La Plata County deputies undergo SWAT training | News

SWAT situations are intense and require law enforcement officials to think on their feet.

On Thursday the La Plata County Sheriff’s department put some of their own through SWAT training.

“We just completed a scenario in which we had hostages in a vehicle with an armed subject,” said spokesman Dan Bender.

All this week La Plata County law enforcement agents have been in swat training.

“People who mean to do us harm or do general public harm are more and more heavily armed and they are more prone to use that--those weapons against us,” said Bender.

It’s exactly this type of SWAT training that helped law enforcement agents find and arrest Tommy Lee Mitchell and Elijah Timothy Anglin who allegedly shot and killed an Ignacio man back in April.

“We had two armed suspects we were looking for in relation to that case and we utilized our swat team for those searches,” said Bender.

Officials said these trainings are crucial for the public’s safety when there is a stand-off.

“We have techniques and tactics that can quite often take people into custody without heavy use of force,” said Bender.

The SWAT training program is paid for by a grant from Colorado law Enforcement.