Six Four Crew

I got on the SWAT Team in April of 2011.  From that point forward, I started receiving hazard duty pay which is $64 dollars a paycheck.  I don’t know much about the world of finance, but I think that is what they call not very much money.  Our SWAT team is not officially on call since that would require the members to be paid on call pay, but if you want to make it to the SWAT callouts, you have to stay sober, in town, ready to respond at a moment’s notice, and keep your phone nearby in case there is a major incident requiring a SWAT response.  So, it is nothing like being on call.  The truth is everyone on the team loves their assignment so much they would pay for the privilege.  The financial incentive of $64 dollars every two weeks is not needed as a recruiting or retention tool and has become a common joke among the SWAT guys.

In the fall of 2020, we had a callout where the suspect had attempted to kill his ex-wife with a hammer because he had smoked too much meth and started having some very dark hallucinations about her and the treatment of their five-year-old son.  She escaped with a skull fracture and a brain bleed, but she came very close to dying.  When the first officers arrived at the house, the suspect threw a pipe bomb at them which detonated in the street but fortunately did not injure anyone.  He then barricaded himself and his son inside the residence and a SWAT callout was initiated.  The suspect was still armed with multiple pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails and after about 14 hours, we sent a team to breach one of the living room windows to allow a better view into the house.  He thought we were making entry and detonated two of the devices.

The explosions blew out all the windows on the house and shook the entire block.  Some of the gasoline filled bottles broke and caught fire which instantly turned the living room and kitchen into an inferno.  There was a moment of disbelief as we realized we had lost the little boy.  One of our operators went to work putting out the flames with a fire hose we had pre-staged and as the water came in contact with the spilled gasoline, it pushed the flames farther into the house and spread the blaze more rapidly.  Then, the front door came open and a combination of fire and water from the hose came spilling out.  A moment later, the boy came sliding out and down the front steps followed shortly behind by the suspect.  We moved in and scooped up the boy who was taken to the command post.  The suspect was then taken into custody in one of the most chaotic arrests I have ever been involved.  He was at the bottom of the front steps and a police canine was biting one of his legs while officers were fighting with him to get him in handcuffs.  The ground was muddy, and we were right next to a burning house that had just been partially blown up and was still full of explosives.  Water from the hose was still pouring out onto us and spitting fire out of the front door.  We got him moved away and were able to put out the flames.  The boy had some minor burns and scrapes but was otherwise uninjured.  The suspect had some shrapnel wounds and serious burns in his lungs from inhaling the fire.  He spent a few weeks in the hospital before being booked.

Once the scene was stabilized and handed over to the detectives, all the SWAT guys went back to the command post for our debrief.  Stress and high-pressure situations can have different effects on different people.  It tends to make me compulsively laugh and want to make jokes.  I have to consciously tell myself to stop because most people do not feel like joking in those situations.  One of the things I miss the most about the SWAT Team is that they all feel the same way and I can make those jokes during those times.  We were all walking away from the destroyed house as the sun was starting to come up and people were coming out of their homes.  It was light enough now for them to see us clearly.  I could feel this big shit eating grin on my face and thought it would look bad if the public saw me smiling after such a dangerous incident.  I tried to make my face stop smiling but it would not cooperate.  Then I grabbed the corners of my mouth and tried to force them back down, but they would not budge.  Finally, I gave up and blurted out, “Man, they really made us earn those $64 dollars today!”

After that callout I started referring to my fellow SWAT operators as the “six four crew”.  This mindset, the six four mindset, is the idea of doing difficult things for their own sake.  It’s the recognition that we have a short window of opportunity to do something like this, maybe 20 years if we are lucky, and after that we will reminisce about these days.  It is the view that difficult challenges, whether they be self-imposed workouts or training exercises, or real-life dangerous operations are opportunities to be and to do something great.  These opportunities are limited and fleeting so we cannot let fear or laziness prevent us from taking them.  The six four mindset is the recognition and appreciation of these opportunities.