SWAT: CAPE SPECIAL RESPONSE TEAM TRAINS

"You, in the house come out with your hands up!" shouted a Cape Girardeau police officer decked in full battle gear, his semi-automatic handgun trained on the dilapidated house at 710 College Street.

The only audible response was that of a turkey, gaggling away in a nearby yard.

"This is the police!" the officer seconded. "Come out with your hands up!"

Monday morning's three-hour maneuver, which resulted in the capture of three "suspects" from two abandoned houses, was a training exercise of the Cape Girardeau Police Special Response Team.

"We do this about once a month," said Sgt. Brad Moore, leader of the Special Response Team. "Each time it's different; we never know what we're going in to."

For Monday's exercise, the seven-member team was told that there had been an armed robbery and the suspects were last seen entering a building or buildings in the 700 block of College.

The marked police van pulled up in front of the abandoned house. Heavily-armed officers wearing black uniforms, Army boots, bullet-proof vests, knee and elbow pads, steel-bowl hats and protective eye gear poured out, quickly surrounding the area.

Officer Rick Price, the "sniper" of the group, was boosted up onto a nearby roof by fellow officers to take his position, covering both houses.

The radio comlinks - connecting the officers to each other at all times - buzzed with activity.

Officer Homer Markhart knelt poised behind the protective covering of the police van shouting orders at the house. The team was ready to move in.

Wearing a protective gas mask, Officer Bill Bohnert entered the rear of the first house spraying a fog of pepper mace around the first floor.

Rob Sander, a reserve officer with the Cape Girardeau police who served as a "bad guy" for the exercise, fled the house to escape the reach of the mace.

Then the officers refocused their attention on the house next door. The police sniper spotted a man on the second floor of the house. He alerted the other team members of the man's presence.

After pretending to discharge tear gas into the house, the team waited for the suspect to make a move as they would in a normal situation, while discussing their alternatives.

The officers don't use real tear gas or an excessive amount of pepper mace to protect people living in the neighborhood from exposure to the irritating gases.

When no indication of surrender was given from the man inside, two team members made their way toward the front of the house, running in short spurts behind a protective shield. The two then beat on the front door, demanding that the suspect give himself up.

When there was no response, the front door was kicked in by Officer Jimmy Smith. As the door blew open, the officers stood poised behind the shield ready for an attack from the suspect.

"I've got a hostage up here," the man inside shouted. A popping sound echoed from inside the building - the suspect was shooting (harmless caps) at the team. "I'll kill him!" the suspect warned.

"The suspect is armed and has a hostage," a voice over the radio advised.

Just then a scuffle was heard from inside the house. Minutes later, Officer Dennis Horn - "the bad guy" - walked out of the house carrying his hostage: a stuffed, man-sized dummy.

"I looked over my shoulder and Price had me in his sights," Horn told the other "bad guy" as he joined him outside. "I tried to roll over, but he got me."

After Horn left the scene, attention shifted back to the third house, where another suspect was heard scuffling through the building.

Team members broke through a basement window and threw a smoke bomb inside to smoke the suspect out. Almost immediately red smoke rose out of the basement window, and within seconds it permeated the whole building. The smoke was irritating to the eyes and throat, with a thick smell of sulfur.

The suspect moved to the top floor to escape the fumes.

"It's hard to secure a two-story building," Horn said as he watched. "You're very vulnerable walking up those stairs."

The team moved on the house, breaking open the doors and using a mirror on a pole to look around corners, searching for the suspect.

Suddenly, the suspect began shooting powder caps at the officers. Bohnert was "hit" in the leg; Price in the arm.

But as the commotion at the front stairwell grew, another team member scaled the rear staircase of the house, setting the suspect in his sights.

"I thought you'd come out of the house after the smoke bomb," Bohnert said to the last suspect. "I didn't think you'd stay up there and die."

Practice was over.

In a critique session afterward outside the buildings, the officers rated the outing as good, but it could have been better.

"We spread ourselves a little too thin in the back," Bohnert said. "But in all, it went pretty well."

The Special Response Team was rejuvenated by former Police Chief Ray Johnson in 1987, when a few members were sent to SWAT Team school at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. Bohnert, Price and Moore consider themselves the "charter members" of the group.

"We are trained to work mainly in hostage situations, high-risk search warrants and in other high-risk situations," Bohnert said.

"We're brought in to face armed situations like this," Price said. "And we can't shoot until they do."

The team members practice so that they can learn from their mistakes, thereby making them as effective as possible in real-life situations.

"If we get shot during the practice sessions, then perhaps it won't happen during the real thing," Price said.

The Special Response Team is the only one of its kind in the immediate area. Team members find themselves being called on more frequently with the influx of the drug market. The team will make the initial entry into buildings to secure the scene for other officers to safely enter.

"We were Bollinger County deputies one day," said Moore. "We secured the area so that officers could execute a search warrant on a motorcycle group."

Price said that going into a building - especially in a hostage situation - is always the last resort.

"We have a hostage negotiator who will talk to the suspects," Price said. "We'll try to talk him out first; then we go and get him."

To be part of the team, an officer must go through physical testing, meet field experience standards and undergo additional book study.

The houses in which the officers train are condemned buildings along the path of the new Mississippi River bridge highway. The houses have been purchased by the state.

"They let us use their buildings as long as we secure them as best we can before we leave," Moore said. "It gives us a practical setting; all the obstacles that we would encounter are there."

Although two reserve officers and one full-time officer was used for Monday's exercise, Bohnert said that they prefer to use civilians.

"The officers know what we are trying to do and, a lot of times, can predict our movements," said Bohnert, who serves as training officer for the team. "Most of the time you don't run into people with a lot of training or knowledge of police procedure."