By Kevin Krause
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS, Texas — Dallas school district police have their own SWAT-like tactical squad.
Constables will soon be breaking down doors to take wanted felons to jail.
Not to be outdone, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department wants to form its own SWAT team.
Dallas County law enforcement agencies haven’t added this much muscle and firepower to their arsenals in years.
The sheriff hasn’t had a highly armed tactical assault team since former Sheriff Don Byrd disbanded one in 1982 for lack of use. But sheriff’s officials say they are now seeing a need for such a team.
The department is responsible for policing unincorporated areas and assisting small cities without the resources for a fully equipped police agency.
For more than 20 years, the sheriff and many other agencies have had to rely on Dallas police’s SWAT team for emergency situations such as barricaded suspects and hostage situations.
This week, Sheriff’s Capt. Sheila Carter-Bass presented a SWAT proposal to the chief deputies, sheriff’s spokesman Michael Ortiz said. When minor details are worked out, she will take the plan to Sheriff Lupe Valdez.
Deputy Ortiz said the proposal is still in its infancy.
“A lot of our warrant officers are already trained in SWAT techniques,” he said. “It only makes sense to piece them together and make a useful team out of it.”
The warrant section has 58 deputies, the largest such division in Texas. They work in two shifts, a day shift and one at night.
County Commissioner John Wiley Price said the sheriff can create her own SWAT team as long as she finds the money to pay for it.
“If they can raise the money ... more power to them,” he said.
That’s fine with the Sheriff’s Department.
One idea is to use forfeiture funds to outfit the team and use existing warrant deputies to staff it, Deputy Ortiz said. He said the department also may solicit private donations to fund the team.
The Sheriff’s Department already has an armored vehicle that was donated by Brinks Security in 2003. But the title to the vehicle hasn’t yet been transferred to the Sheriff’s Department. When that happens, the new tactical team will use it.
Deputy Ortiz said Dallas police’s SWAT team can’t respond to emergencies as fast as the sheriff’s own tactical squad.
“If we had our own, we could be there in a matter of minutes,” he said. “There have already been incidents where we could have used a SWAT team. We’ve had barricaded people.”
The Sheriff’s Department’s tactical assault team was born in 1977. Sheriff Byrd disbanded it five years later because it wasn’t practical at the time, Deputy Ortiz said.
“In a year’s time, the team was only used three times. He looked at it and weighed his options and determined it was not cost-effective back then,” he said.
Dallas Independent School District police formed a 16-member Special Response Team last summer to respond to emergencies such as school shootings, riots or chemical spills. No other North Texas school system has one.
The district doesn’t call it a SWAT team, but the district has bought a lot of tactical police equipment such as body armor, riot shields, helmets and M-4 semiautomatic rifles.
Beginning Oct. 1, Dallas County constables will be helping the Sheriff’s Department serve felony and high-level misdemeanor warrants as part of a plan to ease the current warrant backlog within existing resources.
Copyright 2007 Dallas Morning News