SWAT school at the Orange County Fire Training Center
NEW HAMPTON – Twelve police officers from jurisdictions across the region Friday completed their final tactical training scenario for the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services Basic SWAT school hosted for the third time by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
The four-week program trained officers in a number of areas including firearms, hostage rescue, high-risk warrant service, scout missions, barricade subject resolution and a number of paperwork protocols.
This round’s basic SWAT school consisted of officers from the Orange and Sullivan County Sheriff’s Offices, Kingston and Peekskill City Police Departments, Saugerties and West Nyack Police Department.
Orange County Sheriff Carl DuBois said seeing the young officers succeed is a matter of great pride for him as a veteran officer. To DuBois, it’s a display of the police mentality at its finest.
“Coming here is just part of the natural progression in police work, where you come to something like this and you know that they’re on top of their game and they just have a thirst for more learning, and being involved, and they use their mental and their physical skills to come to fruition and to be a viable member of a SWAT team, or special operations group,” said DuBois.
When addressing the graduates after the training scenario, DuBois likened the Basic SWAT school to insurance. “This is the same thing,” he said. “You don’t expect it to happen, but we have to be prepared. If we’re not prepared, guess what, they’re going to say, ‘Why weren’t you? Why weren’t you prepared?’ ”
Of the dozen graduates, in addition to their SWAT training, each has their own set of individualized skills they will be bringing back to their home departments now that they’ve graduated.
Orange County Undersheriff Anthony Weed, an instructor for the academy, said they have a perfect graduation rate.
“I think that goes to the training that their receiving, as well as the quality of the individual that they’re sending us,” Weed said. “They go through some background stuff at their home agencies. They have to go through a physical fitness testing and firearms testing prior to coming to our class and academy; so, that’s all done at their home agencies. That goes to their home agency standards as well, and it’s what they’re receiving here at our academy.”
Evaluators from each department with participating officers observed the scenarios, grading the SWAT students as part of their final test before the graduation ceremony that day.
