope it's not, but Ihave to assume that it's going
to be bad, just kind of expectworst case scenario.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
You have to.
That's the only way.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Because bad situation , you know it's like y'all have
to be set on the worst for whenyou get there.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
You never know yeah for sure, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
So when it comes to, when it comes to y'all SWAT team
, is there like a, like a bombguy?
Yeah, is there any kind of?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Well, so We've got a bomb team that goes with us,
okay, for, like, if there's, youknow, there's information that
there's some type of explosivein there, but this isn't the
same.
But we also we have a group ofguys on the team that are
explosive breachers, so theydeal with, you know, explosives
all the time.
So they're putting like anexample they'd put explosives on
(16:42):
the door to blow the door yeahgenerally speaking, the door
could be a wall, could be acouple of different things at
the same time, but generallyspeaking it's a door.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
So, going off of that , do y'all kind of make
everybody good at everything, oris it pretty individual
specializations?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah, we pretty much all train in the same thing, but
there's going to be guys thatwe're going to be like okay,
you're the go-to guy for that.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah, okay, explosive breaching how many different
categories of do you have tohave a guy for?
So, like you said, bombspecialists?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
We've got shield guys , okay, um explosive breachers,
snipers, um guys that prettymuch specialize in deploying gas
, so we've got.
We've got some other technologythat we use, certain cameras,
so we'll have guys that know howto operate those as well.
(17:36):
Gotcha, okay.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
So the sensor is basically like a sniper is what
I'm kind of getting hung up on.
Would you position a sniper offof, maybe where the team's
gathering or getting ready to goin?
Would a sniper be off of itjust overlooking it, or would he
sometimes be with the team?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
well, that's a good question a lot of times.
So we we try to meet up as in agroup but, depending on the call
, we may have to send snipersout to kind of keep an eye on
the place, or a QRF group out,like if it's a hostage.
In the first two or three of us,four of us that are there, they
go straight to the scene andget close to it just in case
(18:17):
something bad happens.
Yeah, it just depends ifthere's it.
It depends a lot on the call.
If, if we can, you know, likewe may be training, like, let's
say, we're training today, weget a call out, well, we can all
go to the command post orwherever we're going to meet at,
and we can get the game planright there, which we probably
(18:37):
already got before we got thereanyways, because we're talking
on the phone, we meet, this iswhat the team assignments are,
go, and so then it would be likeeverybody's, you know, moving
into position at the same time.
Snipers would definitely befirst because they're going to
be watching things for us.
That makes sense.
It just depends on the call.
Everything changes yeah there'snot like a cookie cutter.
(18:58):
There are SOPs that we go by,standard operating procedures
that we go by, but for differentcalls.
But even with that, sometimesthose change just depending on
what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
And speaking of change too and I'm sorry to
interrupt you, no, you're good.
Like I know, every house isdifferent, got different layouts
on the inside Could be abuilding here or a house there.
Do you all have any way of kindof getting a layout of the
house before you plan to breach?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
There's some technology now that we're
starting to look into.
But I'll just be honest.
You know, a lot of times oh,so-and-so has been in that house
before and they give us thelayout.
It's nothing like it.
Really, honestly, I don't evenlook at it, because one thing we
do in training is that I wouldsay maybe a little different
(19:48):
than some teams is that we tryto use different places all the
time to train.
Yeah, like, and that's the onegood thing about being, you know
, that works for the statepolice We've got places across
the state that we can look atand train in, and that way we're
not, you know, we're used togoing into a place that we're
not used to yeah Right, so MakesRight, so that makes perfect
(20:08):
sense yeah, when we get layouts,if it's somebody like penciling
in, I'm like, yeah, I don'tknow about that yeah, I don't
even honestly, for good or worse.
I don't look at it because it'slike yeah, too many times.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It's not right yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Focus on something usually, you know, usually it's
not right.
So what was you saying, jake?
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Well, I guess I was going off of that.
I was going to kind of ask howhard it is you, being the team
leader, to get a call and it bea different environment every
single time.
How hard is it for you to kindof send the right people, and is
there like a standard, I guess,format that you go by, or is it
just different for each andevery scenario?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Well, as far as the personnel we use, we've got,
we're going to use the guys withmost experience, with the most
knowledge, with the I wouldn'tsay most ability, because even
the young guys have a lot ofability now.
They're just that good, justmore about experience.
We're going to go with theexperience and so we've kind of
(21:13):
got that core group.
But I mean that changes.
You know that's not alwaysgoing to be the same, but
everybody knows who's going togo in there after that bad guy.
If he's not coming out and wegot to go in, everybody knows,
okay, it's going to be thisgroup.
But if he does come out andwe're very certain that there's
no one else in there, dependingon how much training the young
guys have had once they've hadabout a year or so we'll let
(21:36):
them get in there with the guysand get some experience, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
So, as far as getting experience goes, you mentioned
in that so is it only calls thaty'all go to, or maybe like an
event where they call you andsay, hey, we might need some
extra security or something?
Do y'all do things like thattoo?
Yeah, we definitely do that too, Like what kind of events would
you see a SWAT team out therejust being extra security for?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Like when they, when the governor took office we were
part of that Not the same, butsometimes like if they've got a
big warrant service roundup,like the FBI or the DEA or
something like that, they'llcall us in to you know if
they're taking down 15 targetsat the same time Just to kind of
(22:24):
be in the area on call.
No, we'll have an assignmentthat way, like if they're trying
to take it down all at the sametime.
That way there's not phonecalls, hey, they're coming.
Right, right, right.
We get involved in that too.
Sometimes we just send ourarmor, like maybe one of the
federal departments or localssay, hey, we're going to go
(22:44):
serve this warrant, we reallywould just like some armor.
Can you send some armor?
So we'll send a couple of guysto drive the armor Gotcha.
So we have.
That happens frequently as well.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Is there ever a time that y'all have to split up?
Like you say, you get two callsat once.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
It's usually not a call.
It might be the warrantservices.
Like when there's a federalwarrant service roundup, we
usually split the group into twoor three teams to take more
houses, you know more targetsdown Gotcha, but never like an
urgent, two calls at once, Ithink maybe that might have
happened one time, since I'vebeen on the team, but it's not
(23:21):
like.
There's not a good likelihoodof it?
Yeah, not very much at all,gotcha man.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Gotcha, I Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
I'll tell you what it definitely sounds like.
It's a little bit differentfrom a Swap TV show, Because
them guys seem like they're init every five minutes.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Does it not feel like that, I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I mean how many missions calls do you think you
guys go on a year?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
We had a busy year last year, so we had 22 calls
last year.
It just varies.
The year before that we didn'thave hardly any at all.
So it just kind of seems to me,the more calls we get, the more
people will remember oh, thestate police has a SWAT team,
let's call them.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
That's true, Okay.
So do you see it kind of comein waves?
Would you say more than just anaverage, like, say, one every
two weeks or something like that?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, definitely Well that too, and last year was
kind of a hard year financiallyfor people too it was.
You know, and I think you knowfinancial like problems lead to,
you know, more crimes.
I would say I think you'reprobably right.
So I mean, I would expect thatthe harder it is to make money
and the harder it is to, youknow, get the groceries you need
to make it more appealing tosteal, more appealing to you
(24:30):
know, break the law, yeah, loseyour cool.
And I think you're 100% right.
I think that people are kind ofgetting brainwashed by the
violence and the crimes they seeeverywhere on the news, social
media.
It's getting to where it's likeoh, ain't no big deal, yeah,
ain't no big deal in people'sminds, yeah, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Scary thing it's like a new generation thing it is,
and it's been going on for awhile, ever since, you know,
technology started advancing.
I've just kind of and that'sjust my opinion, but that's just
something that I've kind ofnoticed Like it just gets easier
in their mind, Get accustomedto it.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Absolutely, and this might not be something you want
to talk about or not, but so,like the Trump's attempt
assassination, you knoweverybody under the sun was
talking about the security there, talking about how to get on
the roof.
What was the snipers doing onthe roof?
I mean, what is your take onthat?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I don't know why that roof wasn't occupied Would that
not, I don't understand Evensomebody that's not trained.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I don't understand Even somebody that's not trained
.
I don't understand.
Why would there not be somebodyat least watching that roof?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I don't know that, you know I wasn't there, but
that's obviously a mistake.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
I mean, from a security standpoint, I'd say
that was a failure, wouldn't you?
Yeah, I would yeah.
I mean like I would imaginethat when you're going into
planning an event like that,that, I would imagine that when
you're going into planning anevent like that, that would
definitely be one of thepotential places you would want
to have locked down.
Well, that was way too close,it was.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Way, way too close.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
It's horrible I agree , and so are you being the SWAT
commander, are you all?
Any time there's events, orjust any of these cities?
Because it seems like crimelevels are higher in the cities?
Obviously because there's morepeople.
Yeah, so statistically speaking, they're going to be higher.
Well, is there certain places,like where their event be, where
(26:16):
, like, the SWAT team would comein and maybe say, okay, we need
to look at this building, weneed to do this, we need to do
that, or is that somebody elsethat does that?
Speaker 2 (26:24):
So, generally speaking, on our calls, it's
going to be more rural countiesand even for events like we're
just, you know, like, let's justsay, something happened in
Little Rock and Little Rock SWATis going to handle that and if
they need some help they'll callus.
(26:45):
But, generally speaking, likewe don't really do a whole lot
of big events, right, we may.
Now you know the way thingshave been going politically.
You know I could see us being alittle bit more involved in
some of that, yeah, but, andgenerally speaking, in the past
you know those, the, whereverthe city was at, would usually
handle those type of that typeof thing.
Like I said, we did go to theinauguration.
So, yeah, we had, we had guyson the roofs, we had drones up
(27:07):
and things like that.
Oh cool it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
It's crazy to me.
It's like maybe I just didn'tnotice or I wasn't old enough to
pay attention, but it's like Idon't remember there being so
many radical people no, doingthings like this, like you had
to watch out for it I don'tthink there was.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I think it's kind of a you know something that's that
we haven't seen before.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Are they trying to do it for fame?
Are they doing it for Again?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
it's crazy, Just I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
When you get somebody in here that might know how to
answer the, I guess you'd haveto.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
The psychologist.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I don't know if you'd want one of them.
We might need you guys standingover there in the corner.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Ask me if you mind coming back and watching this
guy.
Yeah, no, kidding.
Well, chad, I mean really.
What's cool about it to me islike I vision the SWAT team as
like highly trained, like SEALTeam 6 of law enforcement.
Well, I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
That's the way.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I see it, though, Compared to, you know, just your
standard police officers andyou see, the SWAT team.
These guys are.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
We definitely get a lot more training than a normal
police officer would for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That's a big part of what we do, and situations call
for it, though.
And you know a big part of whatwe do and situations call for
it though.
Yeah, because you don't.
I mean, you never know whatsituation you might be in?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah Right.
So what's a normal day looklike for you guys without a,
without getting a call Like,yeah, so are you training every
single day or you just yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:39):
So there's a lot of logistics behind what we do.
So if we're not, if we're noton call and we're not training,
then we're doing some logisticstuff.
Like we've got a big trainingevent coming up in April with
Oklahoma State Police.
We've kind of befriended eachother and we're working with
each other and training witheach other.
So some of us are going andwe're doing that at Fort Chaffee
in April.
So several of us tomorrow aregoing to drive out to Fort
Chaffee look at the differentranges and get things set up, so
(29:01):
that way you know the day oftraining everything's already
done, especially being acrossthe state like that.
Yeah, we, we do.
We do a lot of that, justanything behind the scenes, you
know we there's a couple of daysa week that we're taking care
of that.
Other than that, if we're noton a call, then we're training.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Thursday night, I think it's.
I don't know how cold it'sgoing to be.
We're going to be at the rangetraining.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Gotcha, oh, it's going to be cold.
It's going to be cold.
How do you kind of, how doesy'all's like actual be here, be
in wherever y'all are located?
How does that schedule, kind ofwork?
As far as like a day-to-day yes, like I mean, is it get in at
eight every day?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
no, we usually set the week up.
We'll set the week up the weekprior, or maybe even just depend
on what's going on like rightin april such a big deal.
We're not going to wait till aweek before, right, you know
we're starting to get stuffready, uh, starting tomorrow.
But yeah, if there's not a lotgoing on the week in advance,
we'll have the week planned outon what we're going to do and
(30:02):
again, it's going to be heavy ontraining unless there's a
warrant service or somethinglike that.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And with y'all being kind of dispersed around
Arkansas, do y'all meet in oneplace to train or y'all just
kind of?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
group up in different areas.
Yeah, when we train, it'll allbe together, we all train
together, and then every once ina while there'll be somebody
having to do some specializedtraining off somewhere else, but
generally speaking, it's alwaysgoing to be together what, as a
team, needs to be.
Yeah, you know, I'll play teamsports my whole life baseball,
football and it's like when theteam's together and plays good
(30:35):
together, they're unstoppablewell, and that's the one thing
that I think, if you'd ask oneof us, any one of us, what we
enjoy the most, it's the team,the camaraderie, the closeness.
It's like a brotherhood.
It's definitely a brotherhoodfor sure.
I mean we go, you know there'slots of I mean lots of great
(30:56):
times together, and then,anytime you're going into harm's
way with someone else, you knowyou're going to be forming some
pretty special bonds.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
For sure.
Oh, you're absolutely rightabout that, because you're all
risking the same thing together.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
So I'm a little curious on this Thursday night
cold weather training.
What's that going to look like?
Can you speak on?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
that, yeah.
So we're just basically we'regoing to go anytime.
We train at night, we're goingto work with white lights,
flashlights, but we're going togo really heavy with our night
vision training Gotcha.
So that's mainly what we'll bedoing on Thursday night.
We'll meet Thursday during theday, do some day drills and then
we'll just train into theevening.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Gotcha.
So what kind of technologytalking about night vision what
kind of technology do y'all relyon?
You know a lot on thesemissions.
Either it be breaching you knowbreaching stuff, or it be the
gun, the rifle y'all use, likewhat's standardized, like what's
y'all's gear.
Y'all roll in with, yes,everything, everything.
So Like what's y'all's gear.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Y'all roll in with, yes, everything.
So obviously we've got bodyarmor helmets, night vision
goggles, rifles, pistols.
That's all gear that we keep inour vehicles with us at all
times, in case you know we'reright there when something
happens, the explosive breaching.
It stays on a truck.
(32:17):
Most of that stays on a truck.
So we'll have our armoredvehicles that roll out, and then
we've got an equipment truckthat rolls out with us.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
We've got shields that we use a lot.
These are full body shieldsthat stay behind.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, I say they're not full, They'll cover your
head to.
About your waist, I got you.
Yeah, so that obviously thearmor vehicles, I mean just, you
know, standard gear that youthink a SWAT team would run.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
What caliber rifle do y'all run?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
223.
223?
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Heck yeah so.
Yeah, I tell you what them 223sare.
Something else Hog hunting yeah, else hog hunting.
Yeah, you down here there's somany hogs, golly, I mean, you
can't kill enough of them.
Yeah, we run up.
223 is only hog hunt.
You know you, you can run likenight vision or thermal scope,
whatever whenever you're hoghunting.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, and that's crazy technology yeah, we'd
actually looked at some thermallike a little.
It's called a clip-on thatwould go on our night vision
goggles.
But when we, when we lookthrough the thermal and I really
don't know that much about it,y'all probably know more more
about it than I do but wenoticed when someone was
carrying like a rifle you couldsee like the barrel but you
(33:28):
couldn't really necessarily seewhat was in front of him on his
torso like a pistol.
You may not even be able to seeit.
So we're like kind of kind ofblend in mask.
What we were looking at did Now?
I mean, we do use thermal fordifferent reasons, Right, but
you know, as far as like wearingthem on our helmets with night
vision goggles, we opted not todo that.
(33:49):
Just because of the we didn'twant there to be any confusion,
no delay and all right, that's agun.
Yeah, yeah, you know For sure.
What about drones?
Yeah, y'all use drones.
We do use drones.
And if the guys watch thissorry drone team I forgot they
deploy with us too.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
The technology in drones now is crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
We use a lot of drones.
Yeah, we use them on every call.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
When would you say they came in to be in every call
type of team?
How long ago was that, wouldyou say?
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I'm guessing I mean team.
How long ago is that, would yousay?
I'm guessing my, I mean mytimetable is not exactly right,
but I'm guessing four or fiveyears ago, really something like
that, even that recent yeah Igot you?
Yeah, not, we haven't used themforever and they're and they're
.
We probably did use them beforethat, but I know like four or
five years, you know, we've beenusing them on a lot of
different things and they'rejust surveying and kind of
(34:38):
looking.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
They do that.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
So they'll go out before we go and kind of
wherever the structure is, thehouse or whatever kind of give
us an overall view of it.
And then we've actually usedthem in some pretty violent
encounters we've been involvedin, like the drone will go in
and kind of like, all right,this is where the guy's at oh
really, yeah, more than if it'sa violent event, they're
(35:01):
shooting the drone.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yeah, that's happened several times.
Are they ever?
Is it used just for likesurveillance, or can you like
deploy gas or, you know,flashbang?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
There's a new one that we I think, and we I don't
know if they've got it yet butthey can break glass, one that
we I think and we I don't knowif they've got it yet, but that
they can break glass.
But as far as like deployingbangs and gas, there may be that
technology, but that's, wedon't have that Okay.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I know the like the thermal drone stuff that I'm
seeing nowadays.
A lot of people are hog huntingwith them or doing whatever
they're doing with them.
But it's crazy that you can getso high up and see any little
bit of life that's there.
It's crazy that you can get sohigh up and see any little bit
of life.
That's there.
Yeah, I mean just the amount oftime it would save, if you like
find somebody, or they're onthe run or whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, we've used that before too, when our helicopter
just suspected that it was outin the woods armed and the
helicopter crew with the thermalled the team into them.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
That was even a long, that was probably 10 years ago.
So y'all were on the radio oron the phone with the helicopter
guy and they just kind ofsteered y'all in.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, I was on the radio with him.
But with a helicopter that'skind of like.
You got to be careful of thehelicopter too, because if
they're too low you can't heareach other talk or you can't
hear somebody walking.
So you know, there's kind ofsome fine lines there.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I imagine they got to get out and away, kind of.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, they usually get up pretty high, but those
cameras are so awesome Like theycan really zoom in.
That was crazy.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
I'll see some of the stuff that you know civilians
are able to buy nowadays and I'mlike you know there's no
telling what the military, whatthe you know crazy technology
they have, is capable of doing.
If we have thermal drones,right, definitely Like what is
out there.
Yeah, yeah, that we don't knowabout yeah.
You know, I mean, it's crazy,for sure, it is For sure.
I mean, and has the technologymade it easier, you think, for
(36:53):
you guys to do your job?
Oh, for sure, over the last 10years?
Speaker 2 (36:56):
And when you're talking technology, even as far
as, like, when I got on the team, we didn't have armored
vehicles.
I mean, I wouldn't imagine itnow.
I mean, and there's sometimeswe can't use armored vehicles,
depending on where we're at.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Have you ever had your armored vehicle like
actually shot?
Oh yeah, really yeah, a coupleof times, that's wild.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
It's crazy to think about.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Is there anything you know you could mention on that?
Obviously you don't got to gointo great detail, just kind of
maybe a situation in which thathappened.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I'll just say that another department was getting
shot up, shot at like heavily,like a couple hundred rounds at
them.
They called us in and, sureenough, he started shooting at
us too, yeah, sure enough hestarted shooting at us too, yeah
, and we deployed drones on thatone.
And that was just one of thosepeople that you know we were
talking about earlier that just—Didn't care about anything but
(37:47):
himself.
Nothing matters, didn't care.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
How often is it groups of people that you're
dealing with, versus just a solo?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
No, I would—I mean I sure hate to say never, because
we usually it's just one suspectfor us.
But you know, I would sayalmost always, obviously there's
going to be a few times wherethere's a couple, but not like
groups or anything other than abig warrant service, but then
you know they're spread outacross the town or the city.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
That we're in.
You never go in and catch themall at one spot at one time,
type of deal.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
We've done something like that before.
I'll tell you this one, becauseit doesn't really matter.
It was actually a chickenfighting operation, a chicken
fighting operation.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
That surprised me.
That was surprising.
That's how you find them all inone place, right?
Speaker 2 (38:34):
there.
That's how we did it.
We took the whole group down,so I don't mind talking about
that one.
That's how we did it, reallygood.
Took the whole group down, so Idon't mind talking about that
one.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
That is wild.
I bet you y'all do encountersome things sometimes.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I was about to say.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Ironic.
It's like wow.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
It's usually like what are people thinking?
Yeah, like why yeah?
Speaker 1 (38:57):
I mean, is that crazy what?
People do with their spare time, you know, yeah, yeah, I guess
there's money to be made.
Somebody's going to try to makeit.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
I guess, no matter what it is.
Yeah, yeah, that was a longtime ago, and we're like what
are we doing here?
Speaker 1 (39:08):
You ever get on calls and then all of a sudden it
just dissolves.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Like it extensive process to get us called out.
To begin with, there's going tobe several people involved in
the decision, so a lot of thetime it's going to be like well,
is it worth, is this call, isit worth the assets that we're
sending the time, the money, andthen every once in a while and
usually the answer is yes If wego, the answer is usually yes.
(39:42):
And then there's been a few.
I remember I rolled up on one.
I'm like ah, that does notsound like that's what happened
to me.
And sure enough, the guy comes.
I didn't even know y'all werehere.
Really, the story that we weretold that got us there wasn't
what happened.
So every once in a while,somebody might you know, get
ahead of themselves Not veryoften at all Because, again,
(40:03):
like it's before it even comesto me, there's going to be three
or four people involved in thestate police.
That, hey, is this something weneed to send the SWAT team on?
Speaker 3 (40:13):
How often is it like you get a call and you know
right from the get go like, OK,this isn't anything, but we've
got to go.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
No, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
I'm thinking of.
I was in middle school and somekid broke a bomb on the
bathroom wall and we evacuatedthe school, brought the SWAT
team in the whole deal.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
But you know there's not a very high risk of that.
You know something like thatactually happening?
Yeah, I mean locally.
I would assume that happens.
You know more often than not.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
But for it to get to y'all, it'd have to be pretty
serious.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
It's got to be pretty vetted Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
It's almost and it's one of those deals too.
It's like you never know,though, because if they don't
call you and somebody ends updead, you know, or it costs
somebody's life, you know itwould have been worth sending
them.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
We've always said like there's been calls where
the dude gives up and whatever.
And then the commander there islike we're so sorry, I'm like
dude, we're glad to be here,like we'd rather be here and
nothing happen than somebody wenot be here.
And then somebody gets shot.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
For sure.
Yeah, better be safe than sorry, yeah.
Especially when you're dealingwith people's lives.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
And I guess the closest thing to answer that
question would be like you know,we got an active shooter.
Well, my idea of an activeshooter and somebody else's idea
of an active shooter iscompletely two different things,
and their idea of an activeshooter may be.
Well, they fired off two orthree rounds inside the house.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, that's not an active shooter.
And see we had, That'd besomething we would go to Right.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
But my idea ofwide active shooter emergency.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
So I was just curious on how many of those pretty
obvious false alarms you dealwith Well, and I'll say for the
state police, that happens justfor the guys that are out there
on patrol, you know, assistingthe other departments.
Yeah, because I know when Iworked in Malvern or Hot Spring
County that happened a lot.
Yeah, like, oh, we got thisgoing on, this going on, all
right, I'm headed that way, andthen Turned out to be nothing,
(42:18):
yeah, completely yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
So here not too long ago, well, last year we had a
shooting at the Mad Butcher herein Fordyce and you know he was
just running around the parkinglot shooting people, yeah, so if
he which I know it got handledyou know before obviously more
you know y'all could have cameor things like that.
But would that have been asituation where, say, it didn't
(42:40):
get handled and he was hunkeredin the parking lot or he got
back in a building and was justkind of hunkered in shooting?
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Would you of hunkered in shooting?
Would you have showed up forthat?
Speaker 3 (42:51):
oh, we definitely would yeah, for sure would have
came to that.
Yeah, did you guys get a call?
Speaker 1 (42:53):
on that or it was over before I even knew about it
.
It's kind of quick.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, how well I mean are there?
Is it?
Pretty often like prettysignificant stuff like that goes
down and y'all I mean it's bang, bang and y'all don't even get
a chance to come in and dealwith it oh no, I wouldn't say so
.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
I mean that you know.
Obviously that's a terrible,terrible thing that happened, um
, but though, I mean, thosethings do happen, obviously, but
that's not generally speaking.
That doesn't happen very often,gotcha, you know, okay, usually
the call we're getting is it'salready happened.
Police has a perimeter on it,like would have been the same.
(43:32):
You know, right, if they didn'tyou know they didn't take care
of it as quick as they did, thenthat would be something.
Yeah, we got a security.
You know a perimeter.
We need you guys to come in,and you know, gotcha, Take care
of it.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
And I guess I have one more question as far as
y'all getting the call does itcome from the same number or do
y'all get calls?
So that's a good question,because I would think if you're
just getting random calls andit's not controlled before you,
you would have to then figureout if it's a real caller or you
know things like that.
So I guess the number comesfrom.
The call comes from one numberto you so I mean that's a good
(44:08):
question.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
So generally, before we get the call, I'll already
know about it, because my, mymajor's contacted me.
I've texted the guy say heyguys, we're probably going to
roll.
So everybody's right, because,again, a lot of times it's 10
o'clock at night, yeah, yeah.
So anyways, um, they'll knowahead of time.
We give guys time to get get up, get moving, get a plan on how
we're going to get the vehiclesthere and then so a call comes
(44:32):
in on a like a.
We have a kind of like an, acall, a call alert system.
So if you know that, numbersbeing you know, if you get a
call from this number.
You know that, you know.
You know, you know, with a textand all that everybody, unless
they were asleep, they prettymuch already know that.
You know we're rolling onsomething Every once in a while.
(44:54):
You know one of the guys I haveto call a guy's wife.
Hey, wake so-and-so up, we'refixing to roll out.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I imagine, yeah, I'd probably be that guy if I was.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
You'd both be new guys, yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Yeah, so for you individually, how do you, when
you're in the truck on the waythere, how do you kind of
prepare yourself like gettingthat mindset, because I'm sure
it's?
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I mean, so that's usually the worst part of it all
, like my mind's going a milliondifferent places at once.
And, and then, yeah, you're justlike all right, what if, what
if?
And then, honestly, that'susually where all my concerns
are at.
Every once in a while I canremember being concerned on a
call, but usually when you geton the call you know there's a
lot of tasks and a lot of thingsto focus on.
(45:37):
So you know at that point youknow you got a job to do, so you
just got to perform.
For sure, each individual hasto perform, but, yeah, generally
speaking, the call is the rightup.
There is usually the worst.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Suspenseful yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
That's what.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I figured Because I mean, especially when you, as
the commander or a team leader,you know you've got all these
guys, that you know you've gotto try to do the best job, you
can make the right decisions toget them back home For sure and
innocent people I mean, and eventhe suspect, for that matter.
You know, obviously you know ifwe can get it to be a
(46:15):
nonviolent outcome, that's whatwe want, but you know that's not
always the case, right?
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Do you ever?
Do you ever struggle with theresponsibility?
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Like does it ever when I say struggle, I don't
mean like Is it way on you?
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, is it ever way on you.
Yeah, it's definitely.
Yeah, it's a heavy weightbecause there's a lot of
responsibility there and it'snot just on me, you know.
Obviously it's on all of us asthe group, where I mean even the
youngest team member.
We're like hey, you know, ifyou, I tell them.
If you see me messing.
This is not the answer to yourquestion, but if you see me
(46:48):
messing up, you need to tell me,even if it's mundane tasks at
training or something.
I'm like hold ourselvesaccountable.
I don't care who you are, and Itell them this all the time.
We're all on probation everyone of us.
So I've been on the team longerthan all y'all and I'm just.
You know, if I, if I, get toscrewing up and making a bunch
(47:10):
of mistakes, and especially youknow what we'll see is if, if a
guy has been around too long inhis head, just not in it anymore
, it's obvious I don't want tobe that guy and I don't want
anybody on the team to be thatguy, cause that's you know,
obviously I'm not going to saythat's what gets people killed,
but that's definitely going tohurt your chances of having a
successful mission.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Do you see an average age between the guys, For
example?
Is there a life expectancy ofit?
Like an NFL player, you're notgoing to play that long.
You know what I mean.
What does that age group looklike?
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Well, I would say the average age of the guy on the
team probably about probablyearly 30s.
And then the assistant teamcommanders kind of told the guys
it's like we expect everybodyto be here.
You know, if you, if you'rehere 10 years, you had a good
career.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
And you know, it just depends on the person.
Some people are more driven forit.
Some people you know I had areally close friend that just
got off the team.
You know he's he's got a lot, alot of other responsibilities
in the department.
Kids are growing up and he, youknow he he decided it was time
for him to move on.
(48:19):
Yeah, just, each individual isjust different.
But what we won't accept is ishalf ass, right, we're not going
to accept that.
Now.
We all make mistakes and we allhave little slumps, and you
know, we understand that.
But if you, if you're in aslump, you better, you need to
get yourself out of it.
Yeah, or let us help you getout of it.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
And if you can't get out of it, then do you think a
lot of that's mental, likethey're just mentally being a
slump um oh yeah, you know, justyeah, a lot of it's family.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
You know some of it's work related.
You know, other than SWAT it'susually not SWAT related.
You know some of the guys onthe team have two different jobs
.
Some of us are SWAT and thensome other guys have other
duties too, so those otherduties can weigh heavy on
somebody.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
That makes sense.
Now everything adds up, youknow, like mental clarity going
into those situations.
It's got to be key it is andconfidence too.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
I imagine, oh yeah, that's a real big deal.
And then, yeah, I mean, andthen you also have to deal with
fatigue, because it, you know,we're usually operational.
Like I said, if we get calledat 10, you know it's usually
most of us are sleeping at thatpoint.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah, you've got to wake up and get ready fast.
Yeah, I mean y'all bump heavymetal or anything like that on
the way I love heavy metal.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Y'all got a walk-up song.
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
What's the walk-up song?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
You know, I would imagine we would have a walk-up
song.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
I played ACDC this morning.
Yeah, like five minutes out Onenight you were.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
ACDC or Metallica, every once in a while, back and
flat.
That's sweet, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
That's cool man.
Yeah, they make fun of me forheavy metal, Do they?
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (49:54):
You got to get the mind right.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
Yeah, there you go you got to get the mind right.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Well, chad, it was a pleasure.
Thank you for coming today.
And you know a lot more goesinto it.
People think you know you guysare training for this.
Every day People see the SWATteam roll in and they know
they're trained, they knowthey're, you know, prepared for
the job.
But, like what actually goesinto it, it's all kind of behind
the curtains.
You know you don't really seethat.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yeah, definitely a lot of behind the scenes stuff.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
And just knowing that y'all put in all the work and
the conditioning and everythingto be able to handle the
situations that pop up, you knowmakes everybody feel better
Knowing that there's a group ofguys that are going to come in
and take care of it Well andI'll.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
I'll say this too you know, we couldn't do it without
the support of the state police, our bosses, like they really,
really support us a lot and it'sjust.
It's been awesome working,working for them.
And then again, you know, Iwould.
I wouldn't be right if I didn'tsay something about our wives
that support us because, oh yeah, that's most important I'm
(50:56):
being serious, like without them, it just it wouldn't work.
So you know, we we reallyappreciate our bosses and we
appreciate our wives supportingwhat we do, which is still your
boss, we just appreciate our athome, we just appreciate our
bosses.
Yeah, here you go.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Well, I think that wraps this up.
Guys, make sure you leave alike, subscribe, hit the bell
for notifications and check outour other videos that are
everywhere.
Catch you on the next one.
It's 5 o'clock and you're off the clock with Beast
Guy, and today we have as ourguest the Arkansas State Police
SWAT Commander, chad Staley.
Now listen, everybody has seenSWAT on TV.
How realistic is it?
We don't really know.
But I do know one thing we'regoing to find out today.
He's going to tell us all aboutthe training, what they do when
they get a call, the kind ofequipment they use.
(00:21):
I mean, he's going to go intodetail about what kind of
situations and what the SWAT ismeant for.
So, guys, stay tuned, we'reabout to unravel it.
So, chad, tell me how you gotinto law enforcement and how you
got to where you are today,because right now you're the
commander of the SWAT.
Yeah, I mean, that's a prettyhigh role, I'd assume.
(00:42):
Is that where you shot for itfrom the very beginning, or did
you kind of just work your wayinto that?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
No, honestly, when I started law enforcement, my plan
was just to stay on highwaypatrol with the state police,
retire and be happy.
And then just things happened.
When I went through my troopschool in 1998, the SWAT guys
came and did our firearmstraining and I'm like man, I
(01:09):
want to be like that guy rightthere, and so that's kind of
what got me involved or wantingto be a SWAT team member.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Was the law enforcement side of things,
where you knew you were going toend up where you wanted to be
from the get-go, like when youwere a kid.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
No, I wouldn't say that.
My wife and I were going tocollege together and at just
some point that's just what Idecided.
I thought I wanted to go be afederal agent and then I had a
buddy that went to the BorderPatrol and I'm like man, like we
were very close.
I'm like, golly, this hurts man.
He's not here, so it'd be likethis is going to really hurt me
if I leave everybody.
(01:42):
So, I decided to stay local,worked for the sheriff's office
for a few years and then gothired with the state police.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Heck, yeah, dude.
So how far from that point didyou get to be in the SWAT and
how did you start out?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So after troop school there's a three-year wait
period to be a tryout for SWAT,and so I waited my three years,
tried out and I made the team,which was 2001.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
What kind of requirements do you have to have
to be on the SWAT team?
I imagine it's probably pretty.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, obviously physical fitness is a big thing,
like firearms.
You have to be very, veryproficient with firearms and
that's kind of to get youstarted.
But one of the big things thatwe look at for a team member
those are obvious but is how canthis guy get along with the
team?
Is it about him or is it aboutthe team?
Because if it's about him itdoesn't work out.
(02:41):
Yeah, so we're very picky onthe selection process and that's
like a really big deal.
There's that.
And then you know, most of usare married, right, and like one
of the questions we'll ask inthe interview process is what
does your wife think about this?
And if she's not all in, wewon't accept them.
(03:01):
Really it won't work.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So you take like a team, like team's the number one
thing, right, it's all or none.
it's kind of deal, team yep andthen every once in a while, you
know, somebody might have theright words to say, and then
they, they're not a team memberand that just that doesn't work
out, that it has to be about theteam guys, if you made it this
far, like subscribe and hit thebell for notifications, it helps
us out tremendously and ithelps us push, get more things
(03:26):
in the gear shop, more contentup, and if you like something or
he wants to do something, dropa comment down below.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
All right, we'll get back into it how do you deal
with that when it's after thefact and they're already signed
up and in the field?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
you know, as, as the commander you know, I would
there's probably already beenconversations that's gone on
before I've had the conversation.
Yeah, like, hey, you know, thisisn't.
This isn't what we're wantingfor a team member.
You know, if you want to be apart of this team, you need to
change your mindset, gotcha, andif that doesn't work, then
they're not going to stay on theteam.
So just a really short leash,but yeah that's very, very rare
(04:04):
because our selection process isso physical and rigorous and
it's a very thorough.
It is and it's oriented arounda team mentality that, if
probably, more than likely, ifyou don't have that team
mentality, it's probably goingto come out during the trial
process more than likely Kind ofweeds themselves out in the
process.
Yeah, you'll see things, you'lljust see that.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
You're like I don't know about him.
Yeah, so, being a team, youknow set, when y'all do your
training, like say you're not ona call, you're not going out on
a mission, or whatever it maybe what kind of training does a
team go through?
So just the training in general?
Yeah, is it more like teamtraining or is it?
Speaker 2 (04:45):
individual focused Well when we're with a team,
it's team training, and thenwhen you're not with a team,
then you have to focus on yourindividual skills.
But yeah, anytime we train it'salways team related.
We just train for what?
The majority of the calls thatwe would go on because there
there's you know there'sdifferent types of calls we go
(05:06):
on.
We train for that, thescenario-based training,
firearms training, and then withthe state police, we have so
much equipment and gear thatwe'll also have to have just
specialized training on thatgear throughout the year.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
I didn't even think about that because as new
technology comes out, obviouslyyou'll have to be trained up.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, even if it's not new technology, some of the
things that we do and train withthe gear requires a lot of
repetitions and you know whenyou need it.
You want to be very familiarwith it and you know not have to
really think about it for surebut, um, yeah, yes, a lot of
that gear.
You just have to get a lot ofreps on, yeah, and if you don't,
(05:47):
then you're going to get tocall them like uh what do we do
here?
Speaker 1 (05:51):
yeah, and that's never good especially when you
throw on you know uncontrollablevariables, like you know bad
guys in there.
It's like need to have it alltogether yeah definitely.
So you talked about trainingfor like what you see most.
What is it that you think thesituation y'all get called out
for the most is?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I would, generally speaking, the call we get the
most of would be police officersbeing shot at either shot or
shot at, or they may have like amurder suspect barricaded in a
house, but generally speakingit'll be something bad has
happened and the suspect'sbarricaded with weapons and they
(06:30):
say they're not coming out.
So y'all do a lot of breaching.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, we do a lot of breaching.
Yeah, a lot of breaching.
Do you seem like it's more ofthat nowadays, or maybe the game
has kind of shifted and thethings y'all are dealing with
now is a little bit differentthan what it has been?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
yeah, that's definitely true.
When I first got on the team,um, I mean, things would happen
and there was obviously, youknow, we were there for violent
suspects, but uh, I've seen overthe last six or seven years
that they become a lot more, um,violent and a lot more willing
to fight.
Why is that?
Honestly, my opinion is we'rein a, we're in a, we have a
(07:10):
culture of it's all about me.
You think so.
That's just how I feel about it.
It's all about me.
I mean, if you, you know, ifyou think about, like for me,
when I grew up, you know, wedidn't have cell phones, we
didn't have all this informationpouring in on us, and I think
that factors in, but I reallyfeel like that a lot of people,
it's just about me and I don'tcare about nothing else.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
So selfishness, kind of just self Definitely
selfishness for sure, and it'sjust honestly.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
It's just a more violent society than it was.
You know, when I was growing upwe didn't have wars, and since
then we've been involved in afew different things and with
that, you know just, the societyjust becomes more violent, in
my opinion.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
So do you think it's?
You know, social media, I mean,obviously I think social media
has a big impact in it, becauseeverybody sees what they, you
know, are interested in orwhatever, and they say it's
fighting or violence, whatever,and they think it's cool.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Or it's video games.
Desensitize to it.
You just become used to it andit just isn't.
You know, just desensitizationis what I feel.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
I didn't even think about it like that.
Yeah, you see it all the time.
You see it all the time.
It's not such a big deal.
It Easier.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, makes it a lot easier.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Are y'all having to go out on more calls that are
like this, or are they justgetting more violent, the ones
that you're going on?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
No, I would say they're just more violent, the
ones that we're going on, reallyyeah.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So do y'all go out multiple times in a week?
I mean, what area exactly arey'all on call for?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So we're on call for the whole state.
So, generally speaking, youknow there's a lot of smaller
departments that have SWAT teamsright and then if they run into
that guy that's barricaded andarmed, you know they may not
have the the equipment assetsthat we have.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
So, generally speaking, that's what we'll get
called for um, and when y'allget the call, do y'all hop in
the.
You know we've all seen theshow SWAT, right that.
And that's what I was talkingabout earlier.
It's like I know how realisticis the show SWAT compared to
what you guys do.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
I don't watch it.
I don't know the few episodes Isaw.
I'm like I'm not watching it.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It's super dramatic.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
You know how it is yeah, no, well, you know, for us
it's a lot different anywaysbeing in the state, so different
anyways being in the state.
So you know, right now there's26 of us and we're spread out
all over the state.
So when we get a call it'sprobably going to be three hours
before we're operational.
Really, okay, yeah and uh,generally speaking, the call's
been going on for a few hoursbefore we even get the call.
(09:36):
And you know, we just it justtakes us a while to get there,
so it's not like.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
So you're all kind of dispersed all throughout
Arkansas.
Whenever the call comes in,it's obviously something super
important or dangerous orviolent or whatever, and then
you all kind of just all cometogether.
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And then with us when we get those calls.
We have other assets that rollwith us.
Right, we'll have a crisisnegotiation team.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
We'll have and the negotiation team kind of walk us
through a little bit what theydo.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
So well, they're completely.
They're all state troopers, butthey're a completely different
group than us.
So while we're focusing on thetactical how are we going to
settle this they're going to beon the phone talking to the
suspect, trying to reason withthem.
They'll be getting informationfrom family members, just any
(10:28):
information they can give tohelp us.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Y'all are kind of working both angles, like y'all
are looking more into thephysical.
How do we physically get inhere and take care of it?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
If things get bad and we have to go in for whatever
reason either they're hurtingpeople or we just use everything
we can use and they're notcoming out we've got to go in.
They're still working andtrying to figure out, hey, can
we get this person out?
Or, you know, do we let thefamily talk to them?
You know, I really don't get inthe negotiations part, but I
(10:56):
know they have things that theydo and certain ways of doing
things and they just do it.
They do everything they can tokeep it just to be not a violent
outcome, right, and they justdo it.
They do everything they can tokeep it to just to be a not a
violent out, right.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Kind of just peaceful .
You know, they just give up,walk out, that kind of deal.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
How long is that process usually, where you've
thrown everything out at themand it gets to that point where
you have to move on it.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
They probably already started negotiating before we
even got there, because there'snegotiators all over the state
as well.
So before the whole team'sgotten there there's people.
If there's any communicationwith the suspect, more than
likely one of our state policenegotiators are talking to them.
So there's that.
And then there's other thingsthat we do that we're going to
(11:43):
do tactically before we go in tothe residence.
And you know I really can't getinto a whole lot of that, but
you know we just don't gobusting in on the door.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Right yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Going in after them.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
As an average.
I mean, would it be like 12hours, 24 hours, how long are we
?
Speaker 2 (12:01):
talking.
I would say generally speaking,a lot of the calls happen early
in the evening.
Let's just say 7 or 8 o'clock.
We might get the call at 10o'clock, so it takes us three
hours to get there to get set up.
So you're talking anywhere.
It could be 8, 10, 12 hours forthe whole call.
(12:21):
Gotcha.
Okay, not just us being onscene.
Whole call Gotcha.
Okay, not just us being onscene, right.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Gotcha.
So with you guys showing upnegotiators there, showing up
that kind of stuff, you know,armored vehicles, I mean, do
y'all roll up in armoredvehicles?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Oh, yeah, definitely, or is?
Speaker 1 (12:35):
that a different branch that brings those, that's
us.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, we bring in our armored vehicles.
We've got three of them.
We've got three of them.
We've got two Bearcats which,if you've seen any critical
incidents on TV where there'sarmored vehicles, generally
speaking those are Bearcats.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
That's kind of like the jacked-up van-looking one
that just has a bunch of guys init, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, and then we've got two of those and then we've
got a Bear, which makes thoselook like little itsy-bitsy cars
.
Those things are sweet dude.
I got you those things aresweet dude.
Yeah, yeah, the bear.
It's just it's so big it's hardto use, because if you've got
trees in the yard or hard to getto places, it's just very
difficult to use that.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
What are some of these missions you were telling
us about?
Like you said, there's a fewdifferent departments around the
state that have SWAT teams thatare smaller.
What can they handle withoutyou guys?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Well, it'd be kind of hard for me to speak to that,
but I would guess, you know, Imean each one's going to be
different, but I would thinkmost of them would do warrant
services, okay, gotcha, and ifsomebody's holed up in a house.
But you know, I don't know, youknow, I just I don't really
know, I would imagine y'allprobably get called anytime
(13:46):
there's a hostage situation.
I would say generally speaking,unless it's like a big
department, more than likely wewould get called on that.
Yes, If a state police isinvolved in it, we'll get called
.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
In those situations, are they holding hostages in
there because they don't want togo to jail?
They don't necessarily.
There's no way out kind of deal, so they're just holding
somebody in there just trying tobuy some time.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I mean it's kind of hard to get into their thought
process, but I'll say a lot.
I say a lot.
I've seen times where it'sfamily related, really yeah, and
so I mean I don't know why theydo what they do, obviously, but
generally speaking, we will getthe innocent people out.
(14:33):
They may, or it may even be weget a call for a hostage and
it's not a hostage, it's abarricade that still has family
members in there.
Oh, and they would be considereda hostage at that point because
they're stuck in there.
It just depends on you know whocalled it in what department,
and a lot of times a hostageends up just ended up being a
(14:54):
barricade.
All the innocent people comeout.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So things can happen technically while y'all are on
the way over there.
I would assume.
Oh yeah Is there somebodythat's like updating y'all like
play-by-play kind of what'shappening so that y'all are
super informed.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Generally speaking, there will be a troop commander
or a CID commander which CIDsare detectives and if there's
something significant happen,they'll call me on the phone or
they'll call my major and he'llcall me.
But yeah, if there's somethingsignificant, I'll usually know
about it before.
And a lot of times I say a lotof times, there's been several
times we get a call hey, this ishappening, this is happening.
(15:29):
We get it on the way and then,hey, he came up, he came and
gave up.
Hey, that's great.
So that happens, that happens,some too.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
That's good, I bet.
I mean, is that just a way ofthe world?
Oh shoulders.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, you know.
I don't know that everybodywould admit that, but for sure.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, you never know what you're going to walk in on.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
I mean I just have to assume when we go it's going to
be bad.
Right, hope it's not, but Ihave to assume that it's going
to be bad, just kind of expectworst case scenario.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
You have to.
That's the only way.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Because bad situation , you know it's like y'all have
to be set on the worst for whenyou get there.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
You never know yeah for sure, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
So when it comes to, when it comes to y'all SWAT team
, is there like a, like a bombguy?
Yeah, is there any kind of?
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Well, so We've got a bomb team that goes with us,
okay, for, like, if there's, youknow, there's information that
there's some type of explosivein there, but this isn't the
same.
But we also we have a group ofguys on the team that are
explosive breachers, so theydeal with, you know, explosives
all the time.
So they're putting like anexample they'd put explosives on
(16:42):
the door to blow the door yeahgenerally speaking, the door
could be a wall, could be acouple of different things at
the same time, but generallyspeaking it's a door.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
So, going off of that , do y'all kind of make
everybody good at everything, oris it pretty individual
specializations?
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah, we pretty much all train in the same thing, but
there's going to be guys thatwe're going to be like okay,
you're the go-to guy for that.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah, okay, explosive breaching how many different
categories of do you have tohave a guy for?
So, like you said, bombspecialists?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
We've got shield guys , okay, um explosive breachers,
snipers, um guys that prettymuch specialize in deploying gas
, so we've got.
We've got some other technologythat we use, certain cameras,
so we'll have guys that know howto operate those as well.
(17:36):
Gotcha, okay.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
So the sensor is basically like a sniper is what
I'm kind of getting hung up on.
Would you position a sniper offof, maybe where the team's
gathering or getting ready to goin?
Would a sniper be off of itjust overlooking it, or would he
sometimes be with the team?
Speaker 2 (17:54):
well, that's a good question a lot of times.
So we we try to meet up as in agroup but, depending on the call
, we may have to send snipersout to kind of keep an eye on
the place, or a QRF group out,like if it's a hostage.
In the first two or three of us,four of us that are there, they
go straight to the scene andget close to it just in case
(18:17):
something bad happens.
Yeah, it just depends ifthere's it.
It depends a lot on the call.
If, if we can, you know, likewe may be training, like, let's
say, we're training today, weget a call out, well, we can all
go to the command post orwherever we're going to meet at,
and we can get the game planright there, which we probably
(18:37):
already got before we got thereanyways, because we're talking
on the phone, we meet, this iswhat the team assignments are,
go, and so then it would be likeeverybody's, you know, moving
into position at the same time.
Snipers would definitely befirst because they're going to
be watching things for us.
That makes sense.
It just depends on the call.
Everything changes yeah there'snot like a cookie cutter.
(18:58):
There are SOPs that we go by,standard operating procedures
that we go by, but for differentcalls.
But even with that, sometimesthose change just depending on
what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
And speaking of change too and I'm sorry to
interrupt you, no, you're good.
Like I know, every house isdifferent, got different layouts
on the inside Could be abuilding here or a house there.
Do you all have any way of kindof getting a layout of the
house before you plan to breach?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:27):
There's some technology now that we're
starting to look into.
But I'll just be honest.
You know, a lot of times oh,so-and-so has been in that house
before and they give us thelayout.
It's nothing like it.
Really, honestly, I don't evenlook at it, because one thing we
do in training is that I wouldsay maybe a little different
(19:48):
than some teams is that we tryto use different places all the
time to train.
Yeah, like, and that's the onegood thing about being, you know
, that works for the statepolice We've got places across
the state that we can look atand train in, and that way we're
not, you know, we're used togoing into a place that we're
not used to yeah Right, so MakesRight, so that makes perfect
(20:08):
sense yeah, when we get layouts,if it's somebody like penciling
in, I'm like, yeah, I don'tknow about that yeah, I don't
even honestly, for good or worse.
I don't look at it because it'slike yeah, too many times.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It's not right yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Focus on something usually, you know, usually it's
not right.
So what was you saying, jake?
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Well, I guess I was going off of that.
I was going to kind of ask howhard it is you, being the team
leader, to get a call and it bea different environment every
single time.
How hard is it for you to kindof send the right people, and is
there like a standard, I guess,format that you go by, or is it
just different for each andevery scenario?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Well, as far as the personnel we use, we've got,
we're going to use the guys withmost experience, with the most
knowledge, with the I wouldn'tsay most ability, because even
the young guys have a lot ofability now.
They're just that good, justmore about experience.
We're going to go with theexperience and so we've kind of
(21:13):
got that core group.
But I mean that changes.
You know that's not alwaysgoing to be the same, but
everybody knows who's going togo in there after that bad guy.
If he's not coming out and wegot to go in, everybody knows,
okay, it's going to be thisgroup.
But if he does come out andwe're very certain that there's
no one else in there, dependingon how much training the young
guys have had once they've hadabout a year or so we'll let
(21:36):
them get in there with the guysand get some experience, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
So, as far as getting experience goes, you mentioned
in that so is it only calls thaty'all go to, or maybe like an
event where they call you andsay, hey, we might need some
extra security or something?
Do y'all do things like thattoo?
Yeah, we definitely do that too, Like what kind of events would
you see a SWAT team out therejust being extra security for?
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Like when they, when the governor took office we were
part of that Not the same, butsometimes like if they've got a
big warrant service roundup,like the FBI or the DEA or
something like that, they'llcall us in to you know if
they're taking down 15 targetsat the same time Just to kind of
(22:24):
be in the area on call.
No, we'll have an assignmentthat way, like if they're trying
to take it down all at the sametime.
That way there's not phonecalls, hey, they're coming.
Right, right, right.
We get involved in that too.
Sometimes we just send ourarmor, like maybe one of the
federal departments or localssay, hey, we're going to go
(22:44):
serve this warrant, we reallywould just like some armor.
Can you send some armor?
So we'll send a couple of guysto drive the armor Gotcha.
So we have.
That happens frequently as well.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Is there ever a time that y'all have to split up?
Like you say, you get two callsat once.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
It's usually not a call.
It might be the warrantservices.
Like when there's a federalwarrant service roundup, we
usually split the group into twoor three teams to take more
houses, you know more targetsdown Gotcha, but never like an
urgent, two calls at once, Ithink maybe that might have
happened one time, since I'vebeen on the team, but it's not
(23:21):
like.
There's not a good likelihoodof it?
Yeah, not very much at all,gotcha man.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Gotcha, I Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
I'll tell you what it definitely sounds like.
It's a little bit differentfrom a Swap TV show, Because
them guys seem like they're init every five minutes.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Does it not feel like that, I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
I mean how many missions calls do you think you
guys go on a year?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
We had a busy year last year, so we had 22 calls
last year.
It just varies.
The year before that we didn'thave hardly any at all.
So it just kind of seems to me,the more calls we get, the more
people will remember oh, thestate police has a SWAT team,
let's call them.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
That's true, Okay.
So do you see it kind of comein waves?
Would you say more than just anaverage, like, say, one every
two weeks or something like that?
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, definitely Well that too, and last year was
kind of a hard year financiallyfor people too it was.
You know, and I think you knowfinancial like problems lead to,
you know, more crimes.
I would say I think you'reprobably right.
So I mean, I would expect thatthe harder it is to make money
and the harder it is to, youknow, get the groceries you need
to make it more appealing tosteal, more appealing to you
(24:30):
know, break the law, yeah, loseyour cool.
And I think you're 100% right.
I think that people are kind ofgetting brainwashed by the
violence and the crimes they seeeverywhere on the news, social
media.
It's getting to where it's likeoh, ain't no big deal, yeah,
ain't no big deal in people'sminds, yeah, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Scary thing it's like a new generation thing it is,
and it's been going on for awhile, ever since, you know,
technology started advancing.
I've just kind of and that'sjust my opinion, but that's just
something that I've kind ofnoticed Like it just gets easier
in their mind, Get accustomedto it.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Absolutely, and this might not be something you want
to talk about or not, but so,like the Trump's attempt
assassination, you knoweverybody under the sun was
talking about the security there, talking about how to get on
the roof.
What was the snipers doing onthe roof?
I mean, what is your take onthat?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I don't know why that roof wasn't occupied Would that
not, I don't understand Evensomebody that's not trained.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
I don't understand Even somebody that's not trained
.
I don't understand.
Why would there not be somebodyat least watching that roof?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I don't know that, you know I wasn't there, but
that's obviously a mistake.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
I mean, from a security standpoint, I'd say
that was a failure, wouldn't you?
Yeah, I would yeah.
I mean like I would imaginethat when you're going into
planning an event like that,that, I would imagine that when
you're going into planning anevent like that, that would
definitely be one of thepotential places you would want
to have locked down.
Well, that was way too close,it was.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Way, way too close.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
It's horrible I agree , and so are you being the SWAT
commander, are you all?
Any time there's events, orjust any of these cities?
Because it seems like crimelevels are higher in the cities?
Obviously because there's morepeople.
Yeah, so statistically speaking, they're going to be higher.
Well, is there certain places,like where their event be, where
(26:16):
, like, the SWAT team would comein and maybe say, okay, we need
to look at this building, weneed to do this, we need to do
that, or is that somebody elsethat does that?
Speaker 2 (26:24):
So, generally speaking, on our calls, it's
going to be more rural countiesand even for events like we're
just, you know, like, let's justsay, something happened in
Little Rock and Little Rock SWATis going to handle that and if
they need some help they'll callus.
(26:45):
But, generally speaking, likewe don't really do a whole lot
of big events, right, we may.
Now you know the way thingshave been going politically.
You know I could see us being alittle bit more involved in
some of that, yeah, but, andgenerally speaking, in the past
you know those, the, whereverthe city was at, would usually
handle those type of that typeof thing.
Like I said, we did go to theinauguration.
So, yeah, we had, we had guyson the roofs, we had drones up
(27:07):
and things like that.
Oh cool it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
It's crazy to me.
It's like maybe I just didn'tnotice or I wasn't old enough to
pay attention, but it's like Idon't remember there being so
many radical people no, doingthings like this, like you had
to watch out for it I don'tthink there was.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I think it's kind of a you know something that's that
we haven't seen before.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Are they trying to do it for fame?
Are they doing it for Again?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
it's crazy, Just I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
When you get somebody in here that might know how to
answer the, I guess you'd haveto.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
The psychologist.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I don't know if you'd want one of them.
We might need you guys standingover there in the corner.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Ask me if you mind coming back and watching this
guy.
Yeah, no, kidding.
Well, chad, I mean really.
What's cool about it to me islike I vision the SWAT team as
like highly trained, like SEALTeam 6 of law enforcement.
Well, I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
That's the way.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
I see it, though, Compared to, you know, just your
standard police officers andyou see, the SWAT team.
These guys are.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
We definitely get a lot more training than a normal
police officer would for sure.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That's a big part of what we do, and situations call
for it, though.
And you know a big part of whatwe do and situations call for
it though.
Yeah, because you don't.
I mean, you never know whatsituation you might be in?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah Right.
So what's a normal day looklike for you guys without a,
without getting a call Like,yeah, so are you training every
single day or you just yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:39):
So there's a lot of logistics behind what we do.
So if we're not, if we're noton call and we're not training,
then we're doing some logisticstuff.
Like we've got a big trainingevent coming up in April with
Oklahoma State Police.
We've kind of befriended eachother and we're working with
each other and training witheach other.
So some of us are going andwe're doing that at Fort Chaffee
in April.
So several of us tomorrow aregoing to drive out to Fort
Chaffee look at the differentranges and get things set up, so
(29:01):
that way you know the day oftraining everything's already
done, especially being acrossthe state like that.
Yeah, we, we do.
We do a lot of that, justanything behind the scenes, you
know we there's a couple of daysa week that we're taking care
of that.
Other than that, if we're noton a call, then we're training.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Thursday night, I think it's.
I don't know how cold it'sgoing to be.
We're going to be at the rangetraining.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Gotcha, oh, it's going to be cold.
It's going to be cold.
How do you kind of, how doesy'all's like actual be here, be
in wherever y'all are located?
How does that schedule, kind ofwork?
As far as like a day-to-day yes, like I mean, is it get in at
eight every day?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
no, we usually set the week up.
We'll set the week up the weekprior, or maybe even just depend
on what's going on like rightin april such a big deal.
We're not going to wait till aweek before, right, you know
we're starting to get stuffready, uh, starting tomorrow.
But yeah, if there's not a lotgoing on the week in advance,
we'll have the week planned outon what we're going to do and
(30:02):
again, it's going to be heavy ontraining unless there's a
warrant service or somethinglike that.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
And with y'all being kind of dispersed around
Arkansas, do y'all meet in oneplace to train or y'all just
kind of?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
group up in different areas.
Yeah, when we train, it'll allbe together, we all train
together, and then every once ina while there'll be somebody
having to do some specializedtraining off somewhere else, but
generally speaking, it's alwaysgoing to be together what, as a
team, needs to be.
Yeah, you know, I'll play teamsports my whole life baseball,
football and it's like when theteam's together and plays good
(30:35):
together, they're unstoppablewell, and that's the one thing
that I think, if you'd ask oneof us, any one of us, what we
enjoy the most, it's the team,the camaraderie, the closeness.
It's like a brotherhood.
It's definitely a brotherhoodfor sure.
I mean we go, you know there'slots of I mean lots of great
(30:56):
times together, and then,anytime you're going into harm's
way with someone else, you knowyou're going to be forming some
pretty special bonds.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
For sure.
Oh, you're absolutely rightabout that, because you're all
risking the same thing together.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
So I'm a little curious on this Thursday night
cold weather training.
What's that going to look like?
Can you speak on?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
that, yeah.
So we're just basically we'regoing to go anytime.
We train at night, we're goingto work with white lights,
flashlights, but we're going togo really heavy with our night
vision training Gotcha.
So that's mainly what we'll bedoing on Thursday night.
We'll meet Thursday during theday, do some day drills and then
we'll just train into theevening.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Gotcha.
So what kind of technologytalking about night vision what
kind of technology do y'all relyon?
You know a lot on thesemissions.
Either it be breaching you knowbreaching stuff, or it be the
gun, the rifle y'all use, likewhat's standardized, like what's
y'all's gear.
Y'all roll in with, yes,everything, everything.
So Like what's y'all's gear.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Y'all roll in with, yes, everything.
So obviously we've got bodyarmor helmets, night vision
goggles, rifles, pistols.
That's all gear that we keep inour vehicles with us at all
times, in case you know we'reright there when something
happens, the explosive breaching.
It stays on a truck.
(32:17):
Most of that stays on a truck.
So we'll have our armoredvehicles that roll out, and then
we've got an equipment truckthat rolls out with us.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
We've got shields that we use a lot.
These are full body shieldsthat stay behind.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, I say they're not full, They'll cover your
head to.
About your waist, I got you.
Yeah, so that obviously thearmor vehicles, I mean just, you
know, standard gear that youthink a SWAT team would run.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
What caliber rifle do y'all run?
Speaker 2 (32:46):
223.
223?
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Heck yeah so.
Yeah, I tell you what them 223sare.
Something else Hog hunting yeah, else hog hunting.
Yeah, you down here there's somany hogs, golly, I mean, you
can't kill enough of them.
Yeah, we run up.
223 is only hog hunt.
You know you, you can run likenight vision or thermal scope,
whatever whenever you're hoghunting.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, and that's crazy technology yeah, we'd
actually looked at some thermallike a little.
It's called a clip-on thatwould go on our night vision
goggles.
But when we, when we lookthrough the thermal and I really
don't know that much about it,y'all probably know more more
about it than I do but wenoticed when someone was
carrying like a rifle you couldsee like the barrel but you
(33:28):
couldn't really necessarily seewhat was in front of him on his
torso like a pistol.
You may not even be able to seeit.
So we're like kind of kind ofblend in mask.
What we were looking at did Now?
I mean, we do use thermal fordifferent reasons, Right, but
you know, as far as like wearingthem on our helmets with night
vision goggles, we opted not todo that.
(33:49):
Just because of the we didn'twant there to be any confusion,
no delay and all right, that's agun.
Yeah, yeah, you know For sure.
What about drones?
Yeah, y'all use drones.
We do use drones.
And if the guys watch thissorry drone team I forgot they
deploy with us too.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
The technology in drones now is crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
We use a lot of drones.
Yeah, we use them on every call.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
When would you say they came in to be in every call
type of team?
How long ago was that, wouldyou say?
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I'm guessing I mean team.
How long ago is that, would yousay?
I'm guessing my, I mean mytimetable is not exactly right,
but I'm guessing four or fiveyears ago, really something like
that, even that recent yeah Igot you?
Yeah, not, we haven't used themforever and they're and they're
.
We probably did use them beforethat, but I know like four or
five years, you know, we've beenusing them on a lot of
different things and they'rejust surveying and kind of
(34:38):
looking.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
They do that.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
So they'll go out before we go and kind of
wherever the structure is, thehouse or whatever kind of give
us an overall view of it.
And then we've actually usedthem in some pretty violent
encounters we've been involvedin, like the drone will go in
and kind of like, all right,this is where the guy's at oh
really, yeah, more than if it'sa violent event, they're
(35:01):
shooting the drone.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yeah, that's happened several times.
Are they ever?
Is it used just for likesurveillance, or can you like
deploy gas or, you know,flashbang?
Speaker 2 (35:13):
There's a new one that we I think, and we I don't
know if they've got it yet butthey can break glass, one that
we I think and we I don't knowif they've got it yet, but that
they can break glass.
But as far as like deployingbangs and gas, there may be that
technology, but that's, wedon't have that Okay.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I know the like the thermal drone stuff that I'm
seeing nowadays.
A lot of people are hog huntingwith them or doing whatever
they're doing with them.
But it's crazy that you can getso high up and see any little
bit of life that's there.
It's crazy that you can get sohigh up and see any little bit
of life.
That's there.
Yeah, I mean just the amount oftime it would save, if you like
find somebody, or they're onthe run or whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, we've used that before too, when our helicopter
just suspected that it was outin the woods armed and the
helicopter crew with the thermalled the team into them.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
That was even a long, that was probably 10 years ago.
So y'all were on the radio oron the phone with the helicopter
guy and they just kind ofsteered y'all in.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yeah, I was on the radio with him.
But with a helicopter that'skind of like.
You got to be careful of thehelicopter too, because if
they're too low you can't heareach other talk or you can't
hear somebody walking.
So you know, there's kind ofsome fine lines there.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
I imagine they got to get out and away, kind of.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, they usually get up pretty high, but those
cameras are so awesome Like theycan really zoom in.
That was crazy.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
I'll see some of the stuff that you know civilians
are able to buy nowadays and I'mlike you know there's no
telling what the military, whatthe you know crazy technology
they have, is capable of doing.
If we have thermal drones,right, definitely Like what is
out there.
Yeah, yeah, that we don't knowabout yeah.
You know, I mean, it's crazy,for sure, it is For sure.
I mean, and has the technologymade it easier, you think, for
(36:53):
you guys to do your job?
Oh, for sure, over the last 10years?
Speaker 2 (36:56):
And when you're talking technology, even as far
as, like, when I got on the team, we didn't have armored
vehicles.
I mean, I wouldn't imagine itnow.
I mean, and there's sometimeswe can't use armored vehicles,
depending on where we're at.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Have you ever had your armored vehicle like
actually shot?
Oh yeah, really yeah, a coupleof times, that's wild.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
It's crazy to think about.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Is there anything you know you could mention on that?
Obviously you don't got to gointo great detail, just kind of
maybe a situation in which thathappened.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I'll just say that another department was getting
shot up, shot at like heavily,like a couple hundred rounds at
them.
They called us in and, sureenough, he started shooting at
us too, yeah, sure enough hestarted shooting at us too, yeah
, and we deployed drones on thatone.
And that was just one of thosepeople that you know we were
talking about earlier that just—Didn't care about anything but
(37:47):
himself.
Nothing matters, didn't care.
Speaker 3 (37:49):
How often is it groups of people that you're
dealing with, versus just a solo?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
No, I would—I mean I sure hate to say never, because
we usually it's just one suspectfor us.
But you know, I would sayalmost always, obviously there's
going to be a few times wherethere's a couple, but not like
groups or anything other than abig warrant service, but then
you know they're spread outacross the town or the city.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
That we're in.
You never go in and catch themall at one spot at one time,
type of deal.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
We've done something like that before.
I'll tell you this one, becauseit doesn't really matter.
It was actually a chickenfighting operation, a chicken
fighting operation.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
That surprised me.
That was surprising.
That's how you find them all inone place, right?
Speaker 2 (38:34):
there.
That's how we did it.
We took the whole group down,so I don't mind talking about
that one.
That's how we did it, reallygood.
Took the whole group down, so Idon't mind talking about that
one.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
That is wild.
I bet you y'all do encountersome things sometimes.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
I was about to say.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Ironic.
It's like wow.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
It's usually like what are people thinking?
Yeah, like why yeah?
Speaker 1 (38:57):
I mean, is that crazy what?
People do with their spare time, you know, yeah, yeah, I guess
there's money to be made.
Somebody's going to try to makeit.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
I guess, no matter what it is.
Yeah, yeah, that was a longtime ago, and we're like what
are we doing here?
Speaker 1 (39:08):
You ever get on calls and then all of a sudden it
just dissolves.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Like it extensive process to get us called out.
To begin with, there's going tobe several people involved in
the decision, so a lot of thetime it's going to be like well,
is it worth, is this call, isit worth the assets that we're
sending the time, the money, andthen every once in a while and
usually the answer is yes If wego, the answer is usually yes.
(39:42):
And then there's been a few.
I remember I rolled up on one.
I'm like ah, that does notsound like that's what happened
to me.
And sure enough, the guy comes.
I didn't even know y'all werehere.
Really, the story that we weretold that got us there wasn't
what happened.
So every once in a while,somebody might you know, get
ahead of themselves Not veryoften at all Because, again,
(40:03):
like it's before it even comesto me, there's going to be three
or four people involved in thestate police.
That, hey, is this something weneed to send the SWAT team on?
Speaker 3 (40:13):
How often is it like you get a call and you know
right from the get go like, OK,this isn't anything, but we've
got to go.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
No, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
I'm thinking of.
I was in middle school and somekid broke a bomb on the
bathroom wall and we evacuatedthe school, brought the SWAT
team in the whole deal.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
But you know there's not a very high risk of that.
You know something like thatactually happening?
Yeah, I mean locally.
I would assume that happens.
You know more often than not.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
But for it to get to y'all, it'd have to be pretty
serious.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
It's got to be pretty vetted Gotcha.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
It's almost and it's one of those deals too.
It's like you never know,though, because if they don't
call you and somebody ends updead, you know, or it costs
somebody's life, you know itwould have been worth sending
them.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
We've always said like there's been calls where
the dude gives up and whatever.
And then the commander there islike we're so sorry, I'm like
dude, we're glad to be here,like we'd rather be here and
nothing happen than somebody wenot be here.
And then somebody gets shot.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
For sure.
Yeah, better be safe than sorry, yeah.
Especially when you're dealingwith people's lives.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
And I guess the closest thing to answer that
question would be like you know,we got an active shooter.
Well, my idea of an activeshooter and somebody else's idea
of an active shooter iscompletely two different things,
and their idea of an activeshooter may be.
Well, they fired off two orthree rounds inside the house.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, that's not an active shooter.
And see we had, That'd besomething we would go to Right.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
But my idea ofwide active shooter emergency.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
So I was just curious on how many of those pretty
obvious false alarms you dealwith Well, and I'll say for the
state police, that happens justfor the guys that are out there
on patrol, you know, assistingthe other departments.
Yeah, because I know when Iworked in Malvern or Hot Spring
County that happened a lot.
Yeah, like, oh, we got thisgoing on, this going on, all
right, I'm headed that way, andthen Turned out to be nothing,
(42:18):
yeah, completely yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
So here not too long ago, well, last year we had a
shooting at the Mad Butcher herein Fordyce and you know he was
just running around the parkinglot shooting people, yeah, so if
he which I know it got handledyou know before obviously more
you know y'all could have cameor things like that.
But would that have been asituation where, say, it didn't
(42:40):
get handled and he was hunkeredin the parking lot or he got
back in a building and was justkind of hunkered in shooting?
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Would you of hunkered in shooting?
Would you have showed up forthat?
Speaker 3 (42:51):
oh, we definitely would yeah, for sure would have
came to that.
Yeah, did you guys get a call?
Speaker 1 (42:53):
on that or it was over before I even knew about it
.
It's kind of quick.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, how well I mean are there?
Is it?
Pretty often like prettysignificant stuff like that goes
down and y'all I mean it's bang, bang and y'all don't even get
a chance to come in and dealwith it oh no, I wouldn't say so
.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
I mean that you know.
Obviously that's a terrible,terrible thing that happened, um
, but though, I mean, thosethings do happen, obviously, but
that's not generally speaking.
That doesn't happen very often,gotcha, you know, okay, usually
the call we're getting is it'salready happened.
Police has a perimeter on it,like would have been the same.
(43:32):
You know, right, if they didn'tyou know they didn't take care
of it as quick as they did, thenthat would be something.
Yeah, we got a security.
You know a perimeter.
We need you guys to come in,and you know, gotcha, Take care
of it.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
And I guess I have one more question as far as
y'all getting the call does itcome from the same number or do
y'all get calls?
So that's a good question,because I would think if you're
just getting random calls andit's not controlled before you,
you would have to then figureout if it's a real caller or you
know things like that.
So I guess the number comesfrom.
The call comes from one numberto you so I mean that's a good
(44:08):
question.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
So generally, before we get the call, I'll already
know about it, because my, mymajor's contacted me.
I've texted the guy say heyguys, we're probably going to
roll.
So everybody's right, because,again, a lot of times it's 10
o'clock at night, yeah, yeah.
So anyways, um, they'll knowahead of time.
We give guys time to get get up, get moving, get a plan on how
we're going to get the vehiclesthere and then so a call comes
(44:32):
in on a like a.
We have a kind of like an, acall, a call alert system.
So if you know that, numbersbeing you know, if you get a
call from this number.
You know that, you know.
You know, you know, with a textand all that everybody, unless
they were asleep, they prettymuch already know that.
You know we're rolling onsomething Every once in a while.
(44:54):
You know one of the guys I haveto call a guy's wife.
Hey, wake so-and-so up, we'refixing to roll out.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I imagine, yeah, I'd probably be that guy if I was.
Speaker 1 (45:02):
You'd both be new guys, yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Yeah, so for you individually, how do you, when
you're in the truck on the waythere, how do you kind of
prepare yourself like gettingthat mindset, because I'm sure
it's?
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I mean, so that's usually the worst part of it all
, like my mind's going a milliondifferent places at once.
And, and then, yeah, you're justlike all right, what if, what
if?
And then, honestly, that'susually where all my concerns
are at.
Every once in a while I canremember being concerned on a
call, but usually when you geton the call you know there's a
lot of tasks and a lot of thingsto focus on.
(45:37):
So you know at that point youknow you got a job to do, so you
just got to perform.
For sure, each individual hasto perform, but, yeah, generally
speaking, the call is the rightup.
There is usually the worst.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Suspenseful yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
That's what.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I figured Because I mean, especially when you, as
the commander or a team leader,you know you've got all these
guys, that you know you've gotto try to do the best job, you
can make the right decisions toget them back home For sure and
innocent people I mean, and eventhe suspect, for that matter.
You know, obviously you know ifwe can get it to be a
(46:15):
nonviolent outcome, that's whatwe want, but you know that's not
always the case, right?
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Do you ever?
Do you ever struggle with theresponsibility?
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Like does it ever when I say struggle, I don't
mean like Is it way on you?
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Yeah, is it ever way on you.
Yeah, it's definitely.
Yeah, it's a heavy weightbecause there's a lot of
responsibility there and it'snot just on me, you know.
Obviously it's on all of us asthe group, where I mean even the
youngest team member.
We're like hey, you know, ifyou, I tell them.
If you see me messing.
This is not the answer to yourquestion, but if you see me
(46:48):
messing up, you need to tell me,even if it's mundane tasks at
training or something.
I'm like hold ourselvesaccountable.
I don't care who you are, and Itell them this all the time.
We're all on probation everyone of us.
So I've been on the team longerthan all y'all and I'm just.
You know, if I, if I, get toscrewing up and making a bunch
(47:10):
of mistakes, and especially youknow what we'll see is if, if a
guy has been around too long inhis head, just not in it anymore
, it's obvious I don't want tobe that guy and I don't want
anybody on the team to be thatguy, cause that's you know,
obviously I'm not going to saythat's what gets people killed,
but that's definitely going tohurt your chances of having a
successful mission.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Do you see an average age between the guys, For
example?
Is there a life expectancy ofit?
Like an NFL player, you're notgoing to play that long.
You know what I mean.
What does that age group looklike?
Speaker 2 (47:44):
Well, I would say the average age of the guy on the
team probably about probablyearly 30s.
And then the assistant teamcommanders kind of told the guys
it's like we expect everybodyto be here.
You know, if you, if you'rehere 10 years, you had a good
career.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
And you know, it just depends on the person.
Some people are more driven forit.
Some people you know I had areally close friend that just
got off the team.
You know he's he's got a lot, alot of other responsibilities
in the department.
Kids are growing up and he, youknow he he decided it was time
for him to move on.
(48:19):
Yeah, just, each individual isjust different.
But what we won't accept is ishalf ass, right, we're not going
to accept that.
Now.
We all make mistakes and we allhave little slumps, and you
know, we understand that.
But if you, if you're in aslump, you better, you need to
get yourself out of it.
Yeah, or let us help you getout of it.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
And if you can't get out of it, then do you think a
lot of that's mental, likethey're just mentally being a
slump um oh yeah, you know, justyeah, a lot of it's family.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
You know some of it's work related.
You know, other than SWAT it'susually not SWAT related.
You know some of the guys onthe team have two different jobs
.
Some of us are SWAT and thensome other guys have other
duties too, so those otherduties can weigh heavy on
somebody.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
That makes sense.
Now everything adds up, youknow, like mental clarity going
into those situations.
It's got to be key it is andconfidence too.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
I imagine, oh yeah, that's a real big deal.
And then, yeah, I mean, andthen you also have to deal with
fatigue, because it, you know,we're usually operational.
Like I said, if we get calledat 10, you know it's usually
most of us are sleeping at thatpoint.
Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah, you've got to wake up and get ready fast.
Yeah, I mean y'all bump heavymetal or anything like that on
the way I love heavy metal.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Y'all got a walk-up song.
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
What's the walk-up song?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (49:41):
You know, I would imagine we would have a walk-up
song.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
I played ACDC this morning.
Yeah, like five minutes out Onenight you were.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
ACDC or Metallica, every once in a while, back and
flat.
That's sweet, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
That's cool man.
Yeah, they make fun of me forheavy metal, Do they?
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (49:54):
You got to get the mind right.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
Yeah, there you go you got to get the mind right.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Well, chad, it was a pleasure.
Thank you for coming today.
And you know a lot more goesinto it.
People think you know you guysare training for this.
Every day People see the SWATteam roll in and they know
they're trained, they knowthey're, you know, prepared for
the job.
But, like what actually goesinto it, it's all kind of behind
the curtains.
You know you don't really seethat.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yeah, definitely a lot of behind the scenes stuff.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
And just knowing that y'all put in all the work and
the conditioning and everythingto be able to handle the
situations that pop up, you knowmakes everybody feel better
Knowing that there's a group ofguys that are going to come in
and take care of it Well andI'll.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
I'll say this too you know, we couldn't do it without
the support of the state police, our bosses, like they really,
really support us a lot and it'sjust.
It's been awesome working,working for them.
And then again, you know, Iwould.
I wouldn't be right if I didn'tsay something about our wives
that support us because, oh yeah, that's most important I'm
(50:56):
being serious, like without them, it just it wouldn't work.
So you know, we we reallyappreciate our bosses and we
appreciate our wives supportingwhat we do, which is still your
boss, we just appreciate our athome, we just appreciate our
bosses.
Yeah, here you go.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Well, I think that wraps this up.
Guys, make sure you leave alike, subscribe, hit the bell
for notifications and check outour other videos that are
everywhere.
Catch you on the next one.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com