This week is the 2004 SWAT Roundup in Orlando, Florida. SWAT Roundups are competitions between tactical teams from around the world, and the Orlando one is one of the largest. In addition to US teams, there are squads from Germany, Sweden, and Hungary at this year’s roundup. Four of us from my department’s SWAT team came down this year, although we’re not competing- we’re taking classes on a variety of subjects.
The drive down Sunday, for lack of a better word, sucked ass. Apparently, everyone was headed back from Thanksgiving at the same time I was on the road, and the average speed on I-75 from north of Valdosta all the way to the Florida Turnpike was about 45 mph. You’d drive 80 or so for ten minutes, and then traffic would slam on the brakes before crawling at 30 for 20 minutes; apparently for no reason whatsoever. Florida drivers suck.
After a night in a strange hotel bed (note: not a stranger’s bed), I attended Explosive Breaching class- quite interesting. Explosive breaching works very well, with very little collateral damage, from the little we saw in the class. Afterwards was the Hostage Rescue competition, which we watched from the bleachers. The best teams were, not suprisingly, the local ones; they’ve had the most practice at the training facility.
Aaaand, I’m tired and time for bed… pictures and more later.
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Day 2 – Nov. 30
Day 2 was Tactical Rifle class in the morning, and the Pritcher Scramble competition in the afternoon. Tac Rifle didn’t really show me much new, other than the department’s AR-15 needs to be sighted in. The Pritcher Scramble had teams vaulting three low walls, donning gas masks, firing a gas round into a window, then breaching a door, engaging a moving target, and returning back over the walls. A vendor on another range also set the berm on fire while demonstrating a flash-bang… whoooops.
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Day 3 – Dec. 1
Day 3 was WMD for Tactical Teams in the morning, which didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know; and a competition whose name escapes me but involved zip-lining over a pond, running to the range to engage a series of metal targets, running back to the pond and getting a wounded man and yourself across the zip line, and then carrying him to the finish line. One of the Swedish team’s competitors didn’t fasten his thigh holster and his pistol went *bloop* into the pond. Whoooops. That night we went to the nightclubs in downtown Orlando… I’m waaay out of practice as far as drinking heavily goes.
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Day 4 – Dec. 2
Day 4 there were no classes, so we went to the Orlando PD’s indoor range to see how it was constructed and to shoot a lot of ammo at their pop-up steel targets. I learned that indoor ranges are expensive as hell, and that I need to go to the range more often to practice. Afterwards, we piled up and headed home.
