Serving on the SWAT team is not only an honor but there are tremendous responsibilities that come with the position.  People’s lives depend on your proficiency and training and if there is one mistake made, you can find yourself in one hell of a predicament.  I made two mistakes.     

I just got home and walked through the door from a long day at work.  Dinner was about ready and my wife at the time was in the other room taking care of our baby son.  The phone rang and I answered it, “This is Scott.”  The voice on the other end was the SWAT Sergeant, “hey, we have a SWAT call out, be at the station in one hour… I’ll see you there,” and he hung up.  A surge of adrenaline started to course through my body.

I went into the other room to say hello to my wife and kiss my little “sonny B” on the forehead.  I love the smell of a baby’s forehead because there is just something about it that seems so pure.  “I got to get back to work,” I said shrugging my shoulders and sounding sorry… again.  The wife of a Cop is a very special woman who has to be very strong, consistently put up with the never-ending abnormality of the relationship and keep guessing if you will come home safely. 

As I was about to walk out of the house I stopped at the front door and could hear my son upstairs crying, “What if that is the last thing I hear,” I thought.  I listened for a few more seconds holding onto every sound, shut the door quietly and left. 

The team was in the briefing room when the Sergeant walked in and barked, “Alright, listen up… we will be serving a Narcotics warrant tonight.”  Many of our duties as a SWAT team were to assist the Narcotic Division serve their search warrants.  The SWAT team would make entry into the drug house, secure the location by taking everyone into custody and then leave to allow the “Naco Cops” to do their thing.  “I am passing around a picture of the suspect we are looking for,” the Sergeant continued, “so take a good look… this suspect is highly dangerous… he was in a Cuban prison for murdering twelve people but Castro let him out and put him on a boat to come to the USA.”  I looked at the suspect’s face and starred trying to memorize every detail.  I felt strange tonight, something was off and I did not feel right… no explanation, it just felt eerie.