The Fight Against Crime: Notes From the Battlefront

They are the Renaissance men of the Sheriff’s Department.

They are trained paramedics, experts in mountain and swift-water rescue.

They handle all the department’s scuba and hard-hat diving chores, and since the department requires two paramedics on every SWAT operation, all have completed SWAT training.

On any given day, the 15 members of the Emergency Services Detail, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s most skilled rescue team, may be asked to rescue a hiker from a frozen mountainside or recover the body of a scuba diver from a murky lake.

Earlier this month, they rescued two men who were stranded on a cement truck that was washed down the Los Angeles River during heavy rains. The ESD’s Sikorsky helicopter plucked the men off the truck without any injuries.

So who knows all this stuff? Before a deputy gets that training, he or she must first have worked a minimum of seven years in the department and passed a battery of written and physical tests, including swimming 25 yards underwater and treading water for 10 minutes, the last 30 seconds with arms raised overhead.

The average age of the team members is 42, and the oldest member is 52, according to Deputy Paul Hoffman, who has been on the team 15 years. No woman has ever applied to join, deputies said.

Training is extensive and rigorous and ESD asks each new member for a five-year commitment.

“It takes at least that long before you know enough to feel confident in the job,” Hoffman said.

In 1966, the county funded the program to create a group of deputies who were also a rescue team. According to Hoffman, the other specialties were added with time.

New members start with paramedic training. They study pharmacology, the nervous and respiratory systems and more.

“When the six months are over, they go out and put the blue shirts on,” said Sgt. Mike Connolly, the team’s leader, referring to the blue shirts worn by county paramedics. As part of their training, each ESD member works as a paramedic for two months.

Then it’s two more months of physically demanding mountain-rescue training, six weeks for swift-water rescue and then on to another two months of diving instruction.

They learn procedures for locating bodies or other kinds of evidence, such as guns, with less than 5 feet of visibility. Indeed, diving for bodies is the worst part of the ESD job, according to Deputy Keith Mitchell, a 17-year ESD veteran.

“The worst part is finding one with your facemask,” Mitchell said.

Connolly agrees and says one of the harder operations he’s had was diving for four people who fell through the ice at Convict Lake several years ago. But Connolly also remembers the team diving for a boy who had been underwater for nearly 30 minutes. The team dove out of a helicopter, found the boy and managed to revive him.

“That’s the best part of the job,” Mitchell said. “When you’re on a mission and your training helps you save a life. You tell yourself, ‘That’s why I trained so hard.’ ”

Even with all the demands on them, the turnover rate is very low.

“Some guys have turned down promotions to stay on this team,” Connolly said. “We don’t like to call ourselves an ‘elite’ team, but the work is very rewarding and there is a sense of pride knowing you are well trained at your job.”