Police forming tactical unit

A patrol officer may always be the first responder to active shooting situations or most other calls, but within a year Eunice Police Chief Randy Fontenot plans to have a tactical unit in place to bring an additional level of expertise to dangerous situations.
“We used to have one and I just felt it was a need to have a team trained to respond the different situations,” he said.
Fontenot said the last time the department had a tactical unit was in the 1980s.
Fontenot also calls it a special response team. “They will respond to incidents that aren’t daily occurrences,” he said.
The unit would be defined by its training and equipment, he said. The equipment would include rifles, stun grenades, shields, upgraded body armor and ballistic helmets, Lt. Ryan Young said. Young is to lead the unit.
The unit was planned before Sunday’s mass shooting in Orlando, Florida. But this area is not immune to mass shootings. In July 2015, three people were killed in a shooting a the Grand 16 movie theater in Lafayette.
Young recalled two shooting incidents in Mamou and there was another shooting in Ville Platte where a gunman took two lives and his own.
“If something happens in neighboring towns or out in the parish where they call for assistance we will have a team prepared to go out and work with other law enforcement agencies,” Fontenot said.
Training will occur inhouse and at schools, he said.
The department is also ordering equipment, which Young said must be in place for police to be trained properly.
Police officers will have to learn how to operate with an additional 20 pounds of body armor, Young said.
Some of the equipment is made to order and deliveries are dependent on manufacturers who are overloaded with orders, he said.
Fontenot anticipates the equipment will arrive by the end of the year and estimates $25,000 will get the department on its way toward a tactical unit.
Fontenot specifically mentions bomb threats, which escalated during the just completed school year.
But he also wants officers to be trained for active shooter situations. “It would be good to have some training in that although we haven’t had an incident here. You never know,” he said.
A special response team also would be helpful for building entries and searches, serving arrest and search warrants and high-risk arrest situations, he said.
A tactical unit equipped with superior equipment may change a criminal’s mind about continuing to resist, he said.