Expert: Jack Toomey - 4/9/2009

Question
Hello,
Me and my boyfriend both want to work in the police force after college. He wanted to be a SWAT member (which by reading other questions may be not what he expected :p )and I wanted to either train police dogs or be a detective. I am currently enrolled in high school and doing a project on SWAT teams. I wanted to know how many team members are usually on a SWAT team and what types of people are on them (i.e. snipers, negotiators, ect), also if there is any information on how much and what kind of training they go through. If you could please let me know about these things it would help me and my boyfriend out alot.

Thank you,
Annie

Answer
Annie,

As you might have discovered police work is not like television.  Many of my questions in this field are the result of high school students watching unrealistic television shows about police work and then expecting them to be true.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Shows like CSI, SVU, and others are killing me.

Briefly I want to tell you that in order to be a member of SWAT an officer is going to work for years in uniform before he is eligible for SWAT.  In fact on MOST departments SWAT is a part time position and most of the time the officer answers calls a uniformed officer.

Detectives and K-9 are the same in fact you probably would need to be in uniform much longer to have the necessary skills to ever be considered for the position of detective.  Training dogs is a long way down the line.  You would be a uniformed officer first, for many years working the streets, then if there was an opening you would apply for K-9 just like applying for a job in a store and the best candidate would be selected.  However you would train WITH a dog and if you are good enough you would work the streets as a K-9 officer.  Years later you MIGHT be able to train the dog but it usually works the other way around.

Answering your question about SWAT is difficult because of the hundreds of departments that have SWAT teams.  A medium sized suburban department might have entry teams but rely on larger departments for negotiators and snipers.  A large big city department would have all of the above.  I don't mean to give you the cold shoulder but the "training" part is equally as difficult because of the numbers of departments and the various ways that departments train their officers.  You would be safe to say that most of the training is physically demanding, a lot of running is involved, lifting, working together, and other physical drills.  Then there would be the use of automatic weapons, flash gernades, and other devices that a uniformed officer would not use.  

I hope that this helps you a little.  If not please let me know.