HANCOCK COUNTY — It was a dominating performance for members of the Hancock County Joint Tactical Team who took first place in the annual Indiana SWAT Challenge. One of the two local teams competing won five out of the seven team skill events, which test physical fitness, shooting proficiency and tactics.
The county’s local tactical team is composed of 20 different members from seven different first responder agencies from around the county. The group split up into two teams to take part in the annual event, which tested the skills of SWAT teams from around the state last week in Delaware County.
The winning team consisted of Hancock County Sheriff’s Department (HCSD) members David Wood, Cody Harris and Aaron Forshey along with Greenfield Police Department (GPD) members Justin Jackson, Isiah Ernst and Zach Marcum.
Capt. Michael Schwamberger from the GPD is a longtime SWAT member and was the team coach for the county’s SWAT groups during the week-long competition. He noted that county SWAT teams have been taking part in the annual event since 2012 (minus COVID years) but this is the first time they’ve won it.
“I’m so very proud of our guys,” Schwamberger said. “They’ve worked hard all year for it and a lot of our guys have been on the team for years and all their hard work has really paid off.”
As the team coach, Schwamberger was able to run with his guys and shout instructions and offer encouragement along the way.
“You have to memorize the course of fire, so they allow the coach to do that run behind the members and make sure they are doing what they need to do,” Schwamberger said.
He described one event on the course as jumping out of a truck, putting on a gas mask, going over an obstacle, picking up a specific object and taking the object to a safe landing place.
“Then the course of fire is a very specific amount of rounds the guys had to fire into certain parts of a target,” Schwamberger said.
Schwamberger watched his teams to make sure they did all the objectives during an event and didn’t drop anything on the course while doing it because that would have incurred a time penalty.
“Something like that adds to your time,” Schwamberger said.
This type of competition is normally dominated by SWAT teams from the Indiana State Police, who have a full-time team, and the Lafayette SWAT teams, he noted. However, this year, the Hancock County teams put in the strongest performances.
“It felt really good to go out there and show off our capabilities,” he said. “To go out there and beat the teams we did says something about our team.”
In addition to competing, Schwamberger said there is a great deal of training that is collected from an event like this. Plus, the SWAT team members develop camaraderie among the team and with other groups.
“There is a lot of good networking, and we’ve already decided to do some training with the Lafayette SWAT team because ultimately the goal is to be better at what we do,” Schwamberger said.
The other Hancock County Joint Tactical Team that competed as Team 2 in the competition was composed of many newer members who picked up valuable training during the competition Schwamberger said.
Those team members were GPD members Dillon Silver, Zach Shultz and Jarrod Davis, New Palestine Police Department’s Wade Whitaker and HCSD members Matt Kelly and Anthony Forshey.
While the county’s joint tactical team is always called to deal with the most dangerous of situations, Schwamberger said it was great to be able to work on their skills without that dangerous risk in their face.
“We always have that risk any time we are called, and it’s always in the back of your head that one of us could be injured. With that danger out of it, it was kind of nice,” Schwamberger said. “It was a nice break from that norm.”
