CAPE OFFICERS GET SPECIAL TRAINING

Police officers, with guns drawn and ready and search warrant in hand, surrounded a house suspected of being a center for illegal drug trafficking, then burst through the doors to conduct a raid.

It looked real, but was in fact a part of a weeklong special response team training event sponsored by the Cape Girardeau Police Department and involving police officers from throughout Southeast Missouri.

The training event, which began in Cape Girardeau Monday and ends today, is being conducted by members of the U.S. Army Military Police School as a part of a national program designed to help local, state and federal law enforcement officials combat the spread of illegal drugs. The military police school, which is located in Fort McClellan, Alabama, sends mobile teams out to conduct the training.

To date, nearly 12,000 officers from 46 states, Canada and Puerto Rico have taken part in the training program. The program has grown every year since its beginning in 1991, with about 4,000 officers taking part in the training last year alone.

"We believe we do a good job helping law enforcement," said Lt. Col. Rick Thomas of Fort McClellan, Alabama.

The program grew out of a Defense Department decision to use military police schools to develop training programs to attack the flow of illegal drugs in the nation, Thomas said.

"The involvement of the MP school is a logical outgrowth of a determined total national commitment to attack the nation's drug problem," he said.

Although the training has drug interdiction as its primary focus, it also provides training in professional techniques used by special response teams. The techniques include conducting drug raids and responding to hostage situations or to any situation in which there is the potential for weapons and violence.

"We are fortunate to have the training here," said Sgt. Carl Kinnison of the Cape Girardeau police department.

"Normally the training is reserved for larger, metropolitan areas," he said.

In addition to ten members of the Cape Girardeau police department, officers from the county's sheriff department, the Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force, Southeast Missouri State University's department of public safety and the police departments of Jackson, Scott City, Sikeston, Miner, Charleston and Festus have participated in the training.

Cape Girardeau police chief Rick Hetzel, who worked for 17 years with the Army Criminal Division, was responsible for bringing the training to the area.