SWAT team holds exercises in Nahant home

NAHANT – With three parole officers playing “the bad guys,” the SWAT team burst into the house at 126 Castle Road, guns raised and shouting “Police! Get down on the ground!”As a parole officer, Mark Fournier knew exactly what he was getting into when he lent his property to Revere and Everett police officers for a SWAT team exercise Wednesday morning.View a photo galleryLed by Revere Police Chief Joseph Cafarelli, the team of about 10 police officers dressed in full SWAT attire and carrying Airsoft guns, which closely resemble the real thing, ran through different scenarios of apprehending a possible dangerous fugitive or high-risk parole violator.Fournier said the home has been in his wife’s family for 50 years, but it’s being torn down next week to build a new one.”The chief is friends with my contractor,” he said. “He said it’d be a great training opportunity for them.”Fournier filmed the action with a handheld camcorder for his fellow parole officers.”It’s an excellent training opportunity for us as well,” he said.Nahant Chief Robert Dwyer and Town Administrator Andy Bisignani watched the SWAT team run the exercises from across the street.”It’s not too often they find an abandoned house that they can use,” said Dwyer.The SWAT team searched every room in the home, even checking in the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets for the possible armed subjects who hid in different places in each scenario. Cafarelli said subjects are known to hide in cramped, unthinkable places behind sheetrock or inside the insulation.The officers had different responsibilities in checking their own area in the home and determining it “clear.”Once the subjects were accounted for, the team would go outside to debrief before running through another drill.Cafarelli said it usually takes a team a minute to gain custody of the subject, but it could take as long as a few hours in big houses. He added that the team must be prepared to encounter anything inside the home from extra evidence, like drugs, to weapons and improvised explosive devices.While all this was going on, Nahant dispatcher Roz Puleo said that from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the station was flooded with calls from residents who thought there was a drug raid after they heard repeated shouting and doors being kicked in.Parole officer Robert Mello said about 90 percent of the time he would come for a parole violator himself, but a SWAT team would be needed if the subject was believed to be dangerous.”If it rises to that level then we act on it. We deploy the team and draw up a tactical plan,” said Cafarelli. “We do whatever we need to put the odds in our favor to minimize the effect on the police, the public and the suspect. Our goal is that nobody gets hurt.”Kait Taylor can be reached at [email protected].