Despite the cold night air, sweat streamed down Officer Ben Chavez's face and stained his camouflaged fatigues.
Chavez and other members of the Oxnard SWAT team had just stormed a darkened, smoke-filled house, shot a couple of gun-toting bad guys with paint pellets and freed two hostages.
"Let's shine some light on these guys and see who's been hit," said Gary Rovarino, a SWAT veteran and consultant who critiqued the four-hour practice siege.
One make-believe hostage had a telltale splotch of pink paint below the knee. The make-believe bad guys were splattered with pink dots.
The mock siege--one of an endless assortment of such precision drills--is part of deep soul-searching by the Oxnard Police Department's Special Weapons and Tactics team in the wake of two recent deaths during Oxnard SWAT operations, including the friendly fire shooting of one of the department's own officers.
The two deaths were the first casualties in the 27-year history of SWAT operations in Ventura County, sending shock waves through the tightknit group of elite officers that make up the four SWAT teams that operate here.
"All those years and we never even had to fire our weapons and then bam, bam, just like that," said Sgt. Bill Lewis, a member of the Oxnard SWAT team for more than 16 years.
The death of Oxnard SWAT Officer James Rex Jensen Jr. last year was hardest to take for the officers.
Jensen was shot by fellow SWAT team member Sgt. Dan Christian during a botched drug raid March 13, 1996. His death was a cruel reminder of the dangers for team members in operations with heavy firepower.
Then, less than a year later, Larry Panky, a belligerent but unarmed Oxnard man, was shot and killed by an Oxnard SWAT sharpshooter during a standoff with police.
Both deaths focused attention and criticism on the Oxnard team and SWAT in general. Relatives of the slain men filed lawsuits and district attorney's reports pointed out mistakes made by the teams.
The pressure mounted internally as well.
The shootings became a point for self-reflection, said Oxnard Police Cmdr. John Crombach, who heads up the 22-member Oxnard team.
"We took a long look at how we do things after Jim got killed," Crombach said. "It just shows that in SWAT there is zero margin for error."
Staying inside that narrow margin is the reason they train so hard, he said.
