SWAT teams from counties across the region came to Lubbock on Monday for three days of tactical training taught by the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team.
Since LCSO is a regional SWAT team, they said they used this opportunity to teach the region about safe tactical room entries.
“It is not just safety for the officers, but its safety for the suspects involved, anybody that might be in the house and the community at large,” said Matthew Coggins, a lieutenant with Canyon Police Department.
LCSO responded to 10 call outs in 2018, and were utilized 100 times for other issues.
The course is 30 hours spread over the course of three days.
“A lot of these guys have been running their own search warrants inside their own cities with a limited knowledge of how to do that, so what we are trying to gear them with is if we are trying to conduct our own search warrants in their local cities, how to safely do that,” said Joshua Bartlett, the assistant commander for the LCSO SWAT team.
The process of running a safe search warrant operation included clearing buildings, moving with the proper speed and diligence, taking suspects into custody, and providing proper medical care, said Bartlett.
Typically, the operations requiring SWAT are high risk, according to Bartlett, meaning this training is important for the safety of everyone involved.
“The biggest thing is officer safety for these guys, we also preach a lot on what we call target discrimination so that’s being able to identify threats,” Bartlett said.
The counties who participated included Seminole, Parmer, Canyon, Border, Hutchinson, Lamesa, Cochran, Hereford, Ralls, Hardeman, Childers P.D., Cottle and Plainview.
Coggins said his department came to the training for the past four years it was held.
“A lot of times it’s for minimal cost to us, so really it is just to come down here, stay, and pursue some high quality training and have officers ready to do their job safely in canyon,” Coggins said.
The departments also learned how to collaborate effectively, in case they ever need to assist each other.
“We want to be able to reach out to these teams in our region and work with these guys,” said Bartlett.
