Hours before sunrise on September 5, 2025, 10 black Richland County Sheriff’s Department (RCSD) SUVs — some marked, most unmarked — converged at a previously determined empty public parking lot in northeast Columbia, South Carolina, for a final briefing prior to hitting an unsuspecting fugitive’s supposed safe house less than two miles away.
The 10 deputies, all members of RCSD’s Special Response Team (SRT), shared pictures of the suspect to be arrested and listened to final instructions from the Fugitive Task Force (FTF) case agent. RCSD’s FTF is fully integrated into SRT (which we’ll get to momentarily).
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Serious focus and lighthearted banter
Leaning against the hood of one of the SUVs, the SRT operators, including the FTF case agent and a K-9 handler, briefly discussed lessons from previous operations with SRT tactical commander Lt. Peter Hart. They mentioned a ballgame — it was, after all, the beginning of the college football season — and quietly laughed about something unrelated that someone did or said.
These are regular people, wired a bit differently, more high-speed than most. The team includes both men and women, all highly trained operators.
Eager to saddle up and “go tactical,” the SRT operators conducted last-minute gear and weapons inspections, climbed back into their vehicles and quickly departed the staging area.
As a tactical observer, I was riding in the front passenger seat of Lt. Hart’s vehicle. We took our place in the middle of the single-file SRT (SWAT team) vehicle formation racing down the road toward the objective.
A Marine leader
Hart, a retired Marine master sergeant with multiple deployments — including combat tours in Iraq and Kosovo — during a 20-year career in the Corps, gave me final “how to survive” instructions in case the operation “went south,” though these SRT operations never “go south.” He then rattled off something that to me was largely unintelligible but clearly understood by the operator in the lead vehicle as we roared down the road toward the target. It was a little after 5:30 a.m., so the world was still dark and there was no other traffic on the highway.
No lights. No sirens. No need. “Whenever we’re running code with all blue lights, it may sometimes look like a funeral when in fact it’s us on the hunt,” said Hart.
The first raid
All at once, the SUV formation took a hard turn into a dimly lit apartment complex and within about 90 seconds all 10 vehicles swarmed upon the targeted address. Everyone leapt from their vehicles. A few operators ran around to the back of the building to cut off any attempt at escape, while the entry team dashed up three flights of stairs, banged on the door, announced themselves — “POLICE!” — and quickly entered the residence. Inside were weapons, a cash-counting machine, narcotics, “boxes of weed,” and the target suspect, who was immediately arrested, cuffed and brought downstairs to one of the SUVs.
Second mission
The team then regrouped, saddled up, split into two elements and roared off in two different directions on a second mission, unrelated to the first but involving two different targets equally as dangerous as the first. The two teams kept in constant communication as both targets had to be hit simultaneously to “avoid one bad guy tipping off another,” said Hart.
Both targets were successfully hit before 6:00 a.m. One arrest was made, and the two temporarily separated teams reconvened at an RCSD substation north of the city, where they linked up with regular road units and members of RCSD’s Community Action Team.
| WATCH: In the video below, two different SRT Operators run two separate phases of the same tactical course at the Richland County Sheriff’s Department range, Oct. 7.
Third operation
Following a quick briefing, the reinforced SRT deployed on its third mission of the morning, hitting an abandoned house with SRT tossing in flashbangs (non-lethal stun grenades) and entry team operators following a small interior drone that buzzed through all the rooms before they entered. No one was home. Still, SRT conducted three unrelated special operations between 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.
All three missions were successful — the first two netting suspects, weapons and drugs. The third was successful in that the SRT discovered where the suspect was not. Lessons were learned. No one was hurt. Everything was completed and consolidated within an hour. The operators then met for breakfast before heading to one of SRT’s substations to prepare an after-action report and discuss the morning missions.
Operational conditioning
An unusual day in terms of mission tempo? “Hardly,” says Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, who years ago served as a sniper on one of RCSD’s earliest SWAT teams, a predecessor to today’s SRT. “What our SRT operators do today, most every day of the week, is both necessary in terms of apprehending the most dangerous felons and fugitives in central South Carolina, but it serves as a means by which our SRT is conditioned to successfully operate in any imaginable scenario.”
Lott adds, “Demanding and challenging training is one thing; operational conditioning, where every single component must come into exact play, is even more important.”
Hart agrees, contending that the number of missions his team is tasked with weekly keeps his operators “razor sharp.”
Rivaling any SWAT team in the nation
“There’s no question that our operational tempo and the after-action group-and-self critiquing fuel our proficiency in terms of the skill sets we are trained up on in all conceivable tactical scenarios,” says Hart. “If you combine our work tempo with our training and the demands we place on ourselves in terms of physical conditioning and tactical performance, you end up with a perfect mix that is conducive to having our SRT perform at a level that could rival any SWAT team in the nation.”
The organizational difference
Unlike many other law enforcement tactical teams, RCSD’s SRT, which falls under RCSD’s Operations Division, includes full-time SRT operators (the constantly training and operating entry team members), full-time deputies who are secondarily SRT operators (but also fully qualified SRT members), mobility (brand-new SRT operators who drive vehicles and bring up necessary ammunition and water), SRT-trained members of the Fugitive Task Force, and two (per day) designated K-9s and handlers.
“The Fugitive Task Force component, our K-9s, and the operational tempo in which we operate are keys to what make us unique as a SWAT team,” says Hart.
In addition to the Fugitive Task Force and the K-9 Unit — both under the Operations umbrella and fused directly to SRT — supporting elements include the Crisis Management Team, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team (bomb squad), Waterborne Operations (marine patrol), Dive Team, Homeland Security, and others.
SRT is clearly a lifestyle like no other.
“Everything revolves around the team and our mission,” says Hart. “In my case, I have to find time to run, to hit the gym. We had a murder-suspect operation this morning, briefings afterward, and I have martial arts training tonight. I am also on the Dive Team. And we have to find time for our family. But we love what we do, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”
