SWAT team carries out hostage scenario downtown

By JOE GORMAN
jgorman@vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
CRT SWAT at the Covelli Centre


The Mahoning Valley Crisis Response Team/SWAT conducted a hostage training exercise Thursday at the Covelli Centre in downtown Youngstown.
CRT/SWAT practice at Covelli


The man on the other end of the police radio from inside the Covelli Centre during Thursday's SWAT training exercise was loud and clear in his message to hostage negotiators: “Either find my brother or some [expletive] cops are going down.”
The man on the other end of the police radio from inside Covelli Centre was loud and clear in his message to hostage negotiators: “Either find my brother or some [expletive] cops are going down.”
That was the scenario Thursday that grew out of a 911 call at a concert that members of the Mahoning Valley Crisis Response Team/SWAT were responding to at the arena, as all the aspects of the team’s operations were on hand for a training exercise.
There were negotiators, on-the-scene dispatchers, SWAT operators who went inside the arena to find the man, a drone, and, of course, the mainstay of crisis response team operations for years, The Bear, the armored vehicle often used in standoff or hostage situations to transport team members right up to the front door.
Youngstown police Detective Sgt. John Elberty, head of the CRT team, said the object of Thursday’s exercise was to work with all the moving parts of a hostage or standoff situation that the team brings to the table.
“All aspects of SWAT will be touched on in this training,” said Youngstown police Capt. Kevin Mercer, who was in charge of planning for Thursday’s event.
In a mobile command post, negotiators were in communications with the gunman. In this scenario, the gunman went to the arena with his two brothers to look for his wife, then something went wrong and the man began shooting.
In another vehicle, team members were on laptops and radios, relaying information to members both inside and outside the arena. It was the debut of their tactical operations center, said Youngstown officer Mike Bodnar, who also is a CRT member, which allows them to contact team members as if they were regular police officers answering a call.
“We’re actually like a dispatch center, except for the actual incident,” Bodnar said.
The exercise started with CRT members responding after the shooter inside had fired and a perimeter was set up by patrol officers. CRT members assembled in the parking lot were supplied with pictures of the suspect from the team members in the operations center, briefed and then loaded up in the The Bear and driven right up to the door. Several minutes later, they took a man out who was a casualty and loaded him into a STAT MedEvac helicopter that landed in the parking lot.
Inside the mobile command post, the suspect was talking to Boardman police officer Michelle Glaros, who is a CRT negotiator. As she spoke, information received from the suspect was jotted down on a white board. Two other negotiators were with Glaros to assist her in the negotiations.
The man on the other end of the line was not kind. He asked Glaros why the media was there, and when she responded there were no windows for her to see out of, the man got smart with her.
“I’d have figured with six years on patrol and nine years in the detective bureau you’d be able to figure it out,” the suspect said.
As he spoke, CRT members in the command post got messages that employees were inside and hiding from the gunman. They relayed that message to the operations center, as well as the information that the suspect would start shooting again unless police told them where his brothers were. Lots of notes were taken, and the information that was written down was passed on to others.
Inside the arena, CRT members were checking different rooms for anyone who was hurt, hiding or for the gunman himself. Elberty was in constant contact with them from the operations center, taking a constant stream of messages over the radio as well as constant written and oral updates from the negotiators.
At the end, some of the hostages the gunman was holding were freed by negotiation. CRT members then stormed a loge the suspect was holed up in with two other hostages. Those hostages were freed, and the suspect was taken into custody.
Elberty said he and team members will examine the results and see what they did well and what they need to improve on.