SEMO Bomb Squad moves to Cape Girardeau

Cape Girardeau Police Department is now the official parent agency of the Southeast Missouri (SEMO) Regional Bomb Squad.

According to Cape Girardeau Chief of Police Wes Blair, Cape Girardeau Police Department assumed responsibility as parent agency of the SEMO Regional Bomb Squad in February. A unanimous vote from Sikeston City Council members finalized the transition earlier this week.

Sikeston Department of Public Safety previously housed the bomb team.

As officers retired or left to work for other departments, Chief James McMillen said Sikeston DPS was left with no members on the bomb team who were bomb technicians.

"I didn't have the staffing to afford to send somebody to training to get re-certified," McMillan said.

All bomb squad equipment and vehicles will transfer to Cape Girardeau, according to McMillan.

The bomb squad's 22-county service area will remain the same.

Blair said he agreed for Cape Girardeau to become the bomb squad's parent agency toward the end of 2020. Discussions were had among Cape Girardeau, Poplar Bluff and Jackson police departments.

All agreed Cape Girardeau would be the best location to house the team's equipment when space and response times were taken into consideration.

"Additionally, with the university and other venues that bring large scale events to town, it makes more sense to have the equipment located here to reduce wear on the vehicles as they travel," Blair said. "Another factor is the centralized location of Cape Girardeau. The responses are generally spread out across the region."

Funding

According to Blair, the bomb squad is primarily funded through Homeland Security grants. All specialized training for the team is covered by grants or provided at no cost from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Cape Girardeau Police Department will shoulder maintenance costs for the squad's two vehicles as part of the department's contribution to the team, Blair said.

"We anticipate those (costs) to be less than $2,000 per year and will be absorbed into our vehicle maintenance budget," Blair said. "We did not increase our budget at all by assuming responsibility of the bomb squad."

A team of officers from Poplar Bluff, Cape Girardeau and Scott County comprise the bomb squad and serve on a part-time, as-needed basis. Each participating agency is responsible for covering salary and benefits for their team members when deployed.

"That practice has been in place since the bomb squad's inception and did not change with the transfer of the parent agency," Blair said. "There will be no officers hired specifically to serve on the bomb squad. That aspect is budget neutral."

When Sikeston became the parent agency of SEMO Bomb Regional Bomb Squad in 2006, McMillen said there were some grant monies paying for necessary equipment and covered maintenance and operational costs of vehicles.

Eventually, however, Sikeston DPS started covering maintenance and operational costs from its own operational budget.

"From a fiscal standpoint, it didn't make sense for us to continue to do that (host the bomb squad) with the few calls that we had in our city" McMillen said.

"We probably would've considered it if we had full staffing availability, but we just don't," McMillen added. "We have to use what personnel we have for patrolling town."