BearCat, SWAT and drones better to have than not for Downey PD

Downey Police Department has begun utilizing drones in their attempts to de-escalate crisis situations in a safer manner. (Photo by Alex Dominguez)

DOWNEY - November 2021. Downey Police Department patrol officers respond to a call of a male threatening his family with a machete. Upon officers’ arrival, the suspect flees the scene. He’s cornered in a back parking lot, but refuses to surrender.

A large black vehicle rolls in, rumbling; imposing in presence and heavily armored all around. On sight, the suspect gives himself up. A potentially dangerous situation subsides.

In the current fiscal year, DPD will once again receive the largest chunk – over $43.6 million (17%) – of the city’s annual budget. The police department has consistently been one of the city council’s top priorities, bringing with it new and – at times – much heavier equipment.

The most obvious example would be the department’s over $400,000 armored “BearCat,” purchased in 2019 shortly after DPD was involved in a deadly chase and standoff with the suspect in the murder of a Downey liquor store owner.

Downey Police purchased its armored “BearCat” in 2019 shortly after an intense standoff with a murder suspect in the city of Vernon. (Photo by Alex Dominguez)

According to Police Chief Leslie Murray, it was incidents like this and around the nation that made the department “take a look at what we were doing.”

“At that point, it was evaluating what equipment we had available, what we were doing in terms of training,” said Murray. “We decided to make the move to increase the amount of training we were giving our personnel, to make sure they had all the necessary safety equipment to address these issues should they face our officers here in Downey, and to best protect the public in responding to those. As we started doing that, we started realizing what we were doing in terms of equipment and training, we really are meeting that criterion of what legally is considered to be a SWAT team.”

Murray says a lot of research went into “doing things the right way,” which is why it “took a while.”

Per Captain Brian Baker, Downey Police have been taking steps to modernize and prepare for extreme circumstances even before the 2019 incident.

“Sometime around 2010, we started a formalized entry team to handle high-risk warrants, search warrants, those types of things. Sometime around early 2020, mid-2020 we started looking at maybe expanding that to an actual formal SWAT team,” said Baker. “With the laws the way they are right now, with de-escalation and everything, and the way our policy is written, in order to have a SWAT team we also have to have a crisis negotiations team. So, every time our SWAT team is deployed, we have crisis negotiators that also go out with them.”

Crisis negotiators work to deescalate situations before things become more dangerous.

“Unlike the way a SWAT team operated probably 20 years ago, or like you see on TV where they immediately surround the house and then they make entry into a house, making entry into a residence or any type of location is kind of a last resort for us, unless somebody is actively being harmed inside the residence,” said Baker. “We do everything we can to deescalate, and through that we use our crisis negotiations team, and they’re specially trained to do that.”

Policy, training and implementation of Downey’s SWAT team was completed around mid-2021. Currently, there are 16 SWAT operators, each of which have completed an 80-hour SWAT class, in-house testing, and interview. Operators train together in a 10-hour training day once a month, and are required to maintain their firearm and physical standards.

“They are selected to be part of the crisis response unit based on their work history, their decision making, their ability to think during crisis situations,” said Baker. “That’s how the SWAT team, or the crisis response unit was formed.”

Since its implementation, the crisis response team have been involved in 11 “formalized deployments.”

Early last year, Downey Police added even more to their arsenal: drones.

Downey PD currently has six drones; a total of $28,000 in equipment purchased between January and September of last year including the units, chargers, batteries, and other accessories.

Baker says drone use has “almost become routine.”

“If we get a burglary call at a residence, or at a business, our drone operators will immediately pull the drone up so we can get a birds-eye view of what’s going on,” said Baker.

Baker added that the drones and all other tools have allowed DPD to “minimize officers’ exposure to danger.”

“Obviously we’re never going to completely eliminate that, but it’s really helped keep our folks as safe as we can, given the technology we have,” said Baker.

There are currently 16 drone operators. Each have completed a 40-hour class and are required to be licensed through the FAA. According to Baker, there have been 29 drone operations since the beginning of 2022.

Detective Chris Pinal flies one of Downey’s six drones. (Photo by Alex Dominguez)

In March of last year, Downey officially adopted its policy for acquisition and use of military equipment in line with Assembly Bill 481, which required law enforcement agencies to obtain approval for such by the applicable governing agency.

Acquiring heavier equipment and more advanced technology comes with its fair share of scrutiny, however, as other law enforcement departments have come to find out recently.

Los Angeles Police Department has faced backlash for its desired acquisition of “Spot,” a four-legged robot able to climb stairs and open doors with 360-degree camera capability, that is roughly the size of a Dalmatian. That purchase would cost nearly $280,000 after upgrades and warranties.

According to a Los Angeles Times article, critics have denounced “Spot” as “a waste of resources” and a “high-tech surveillance tool police would misuse on Black and Latino people.”

And “Spot” hasn’t just run into trouble in LA. Just a year prior, New York Police faced similar criticism for its use of the same technology, which it dubbed “Digidog”. Ultimately, the department returned the robot and terminated its contract with the manufacturer.

In a more dramatic example, a vote last year by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to allow police to use robots with deadly force in extreme situations was met with intense opposition, ultimately resulting in its being struck down.

Still, in the case of Downey and its BearCat and drones, it’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it, according to Murray.

“Those things aren’t needed until they’re needed,” Murray said. “The armored vehicle, the BearCat, primarily when we got it was added protection when you respond to, maybe, an active shooter situation, so that we can get our first responders to where they need to be to possibly do rescues of citizens that need to be taken out of a dangerous situation.”

In the case of the 2019 liquor store murder suspect standoff, Downey PD waited over 30 minutes for Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Unit to arrive on scene with its armored vehicle, after the preceding high speed chase left the suspect cornered in the city of Vernon.

Murray says that equipment like the BearCat and drones allow for more opportunity to de-escalate a situation.

“To be able to secure a scene and slow things down, the BearCat allows us to do that,” said Murray. “It allows us to get the manpower out to where they need to secure a scene and to take a step back and slow things down, and that usually ends up in a safer outcome in the end.”

The heavily-armored BearCat vehicle in particular can be utilized as a shield against potential fire, and – should the situation require it – can transport up to 10 personnel inside. Some drones can fly as high as 900 feet (though Downey operators try to keep it limited to around 400 feet), and have significant canvasing and tracking capability. Other smaller drones are used to approach vehicles and clear buildings without putting officers in harms way.

Baker added that there have even been instances where suspects have surrendered at the very sight of the equipment.

“Earlier this year, we responded to a call of a guy that was shooting a firearm at passing vehicles over in the south-end of our city. When our patrol folks got there, he ran to a nearby apartment and barricaded himself inside,” said Baker. “One of our crisis negotiators happened to be working that night and immediately made phone contact with him. Over the next two hours while we were mobilizing the crisis response unit, we were able to get the BearCat out there as a show of force without applying force, and we were able to ultimately get him to give himself up.”

Drones, according to Baker, are “used reactively.”

“I think that’s important for our residents to know, that we’re not surveilling people, we’re not just putting it up to see what’s going on in Downey or what’s going on over somebody’s house,” said Baker. “We’re putting it up when there’s a reason to do so.”

In fact, none of this equipment, according to Murray, is used without cause.

“We answer thousands of calls for service every year, and 12 deployments during a year and a half time period, it’s such a small fraction of the amount,” said Murray. “We take it out when we need it, and we use it for community relations events.”

And while the equipment often comes with a hefty price tag attached, Baker says “You can’t put a price on our residents’ or officers’ lives.”

“It’s a tool that we have that we may not need all the time, but when the situation presents itself, it’ very important that we have that tool,” said Baker. “If we do have an active shooter or a situation where we need armored protection, it’s important that we have the resource readily available to us so that we don’t have to wait for the sheriff’s department to send it from their headquarters in East LA.”

Detectives Chris Pinal and Calvin Miller are both members of the SWAT team and drone operators. Both agree: they feel safer and more efficient as officers thanks to the new gear.

“We get a lot of these high-risk situations, high-risk stops, or possible burglaries or whatnot; it’s just nice to be able to send a piece of equipment in as opposed to one of us first, and maybe, possibly clear most if not all of that situation before we approach on foot,” said Miller. “It just makes us feel a lot more safe, and it’s nice to have.”

Pinal was on scene when officers deployed a drone to track a fleeing suspect who was hopping between yards.

“He had a gun in his car, possibly explosives,” said Pinal. “With the drone up there, we could see nothing was in his hands at the time. For us, that’s huge. That allows us to buy time, make decisions, to set up a scene, and honestly to wait. That drone bought us time where, eventually, he was just like, ‘You know what, I’m just going to give up,’ and peacefully, we took him to jail.”

Murray says the police department’s primary focus is protecting life.

A drone helps clear a suspect’s car during a training scenario. (Photo by Alex Dominguez)

“Our officers need that protective equipment to face these dangers every day,” said Murray. “The more that we can give them to help them do their job’s safely, it’s worth every penny we spend, and I think our community is very supportive.”

Downey PD continues to look to the future for more potential technology and equipment that may be of use to them.

“We’re always looking at different things that are out there, and there’s always new technology on the horizon,” said Murray. “The private sector is usually ahead of us a little bit on things, but we’re always looking at software programs that will help us better communicate with the public, there’s always technology out there that we’re evaluating that has to do with vehicle pursuits; there’s always things on the horizon that we’re looking at.”

She added that all potential equipment comes with costs, pros, and cons, but that DPD evaluates everything “very carefully.”

“We don’t jump into those things without fully researching them.”