Article published June 11, 2009

SWAT Competition held in Duncan

By Jay King, jking@hometown-news.com

With two members of the sheriff's SWAT team helping round out their ranks, the four members of the team from Trinidad and Tobago volley fire their shotguns in an exercise designed to see how well a team can coordinate their actions when facing an imminent threat.

Some of the nation's most elite law enforcement units converged on Spartanburg County this past weekend for the 16th Annual Southeastern SWAT competition sponsored by the Spartanburg County Detention Center and the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office.

The competition gives the Special Weapons and Tactics teams an opportunity to both show off their skills and compare notes with similar units from other departments from across the country. This year's event also had teams participating for the first time from the Army (Ft. Jackson in Columbia) and an international team from the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, according to one of the event's organizers, Capt. Randy Hollifield, head of special services for the sheriff's office.

Competitions were staged in events like negotiating an obstacle course, marksmanship, hostage rescue and a new event designed to confront each team with a variety of scenarios they had to successfullly negotiate conducted by personnel from North American Rescue Inc., in Greenville.

Of the 13 teams to compete, the Spartanburg Public Safety Department was the only team from Spartanburg County to take an active part in the competition. Also, some members of the sheriff's office SWAT team helped fill out the needed complement for the four members of the team from Trinidad and Tobago.

Peter Nock, one of the members of the team from the two-island Caribbean nation, said that as a fairly new team, he and his fellow officers could not have asked for a more hospitable welcome or for a more enthusiastic group of peers willing to share knowledge and forge new friendships.

With members of the local law enforcement community acting as role players in the hostage rescue scenario, members of the Raleigh, NC Police Department SWAT team secure the release of a hostage while dealing with a "hostile" threat. The event took place inside the old Pacific mill in Lyman.		Taking part in one of the courses designed to throw a number of different challenges at each team, members of the Spartanburg Public Safety SWAT team negotiate an obstacle before moving on to the next challenge. This event was staged and run by personnel of North American Rescue Inc.

Fellow team member Brian Caruth said that one of the things they had learned from the competition is the necessity to add more obstacle course work to their training regimen. He also said that adding more emphasis on physical conditioning would help the team do its job.

Another team member, Andrew Williams, said that competitions and events like Southeastern SWAT helped teams build tighter relationships that improved the units' ability to perform their functions and to know that they can count on their fellow teams members.

The final team member, Anthony Alexander, said this event will be a huge help to the fledgling team which has been organized for a little over two months.

"We are building and this is going to help us a lot," he said.

Caruth added that thanks in part to the warm welcome as well as the valuable lessons learned, the team plans to make this an annual event.

the other first-time team, a mostly military unit from Ft. Jackson in Columbia, was equally impressed by the level of professionalism and challenge built into the competition and the level of camaraderie among the various teams competing.

Sgt. Willy Phoenix, the non-commissioned officer in charge of the team, said that both the challenging nature of the competition's events and the level of cooperation between the teams thoroughly impressed him and his fellow team members.

"This was well-planned," Phoenix said. "They run a class act down here."

Fellow team member Lionel Brown said that he was glad to see so many families at the event and that this contributed to the overall feeling that every officer there, no matter from which agency, all belonged to one team.

"Everybody here seems like one great big family," Brown said.

He and his fellow teammates said they will take away important lessons in tactics, different types of equipment that are being used by other agencies and, perhoaps most importantly of all, a long list of new contacts and fellow SWAT operators from around the country.

Even though there was a great deal of camaraderie and sharing of information, the event was still a competition. Coming in at first place was the team from the Athens-Clarke PD (Georgia), with second place going to the Raleigh (NC) PD and third to the Harrisonburg (Virginia) PD.

In addition to being sponsored by the Spartanburg County Detention Center and the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office, the 16th Annual Southeastern SWAT competition was made possible by contributions and assistance from Spartanburg County Chaplains, Spartanburg County EMS, North American Rescue Inc., Designlab, Ken Toney and the Flounder Fish Camp, Spartanburg County Emergency Preparedness, Lyman Warehouse LLC., Pete Ferguson, Leon Collins, and Terry Watt.