Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
SWAT team
It went up Mill Street and turned into the dark lane behind the Colfax Post Office.
Gray-black in color, the all-armored steel “Peacekeeper” vehicle carried 13 men standing on an iron bar on either side carrying AR-15 rifles.
They stopped behind Columbia Bank. The camouflaged group jumped off the rails in silence and marched in a line, guns pointed from their shoulders.
Inside the bank, they didn’t know what they would face other than a hostage situation. Their arrival was the first of three exercises conducted at the bank for the Whitman County Regional S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons and Tactics) team the night of Jan. 16.
A group chosen for their skills, psychological makeup and physical condition, the team entered the Colfax bank for scenarios including a janitor as hostage, hostage-takers getting a pizza delivered during a long standoff and a final scenario of a hostage in an office on the second floor.
Soon after the “Peacekeeper” arrived, an Ackerman Heating and Air van pulled up to an apartment building also behind the bank. A man stepped out and S.W.A.T Sniper Team Leader Jim Pelissier walked up to him, wearing a yellow “Sheriff” vest.
He introduced himself and told a surprised Matt Watson of the training exercise underway.
“Oh man,” said Watson. “Thank you. Otherwise I would’ve been calling you asking what the h—- was going on.”
Inside the bank, playing the role of the hostage-takers were two part-time volunteer deputies who are soon to go to the police academy. The hostage was played by Connor Pelissier, 14, Jim’s son.
“What kind of pizza are we getting?” asked Connor with a smile, playing the role, before the exercise in which the hostage takers were to receive food during the standoff.
When the S.W.A.T. members came into the building, they walked in a line through a hallway. Once inside the main lobby, they acted quickly.
“We only go in as a last resort or if there’s active shooting going on,” said Pelissier. “They enter the building and find the crisis site. So the training was a last-resort scenario. They’d neutralize the hostage taker, then clear the entire building.”
Afterward, the team convened in the lobby to go over the mission.
“We evaluated on what happened and what we thought we could do better,” Pelissier said. “It’s kind of a constant learning, trial and error when we train.”
On the third exercise of the night, a hostage was held on the bank’s second floor.
The S.W.A.T. members moved through the bank room by room and crept up the darkened stairs, rifles pointed up to the lighted hallway above.
They inched through the narrow hall, past Garfield comics taped on an office door and file cabinets and extra computer monitors against the opposite wall. Pelissier walked along with them.
“Officer down! Man down,” he suddenly called out, tapping one S.W.A.T. member on the shoulder near the end of the hallway, where a suspect was hiding. The team reacted quickly.
The medic engaged, as he and two others pulled the downed man into a stairwell and outside of the bank.
They treated him next to the Peacekeeper which was originally built for the military. It has an open area in back, two seats up front and a dashboard that looks like an early 1980s Dodge one-ton truck.
While the medic takes the lead in the case of a wounded officer, the whole team is trained in basic combat medicine so they can help each other.
“Also for when a (S.W.A.T. member) might shoot a bad guy, he’s usually the first to administer first aid,” Pelissier said.
All told, the training at the bank was welcome, said manager Kathy Wride, who played a hostage in the first scenario.
“I thought it was awesome,” she said. “It makes me more comfortable that they know the layout of our building and where our people are, because we’ve got some empty offices. It just kind of gives peace of mind if, God forbid, something happens. I’m just glad they’re being proactive.”
After Wride’s participation in the first exercise, she remained on hand. Back in her office on the first floor, she got some work done, typing away at a computer while three S.W.A.T. officers crept by in the second scenario, 10 feet away from her, gun-sights searching.
The officers are members of the region’s current S.W.A.T. team, consisting of six men from the Whitman County Sheriff’s Office, including five main operators and the medic. There are four officers from the WSU Police Department and two from the Pullman Police Department.
The team gets an estimated two to four calls per year, said Pelissier, a majority of them for assistance on high-risk search warrants as well as barricaded, suicidal subjects.
Most of the team reports for each call, with some not able to due to being out of the area at the time.
“We expect to have 11 or 12 show up on each call,” Pelissier said.
A S.W.A.T. member is chosen by the respective agency they work for through an application process.
“Ultimately it’s up to the sheriff,” said Pelissier, who joined in his second year with the Colfax Police Department.
The team is commanded by Rob Macy of the WSU Police Department with four team leaders beneath him. One is Pelissier, a sniper team leader.
The four snipers train at a police range in Pullman and in fields around the county, shooting .308 caliber Remington rifles at targets such as balloons, paper and steel items, some moving, some not.
The State of Washington requires a S.W.A.T. sniper to be proficient from 300 yards away, while Pelissier suggests that’s not enough.
“We train our snipers to be able to shoot at least 500,” he said. “Out here, we’re not like a city where 300 yards is a long ways. With the open spaces, we may have to engage targets at farther distances.”
In regular calls, such as in the exercises at Columbia Bank, and later that night at Rosauer’s grocery store in Colfax and the movie theater in Pullman, the snipers carry the AR-15 rifles. In addition, all S.W.A.T. officers wear armor strong enough to stop rifle rounds, carry a handgun and extra ammunition, a ballistic helmet and a flash-bang diversionary device, which creates a bright light and loud noise after a fuse is pulled. In addition, each officer is issued a gas mask and eye protection.
The camouflage they wear varies from light to dark, along with a solid-green option.
“If we’re in wheatfields, we’ll wear the lighter camouflage,” said Pelissier.
Last Thursday, after the Columbia Bank exercises, it was off to a dinner break before moving on to Rosauers then to Pullman.
Some guys went to Taco Time, others to Subway, said Pelissier. They left their armor, helmets and rifles in their cars.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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