SWAT school

In addition to training with swat and going out on call-outs as members of the tactical team, tactical medics must go through two weeks of basic swat school, a time filled with bumps, bruises, painful muscles and joints, and wagonloads of challenging stress.

swat school is not blood-in-the-mud medic training. (“Blood in the mud” refers to military combat medicine, the basis for fire and rescue tactical medicine.) Rather, swat school is about police tactics; athletics; conquering phobias; defense and control tactics; learning the ways of the tactical hunters; and the mechanics of superior marksmanship using shotguns, handguns, subguns and less lethal launchers. Some of the tactical skills taught date back to the ancient Roman legions, while others are new-era tactics that use technology and unconventional ground-combat stratagems.

All participants are transformed by the swat school experience. Although swat medics normally aren’t armed with weapons, they must be proficient in their use to save their own lives or those of others. Army and Navy medics are taught to use various firearms because enemies have engaged medics and the wounded in calculated patterns of combat, targeting them with extreme acts that ignore the generally accepted codes of conventional warfare.

Civilian tactical medic skills mirror those of the military. Teams do not go into situations planning that their medics will be potential shooters, but in real combat, the patterns of evolving situations are subject to change. swat teams are law enforcement’s bedrock infantry and special operations’ response to many bad situations. swat teams can and do save lives, prevent further violence and bring the majority of such incidents to a peaceful conclusion.

Training course

Top swat medics of the Clearwater (Fla.) Fire & Rescue’s Special Operations Rescue Team recently conducted a tactical-rescue technician course. Medics from Tampa Bay’s Hillsborough County, Pinellas County and the cities of Clearwater and Pinellas Park attended.

The rescue-technician training course is not SWAT school. It is more relaxed, without the constant in-your-face stress and pressures that swat school instructors so effectively produce. All students already are certified medics at a fire department. Because swat school is offered only once a year and tactical-rescue technician training is still too new to have a regular schedule, the medics may go through either of the tactical courses before attending the other.