By Kimberly Sherman

In a quiet corner of the county, a small group of highly-specialized officers works hard to protect their unknowing citizens.

Valley Response Magazine was provided an exclusive peek into the world of the local bomb squads. While homicide, robbery, and pursuits make for sensational stories, the work of the bomb technician, while less publicized, is just as critical. It takes a special breed of officer to excel in the world of explosive ordinance disposal.

Local bomb squads, aside from their daily routine, have monthly training days. Driving their robot in and out of tight situations, X-ray interpretations, working with explosives, practicing the art of demolition, suiting up, and double checking equipment and communication systems are all common training scenarios.

Recently, Fresno County Sergeant Kevin Draughon organized a training exercise with Visalia, Clovis, and Fresno P.D., Fresno County Sheriff’s, North Central Fire, and Fresno County Environmental Health, where trainers set up scenarios, used testing devices and specialized suits, and provided additional education to the tightly-knit bomb squads.

“This was our first one. We’re all qualified, but … this is a perishable skill,” said Draughon. “If you don’t do it once a year, your skill level drops. It’s truly a multi-faceted deal.”

The radical 1960s brought a need to cohesively combat domestic terrorism to the forefront of the nation’s concern. Accordingly, in the 1970s the FBI devised a national program aligned with the law enforcement community as opposed to the military, as is custom in many countries. Every bomb technician throughout the country, regardless of law enforcement affiliation, is trained in exactly the same way.

“Bomb squads are the only specialized unit that receive the same federal training; we all go to the same six week hazardous devices school,” said Sergeant Steve Phillips of Visalia P.D. “We all have to be re-certified every three years in Huntsville, Alabama. We learn a lot that way, and it makes it easier to deal with others.”

Clovis P.D. Sergeant Dean Menard elaborated on the training. “It’s the only discipline policy that is unilateral across-the-board administrated and hosted by the FBI. We have manuals and policy that are very stringent.”

The recent local multi-agency training exercise helped fill a need that each law enforcement organization saw and tested each officer on several levels. “We do a lot of training for handling more normal stuff such as suspicious packages and pipe bombs,” said Phillips. “This training was to prepare for chemical weapons biological threats.”

The bomb suits worn by the technicians can significantly raise the body’s core temperature and deplete the body of fluid in a matter of minutes, so putting on and working in the suits is an essential part of training. Suiting up alone can take 30 to 40 minutes.

“We monitor vital signs, blood pressure, core temperature, and pulse. The officers wear 130 pounds of equipment plus a helmet,” said Draughon. “Some people go from 98.6 to 103 in a matter of minutes—then they may start having mental difficulties. Now I have a baseline of records for everyone, and we will be able to compare levels from now on.”

Donning the suits reminiscent of space travel, complete with a self-contained breathing apparatus, the officers also took part in a variety of scenarios designed to test their abilities in time crunch situations.

“We made functional devices for the scenarios so if someone didn’t do something right, it would go off,” Draughon said. “It helped us figure out how to stage a big event that will need multiple agencies.”

Because the bomb squad is such a specialized, compartmentalized facet of law enforcement agencies, recycling and resourcefulness are also key to the success of the task force.

“Back in the day we needed a bomb suit to receive accreditation. Our FBI contact hooked us up with the Sacramento sheriff who had a of couple extras,” said Menard. “They sold us one for $50.”

Menard recalls their first bomb truck. Donated from an armored transport corporation, a weathered armored car was transformed into a prime piece of equipment for the squad with just a fresh coat of paint, a new motor and transmission, and a set of shelves installed by the bomb crew.

“There’s a caveat that you can’t get rid of old equipment. When we got a new truck, we had to give our old one back to the armored transport corporation or pass it on to another law enforcement agency,” said Menard. “Our sister city, Columbia, Tennessee, is the size of Clovis. They were working out of the trunk of a car. We donated it to them at no charge, and they’re still using our refurbished armored vehicle today.”

Phillips wants to stress to Valley residents that they should feel comfortable knowing there are several highly trained local squads who are equipped and qualified to deal with the smallest firecracker to a larger threat.

“The beauty of doing what we do is we always go with at least two technicians who proceed very slow and methodic,” said Menard. “Our motto is ‘Not my bomb, not my bank.’ We’re all going home tonight. We have the opposite mindset of being a street cop, who makes split second decisions that affect people’s lives.”

Menard said that training can often take the form of real-life scenarios. “Our bomb training for the month can be a myriad of different things. Part of our training day stemmed from a call from a real estate broker taking care of forty acres for an elderly couple,” he said. “The barn had been locked and chained for fifty years. When we searched it, we didn’t find dynamite, but we found blasting caps that had ‘cooked off’ inside a concrete pipe in the wall.”

Another training scenario involved a sewer farm where the Clovis bomb squad practiced using and deploying water bottle charges off of their robot. “Our ‘talon robot’ is the same one used by the military exclusively in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Menard.

Readers may also remember the recent pipe bomb scare near Sierra Vista Mall, where the deployed robot blew up the bomb on sight. Menard mentioned that two nights later, another pipe bomb was discovered in north Clovis, nestled in a planter strip near a housing development.

“Mostly kids take Safe ‘N’ Sane fireworks and modify them, mixing chemicals together to make water bottles explode,” said Phillips. “Every once in a while, there’s something serious—there are some people who have motives out there, but in our area it tends to be a fairly rare event.”

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