The Vernon County Special Response Team trains

Last week a team of deputies returned home after attending Basic SWAT camp, hosted and taught by the Joplin Police Department.

They trained with other members from agencies like the Web City Police Department, Jasper County Sheriff's Office SWAT, and other agencies from around Missouri.

The members selected to attend from our County will form the Special Response Team (S.R.T) for Vernon County.

Each day they attended training was long, hot and physically draining. They conducted training during the daytime and nighttime and were instructed in areas ranging from hostage negotiations to responding to active shooter threats, barricaded subjects and searching buildings, and fields and woods when a threat may be present.

The Vernon County team did very well, and on the performance test (requiring running, shooting, and building searches all in a row), the Vernon County Team placed second only behind Joplin SWAT.

We had attempted to start a response team last year, but it was put on hold because of training.

Although I saw a need for a specialized team that would have the training and ability to handle even the worst cases, I have concerns about taking a law enforcement agency and moving in the direction of military style tactics.

After visiting with SWAT trainers from the Joplin Police Department, I decided we were ready to move forward. The focus on the training our deputies received was not what many SWAT teams have around the country. Instead, our training has one purpose behind everything taught: protect life at all costs.

In the past I have been concerned at how fast some agencies have been to deploy a team and move in as soon as they arrive when there may have been other options.

A large part of the training our team received was about those other options and how to use them. If you can talk to someone (even if it takes 16 hours of talking) and an incident can end with no one being hurt, that option is much better than using force too soon and taking the chance of someone not making it home at the end of the night.

One of the members we sent is a certified hostage negotiator, so the team was able to train in scenarios where they provided security for surrounding houses and buildings, and spoke to the person in an attempt to end the conflict in a peaceful manner.

I had someone ask me if Vernon County really needs a special tactics team. Like me, they were also concerned about the militarization of police all over the country.

The first thing that comes to my mind with this question is a quote from George Orwell. He said, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

Of course, none of us want to do violence, but just like a soldier fighting for his country, sometimes we must fight to protect the innocent right here in our own land.

I will never support a militarized law enforcement agency, but I will make sure my deputies have the equipment and training they need to perform any task I ask of them.

It is sad that we must even have to train for such incidents, but they are here. Shootings in schools, movie theaters, malls, churches, bombs, guns, poisons, there is no end to the types of weapons and violence the world is seeing.

Vernon County is not exempt.

We will be ready to respond to protect our people, our lands, and our constitutional rights.