by Michael J. Pach

If you were at Fort Carson's Wolf dining facility May 29 through June 1, you probably would have seen a herd of law enforcement vehicles parked nearby and a bunch of people in tigerstripe camouflage uniforms inside.

Fear not, because nobody was in trouble, nor was there a hostage situation on post. The vehicles belonged to the Boulder County Sheriff's Office and its Special Weapons and Tactics team. The team was on Fort Carson to conduct a week's worth of annually required training exercises downrange.

SWAT Commander Tommy Sloan explained that for the 31 members of his team, SWAT duty is secondary to their jobs as patrol officers, detectives or dispatchers. They participate in SWAT training once a month.

Fort Carson put out the welcome mat for Sloan and his team by providing housing and allowing access to the Wolf DFAC and several training areas downrange.

The 21 officers that make up the SWAT tactical team practiced open-field movements with military formations on their first day downrange and followed the next day with urban maneuvers in one of the mock villages using simulated ammunition (paint ball rounds).

The rest of the team, which includes the bomb squad, the K-9 unit, dispatchers and training videographers, joined the tactical team for the remainder of the week for live-fire training in a village on Fort Carson's range 141A and a hostage-negotiation exercise in which every member played a role.

Sloan was grateful for the opportunity to train on Fort Carson because of the support he received, the accommodations, the quality of the ranges and a restriction level lower than what he's used to dealing with in Boulder County.

"It gives us the opportunity to really train," said Sloan. "We're very restricted on ranges in Boulder County. Everybody here has been so accommodating to us and friendly. We've been really pleased and have been trying to be good stewards ourselves. We've been trying to be high-disciplined, which is not hard, and consider Soldiers first. If there are Soldiers in line at chow, we let them go first because we know they have to go to work."

The SWAT team took advantage of their time here by spending more than 18 hours downrange on some days.

Before the SWAT team could train downrange, members of the Boulder County Sheriff's Office had to complete an installation checklist. The checklist documents that the team has met all the requirements such as attending a safety briefing given by the Installation Safety Office, completing a range walk and submitting a memo to Evans Army Community Hospital detailing how they will provide medical support for their team.

Fort Carson Training Specialist Siose "Mo" Molia coordinates all training requests with outside agencies that want to use the Fort Carson ranges.

"We can train and work closely with all outside agencies as long as the facilities are available and they meet all of the requirements," said Molia.

Sloan had good things to say about the support he received from Molia and the range control officers and also had a message for the Soldiers.

"Keep those guys (the terrorists) busy over there and we'll take care of everybody here," said Sloan.

Sloan felt that training here will make the SWAT team's job of keeping things safe on the home front easier.