CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — Chesapeake Sheriff’s deputies just finished special training to handle corrections and courthouse emergencies and are now capable of dealing with disasters and high-pressure situations.
The emergency response team just graduated Monday and they’ve already put their training to the test.
Chesapeake Undersheriff Col. Christopher Pascal now has a team of 38 experts to call on when things get really tough.
“[It] allows us to reduce situations that are potentially dangerous,” Pascal said.
Just graduating Monday, they’re prepared to respond to highly emotional situations while keeping people safe. Undergoing a 40-hour class, they are now experts in breaching and extracting techniques. But their main goal is always de-escalation, saying negotiation was a big part of their training. But when physicality becomes the last course, “we have very physical standards,” said Capt. Jeremiah Harrell. “We trained to do extractions, we trained firearms, we do a lot of law and case study to make sure that everything we do is within legal standards. We do medical training.”
Said Pascal: “In the jail, for instance, there may be a barricaded subject where we have to breach a cell. There could be, hopefully it never happens, [an incident] where inmates took over a pod or took over a cellblock or something like that. And these guys are specifically trained how to regain control.”
These incidents can happen without warning, as they experienced an incident in the middle of their training.
“We had an unruly barricaded subject, and we went from training to response immediately,” Harrell said, “and they were already prepared, they were poised, they went right to work, and it was eliminated with no injuries.”
Residents, they said, can rest at night knowing this team is at the ready.
“Maybe they prevented an escape, maybe they prevented a death that evening,” Pascal said. “And to the normal citizen, you may not even hear about it.”