Greene D.A. mum on SWAT team
We all agree that the safety of our children and citizens is the top priority of elected officials, and certainly a faster, well-coordinated response to any threatening incident is a necessity.
For decades, the Incident Command System has provided a standardized approach to the command, control, and coordination of emergency response, providing a common hierarchy within which responders from multiple agencies can be effective. In early June following the Uvalde, Texas, school shootings, Greene County District Attorney David Russo announced via media outlets that he was establishing an “emergency response team” to “neutralize” or “deescalate” any threat of a shooting in the school districts. The Greene County commissioners, school superintendents, adjacent law enforcement agencies, nor any of Greene County emergency services were aware of the development of what he now calls the Greene County SWAT Team.
In September, after seeing social media posts of uniformed Greene County SWAT Team members, the Greene County commissioners sent a letter to the district attorney requesting information on qualifications of personnel, standard operating procedures, letters of agreement with police forces, insurance policy coverage, funding strategies, and procedures to handle complaints and internal affairs investigations. In October, without providing answers to any of the commissioners’ questions, the D.A. declared the Greene County SWAT Team operational via an e-mail listing personal information of 11 “fully operational personnel,” including the district attorney as Command and Control.
In November, the commissioners sent a second, more detailed letter outlining concerns, including coordination with adjacent law enforcement units, standards of training, inability to obtain insurance coverage for the unit, lack of adequate command and control, and conflicts of interest with command of a SWAT team residing in the district attorney’s office. A third letter followed in December.
Although three official letters have been sent to Russo, a request for information, a list of concerns and invitation for discussions, and the third reiterating the requests, there has been no response from the district attorney nor cooperative communications for discussions.
While we can appreciate the autonomy of elected officials working within their assigned responsibilities, the district attorney’s duties do not include incident response. Elected officials cannot build and independently operate a “militia” under their own control without integrating with other emergency response units and fully participating in the Incident Command System.
Although the D.A. may shirk his obligation to answer questions of the commissioners, he must be held accountable by the residents and taxpayers of the county.
Mike Belding
Greene County commissioner