By Rhonda Cook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Lt. Bill Trivelpiece, clearly one of the older members of the Atlanta police drug unit, began the training course to catcalls from other officers that included references to him as “old man.”
“Come on, old man. Let’s go,” an anonymous officer shouted from just inside the door to a shed.
With FBI trainers at his side, Trivelpiece ducked into the Ford Taurus, which happened to be his, and shot from an open door at a cardboard drawing of a bottle (silhouettes of people had become too “complicated”).
The head of the Atlanta Police Department’s newly configured narcotics unit moved to the next stop on the course and then to another, firing at each of the cardboard bottles, before huffing across the finish line to boast to the team’s younger members that he completed the course much faster than they had.
“Seventy-eight seconds,” the 42-year-old narcotics officer announced.
It was midweek in the special instruction provided by FBI trainers from Quantico, Va. City police worked with 30 investigators and five supervisors for a week.
It was the first FBI training for the Atlanta Police narcotics team since its predecessor was dissolved following the fatal shooting of an elderly woman during a botched drug raid in November 2006.
Police Maj. Debra Williams said the training was essentially “what to do and what not to do in any combat situation.”
Shooting in stressful situations was the topic of the FBI’s “street survival” course at Sweetwater Creek State Park on an unexpectedly cold and snowy afternoon. Trainers used the pressure of the clock to ratchet up stress levels to as close as what officers would experience in the field.
Shooting accuracy, for example, goes down as stress goes up, one of the instructors said. Each of the officers wore 40 to 50 pounds of full body armor and fired live rounds.
The FBI instructors also covered in the weeklong course how to make a felony car stop, entering a house or room by force, the psychology of surviving a gunshot, and when to use deadly force.
“It’s advanced training. It’s a course that’s in high demand,” said FBI spokesman Steve Emmett.
The current Atlanta Police narcotics unit has been in place less than five months. The previous unit was dissolved after narcotics officers fatally shot Kathryn Johnston in her living room.
The narcotics officers, using sketchy information from an informant, executed a “no-knock” warrant to get inside Johnston’s Neal Street home in northwest Atlanta. Johnston was killed and other officers were wounded when officers began firing in response to a shot from Johnston’s rusty pistol.
Two officers — Jason R. Smith and Gregg Junnier — pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and other state charges in Fulton Superior Court and to federal allegations of conspiracy to violate a person’s civil rights ending in death. They are in custody and awaiting sentencing.
A third former narcotics officer, Arthur Tesler, is to be tried in Fulton Superior Court in April on charges of violating his oath, making false statements and false imprisonment.
In addition to the changes in the narcotics unit and an agencywide reorganization, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington more than doubled the number of officers working narcotics, to 35 from 15. The chief plans to eventually have 100 officers assigned to that unit.
Copyright 2008 Atlanta Journal-Constitution