Posted: 1/24/2005 6:14:17 AM EDT
|
News Update SWAT chaos details emerge By Mark Flatten, Tribune Deputy Sean Pearce lay in the east Mesa street with a bullet in his gut. His head rested on the knee of deputy Lew Argetsinger, a fellow member of the Maricopa County sheriff’s SWAT team whose right hand had been shattered by a bullet from the same gunman’s pistol. In the month before the Dec. 16 raid, the SWAT team’s top commanders, both experienced SWAT veterans, had been replaced without explanation. Training time had been cut. Experienced deputies who normally provided close-quarters backup on tactical operations were replaced with inexperienced officers with virtually no training. Pre-raid planning had been rushed because SWAT team members had been scattered throughout the county on routine patrol duties. Now, both of the wounded deputies say the sudden changes in the SWAT team contributed to the problems that occurred when they served the search warrant relating to a murder case out of Pinal County. In separate interviews Thursday with the Tribune, Pearce and Argetsinger said the SWAT team shake-up and other changes relating to the unit raised the danger by severely limiting their options in handling the warrant. They said they were left with little choice but to pursue a direct assault that went terribly awry when the man inside the trailer opened fire with a 9 mm handgun. Neither Pearce nor Argetsinger directly blame their new commanders for what transpired inside the single-wide mobile home early in the morning of Dec. 16. It was the gunman who decided to open fire, they say. "It absolutely is an officer safety issue," said Pearce, a Mesa resident. "To me the bigger concern is the public safety issue. The neighbors around this house where we served the search warrant are at risk if we can’t perform properly and be proficient in our job, meaning we can’t contain that and not allow this guy to escape." Argetsinger, who lives in the West Valley, also cited top commanders’ hostility toward the SWAT team as causing the disarray that put the deputies’ lives at greater risk. "Did they cause the shooting? No. Absolutely not," Argetsinger said. "But they didn’t help us succeed in there. They didn’t offer the support that we normally would have gotten. Nobody is saying it was their fault. What we’re saying is they didn’t allow us to operate at our peak performance either. I know they didn’t help us. They hurt us." Both of the deputies said they expect retaliation for discussing their concerns with the Tribune. But they said they agreed to talk because they believe Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reorganization of the SWAT team and other changes are putting the lives of deputies and the public at greater risk. The day after the two men spoke to the Tribune, the sheriff’s office launched an internal investigation of the SWAT team and barred its officers from discussing the internal changes made to the unit. The Tribune was told of the investigation by a lawyer hired by a police union. Larry Black, chief of enforcement for the sheriff’s office, confirmed the team is being investigated, but said he could not provide details. Black did say the investigation is unrelated to the shooting. Black rejected any notion that management decisions involving the SWAT team compromised the safety of its officers. The tactical planning for the search warrant was done by experienced SWAT officers, Black said. While the raid was the first assignment for members of the new support team, there also were six experienced members from the old squad in place as well, he said. "It’s the same group of people that made entry into the house that had done it several times before," Black said. "They planned it three days in advance. They had a chance to do all the things they normally do. There is nothing that could have been different than what happened." The Tribune attempted to separately contact Arpaio and the new SWAT commanders, Capt. Joel Fox and Lt. Dave Trombi. Black said he would be the only one answering questions about the SWAT team. SHAKE-UP Rumors that there was going to be a shake-up in the SWAT team began almost immediately after Arpaio was re-elected Nov. 2. Members of the unit were told in early November by their former commanders, Capt. Phillip Babb and Lt. Michael Mitchell, that they were going to be replaced by Trombi and Fox. Fox had served as a part-time SWAT officer in the 1990s. Trombi, who had been the sheriff ’s public information officer, had no experience on the team. Also, members of the K-9 unit, who had long provided the "containment team" — making sure suspects don’t escape when SWAT officers enter a building — were going to be replaced by deputies in Squad Five, a unit of officers without regular beats who filled in on different patrol sectors throughout the county. The K-9 officers had SWAT training themselves, and also trained closely with the tactical team, Pearce and Argetsinger said. Their expertise provided better protection for the entry team and allowed SWAT officers to concentrate on what was happening inside. A departmentwide shakeup involving almost 300 officers took effect Nov. 22. About a week later, Fox met with members of the SWAT team and laid out the new directives. Pearce said it was an "ugly" meeting in which Fox was confrontational. According to Pearce, Fox told SWAT team members they would be given regular patrol assignments because the department’s new priority was to reduce response times. Their training time would be cut from two days per week to two days per month. The National Tactical Officers Association recommends that a full-time SWAT team spends 25 percent of its time training. Pearce said SWAT officers responded that two training days a month were not enough to maintain the proficiency of the unit, especially because they also had to train for specialty assignments, including methamphetamine lab raids and bomb disposal. "We brought these issues up to Fox and he just continued to tell us how training wa sn’t important," said Pearce, who is a certified bomb technician. "On this incident where we had two of our guys hurt, I think that our training allowed us to get out of that situation without having anybody else injured. You don’t rise to the occasion in a situation like that. You fall back on your training. If you train properly then you are going to react properly." CONTINUED TURMOIL On Dec. 1, the new patrol assignments became effective. Argetsinger began working in New River. Pea rce wa s assigned to Sun City, but as the senior deputy on the SWAT team he had administrative duties to wrap up before he began patrol. He also was responsible for helping the SWAT team’s sergeant, Todd Hoggatt, scout locations where future search warrants were to be served. Both Pearce and Argetsinger said no one on the SWAT team objected to being assigned patrol duties. Even before the shake-up, SWAT officers would frequently go out on patrol when they had completed their weekly training and had no other assignments; they just didn’t want to lose training time because of patrol, they said. On Dec. 13, the SWAT team got word that it would be serving the search warrant in east Mesa. The following morning, Pearce and Hoggatt did surveillance on the home and began developing their tactical plan. Pearce said it was clear early on that their options were limited. The unit was understaffed, Pearce said. While the team originally had two sergeants, one had been transferred and not replaced. Two deputies were out of town, and another was on light duty because of an injury. A fourth was off on family medical leave. That left six members of the team to serve what was deemed a high-risk warrant, Pearce said. More troubling was the containment team issue, Pearce and Argetsinger said. The Mesa warrant was to be the first tactical assignment for the new men from Squad Five, who had undergone only five hours of training, including three hours of basic pistol training, they said. "None of us was willing to say we trusted any of those guys with three hours of pistol training," Argetsinger said. The team also did not have the opportunity to go over the assault plan as thoroughly as they normally would, according to Pearce and Argetsinger. Some members of the team were in distant parts of the county on patrol the night before the raid. Others, including Pearce, were working a DUI detail. Pearce said that he raised his concerns with Trombi when they first met to go over the tactical plan. "I specifically told Trombi as I pointed to the ops (operations) plan, ‘We are doing a homicide search warrant with six guys. That’s unacceptable and it’s unsafe,’ " Pearce said. Ultimately, the deputy on family leave was called in, making him the seventh man on the team. LIMITED OPTIONS On the morning of Dec. 16, the full SWAT team met at 5 a.m. to go over the tactical plan. Pearce had worked the DUI detail until about 2 a.m. The planning process, which might normally take hours, was done hurriedly in a remote corner of a shopping center not far from the neighborhood of tightly-packed mobile homes on unincorporated county land in east Mesa. The warrant was to be served at 6:30 a.m. From the beginning things did not go well. The deadbolt on the door was strong, so it took longer than it should have to break through, Pearce said. When the door finally did pop open, SWAT team members called out that they were sheriff’s deputies with a search warrant, both in English and Spanish, and stormed inside. Both Pearce and Argetsinger declined to discuss the shooting itself since it is still under investigation. But a narrative report released Friday by the sheriff’s office provides details of what went on inside the trailer. Pearce broke left upon entering the trailer, followed by deputy Rod Jackson and Argetsinger. The other members of the team went to the right to secure the back of the mobile home. A curtain covered a doorway that separated the kitchen, where the deputies entered, from the living room. As Pearce started to pull back the curtain, gunfire erupted from a bathroom at the far side of the living room. The first slug smacked Pearce in his body armor. The second slipped under the ballistic vest and went into his abdomen. Pearce dropped, calling out that he was hit. Jackson stepped over him, shielding the fallen officer while returning fire, according to the report. Jackson also was hit, but his body armor stopped the bullet. As Argetsinger was raising his weapon, a bullet hit him in the hand and he dropped his assault rifle. Argetsinger tried to pull his pistol with his left hand, but was unable to hold it. He then grabbed Pearce and began dragging him out of the trailer. Jackson saw the suspect duck behind a wall in the bathroom and opened fire, hitting the gunman through the wall, according to the report. Jorge Luis Guerra Vargas was taken into custody with bullet wounds to his face and arm. He has since been indicted on seven counts of aggravated assault. CHAOTIC SCENE Argetsinger and another deputy dragged Pearce out of the mobile home and into a driveway. Later, they moved him to a safer position in the street. Both Pearce and Argetsinger described the scene outside as chaotic, a sharp contrast to what had happened inside the trailer, where SWAT team members responded just as they had practiced in "officer down" drills during training. "You get outside and it’s total chaos," Argetsinger said. "We are left bleeding in the street for way longer than we should have been. We’re both sitting there bleeding, and we’re kind of laughing — ain’t this a sight?" No one had notified Rural/ Metro Fire Department that the deputies would be serving a high-risk warrant in the area before the raid, something Pearce said is normally handled by the lieutenant in charge of the SWAT team, in this case Trombi. Rural/Metro was first notified of the shooting at 6:38 a.m. and arrived on scene about 6:45 a.m, according to Alison Cooper, spokeswoman for the fire department. Pearce said Trombi knelt beside him on the ground and told the wounded man everything would be all right. Pearce recalls he looked up and told Trombi: "Now do you want to talk to me about the lack of training?" Both Pearce and Argetsinger were flown to Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix. As she stood in the hospital corridor, Pearce’s wife, Melissa, was aware of the changes being made in the SWAT unit, and the stress that had put on her husband and other members of the team. She told the Tribune on Thursday that she took no comfort when Arpaio, surrounded by his top administrators, told her he was sorry about her husband. "I understand he has to be there and I’m fine with that," Melissa Pearce said. "But I didn’t want to be around him." A nurse overheard Melissa Pearce say she didn’t want to be around the sheriff and moved her to another waiting room. The sheriff and his chief deputy, David Hendershott, followed them. The nurse moved the family again, this time to an empty patient’s room. Again, Arpaio and Hendershott tried to follow. "I’m thinking, ‘Can they not get a clue?’ " Melissa Pearce said. "I stood up and I said, ‘We got this private room so we don’t have to see people from the sheriff’s office like you.’ " Finally, Arpaio and Hendershott left, she said. CONCERNS REMAIN Both Pearce and Argetsinger face long recoveries. Argetsinger may never be able to work as a law enforcement officer again. Both men say they worry that disbanding the experienced SWAT team, especially in the abrupt manner it was done, will mean that the lives of deputies and the public will be at risk. "It’s not a gamble that I think we can afford to take," Pearce said. "You are putting deputies at risk because they feel an obligation to resolve things without a tactical unit. You put the public at risk because these guys don’t have the equipment or training to work that kind of a situation, and the people that were trained and did have the equipment were sent to other assignments." |
|
Backstory Report: Maricopa County sheriff disbands SWAT team MESA, Ariz. The Maricopa County Sheriff has disbanded the department's SWAT team. The Tribune reports the SWAT team will be rebuilt with officers who will also perform patrol duties. In the interim, Sheriff Joe Arpaio says they'll rely on the D-P-S and other local police agencies that have active SWAT teams to respond to incidents like barricades or hostage situations. The Tribune reports in the weeks before a December raid in Mesa when two SWAT team members were wounded, the unit's top two commanders had been reassigned. Arpaio says the transfers are part of a routine reorganization of his office. The former head of the SWAT team says disbanding it robs the agency of valuable expertise and experience that's used in training new members. Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. |
With trailers it's not so much that the locks are strong, it's that the doors open outward, and are weak. So you cant kick them in, you have to pry them open. Often the pry bar just rips through the aluminum door, you end up cutting the damn thing open like a sardine can. |
|
I've always stated that IF you are going to have a SWAT team they need to be superbly trained and equipt. Only departments that can afford such a commitment and have demonstrated a need should have them. That being said, this is the same guy with a 155mm howitzer right? So why can't he make the commitment to a first class team? The story says these were experience SWAT officers who conducted the raid. I can't see where cutting training over a course of two months and installing two new commanders would degrade the performance of the team to a poor state at this time, maybe six months or a year from now. Definitely over the course of time such a reduction in training would be detrimental, but two months? I'd like to know more about how they severly limited their options in handling the warrant. Seems to me like there is some politics going on on both sides. |
|
Well, I made it over from the other thread. Thanks for the linky to this one, AR15fan. My thoughts? Here goes:
I have a ? about this: Did the guy never leave the trailer? Was waiting him out not an option (and why)? They were serving a homicide-related search warrant, not a drug-related one, so him flushing product wasn't an issue. Mind you, I'm actually/honestly asking a ? here - not trying to Monday morning quarterback this. This is [obviously] not my area of expertise, so I'm asking ppl more likely to know than myself.
Wow. Those wagons were circled pretty quickly.
Back to my professional athlete analogy I made in the other thread: Did these guys have time to "gel"? If not, I'll compare it to the Pro-Bowl in football or the All-Star game in the NBA. Especially the All-Star game in the NBA. It's a fucking circus. Are these guys pros? Yes. So why can't they play as a team to save their lives? Because they're not. A team, that is. And thank God, lives aren't actually on the line. Not exactly the case for you folks.
Somehow I doubt this.
I'll just repost basically what I said in the other thread: Teachers and LEOs both hold lives in their hands every day (albeit in different ways). That's what makes their jobs so important. I'd rather the tax dollars I do pay go to people like them than to fund some post-post-post-grad fuckup's study of the sexual response in female hummingbirds or some other such nonsense. I don't agree with giving the $$$$ carte blanche, though. I'd much rather tax dollars went to training and other important shit. What good is the latest widget if you haven't spent a "sufficient" amount of time training with it? Fox slashing SWAT's training time was stupid, to say the least. The teacher analogy ends here, and we pick up with more of a professional athlete analogy. Very few, if any, pro athletes only train two days per month and expect to remain competitive/proficient. And they play a fucking game for a living..........
There, fixed it for him.
Up until the wee hours the night before the big game/exam. Not too bright (not that it was his choice). Gee, I still can't see how they didn't perform flawlessly.  My educational background is business. Management, to be more specific. Every profession's outlook on the world concretes their place at the top of the food chain. Mine is no different. Early on, one of my mentors schooled me in this: "The value-added function of management is coordination." I don't think their brass coordinated much of anything very well. Those are just my thoughts, though. Oh, and why was he working a DUI detail the night before the big game if the whole reason for the retasking of SWAT (according to Fox) was to reduce response times? How does a DUI detail further the [new] mission or priority of the department? That ain't right.
By far the best line of the story. And the journalist (Mark Flatten) didn't even write it. Classic.
They have a clue, Ms. Pearce. It's telling them no try and make nice with the wifey of Officer Down so they can hopefully contain this "situation" before it gets any more unpleasant for them. Remember, Arpaio's a politician (regardless of whether he wears a badge). He knows what appearances are going for these days. Jake. |
AR15fan, I took Pthfndr's labelling of the SWAT as a No-Knock Team as somewhat facetious. I don't want to speak for him, but the way I read it was more of a poke-in-the-ribs comment on everyone who [mistakenly] thinks that no-knocks are all SWAT teams do. Jake. |
|
BTW, AR15fan. Even if I didn't already know you were po-po, I could figure it out real quick: You didn't sensationalize the thread title. Any of the usual suspects would have started it, and it would've read:
Note that the only difference would be in the addition of exclamation marks. Or they might have also added something like: "CONSTITUTION OUT THE WINDOW!!!!!" |
"The first slug smacked Pearce in his body armor. The second slipped under the ballistic vest and went into his abdomen. As Argetsinger was raising his weapon, a bullet hit him in the hand and he dropped his assault rifle." |
 Smart man
|
|
Updated: January 27th, 2005 01:29:25 PM Arizona Sheriff's Office May Miss Out On Federal Grant Funds With SWAT Team Now Disbanded Associated Press MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- With its SWAT team disbanded, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office could lose out on all or part of a $350,000 federal Homeland Security grant. The federal money is to help fund police and firefighters, who would be the first at the scene in the event of a terrorist attack. Even without a SWAT team, the sheriff's office says it has an emergency response unit that would be called in to assist in the event of a terror attack. Sheriff Joe Arpaio abruptly disbanded the SWAT team last month, saying it was part of a routine reorganization of his office. The $350,000 federal grant is available through the Department of Homeland Security's Urban Area Security Initiative, which was established to help local agencies acquire equipment and training to respond to terrorism. Those grants are meant to enhance existing capabilities of local agencies such as police and fire departments - not to pay for training new teams, said Mark Howard, Arizona's homeland security grants administrator. |
|
There has to be more to this story. Maybe the good sheriff is going to disband this team and create on in his own image? Although, this is a good example of those grants I talked about earlier. OK so it's a little bit more than most grants agencies get, ok ALOT more. |
I guess "routine reorgs" routinely happen after quote/unquote "swat raid gone bad"........... 
Like the cyber-clones Ah-nuld spoke about on Conan O'Brien recently. He'll finish his speech with: <ahnuld>It's clonely at the top.</ahnuld> |