Police christen new mobile command base

- It has a rooftop infrared camera that can focus on license plates hundreds of yards away. It’s equipped with roving internet, police database and television access. It’s a massive black truck that can put the majority of law-enforcement assets — weaponry, high and low tech equipment and human expertise — at the scene of a police emergency.

Introduced on Saturday, the new SWAT/CINT mobile command unit was built by the community and has been a long time in coming, officials said at a public viewing in the Wegmans parking lot.

“All the equipment we need to roll to a scene is maintained and housed in this vehicle,” said Deputy Ithaca Police Chief John Barber. The vehicle was custom built by an Ohio company at the cost of $460,000, said Barber and officer and SWAT team member John Arsenault.

The city of Ithaca funded more than half the project, Barber said. The rest came from a Homeland Security grant via the Tompkins county Sheriff’s Office, asset seizure money, donations from Cornell University and Ithaca College and a sizeable donation from the Triad Foundation, he added.

“I think it’s a piece of equipment the community deserves,” said Triad Foundation executive director Joanne V. Florino. “The mission of this vehicle is the peaceful resolution of incidents.”

Arsenault was the manager of the project, which began in December 2006. The truck was designed to specifications determined by a committee of seven Ithaca Police Department officials and two Ithaca fire officials, Arsenault said.

After three years, several trips to Ohio, and hundreds of e-mails, the project was completed. When the vehicle was picked up last week, “We were just in awe,” he said.

The original SWAT vehicle was an ambulance loaded with gear every time it was called out, Barber said. Then officers — working with donated materials and tools and sometimes in their spare time — retrofitted an old Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit bus into the next SWAT vehicle, said Investigator Mike Gray, who is also a member of Critical Incident Negotiating Team (CINT).

The vehicle increases their ability to function 50-fold and allows them to be self-contained at an incident — putting more Ithaca police, fire and sheriff’s office resources at the scene, he added.

Like its predecessor, the new SWAT has three sections — an equipment area, a tactical operation center, and a room for CINT, which can be closed off so members can negotiate without distractions. Unlike its predecessor, it’s equipped with state-of-the-art electronics, including a sophisticated communication system. “We’re able to talk to everybody no matter what radio system they use,” Barber said.

Police department heritage is also built into the vehicle. It’s numbered “99″ after the “1199″ code for SWAT incidents, and like the old vehicle, has the “knock knock” phrase on it, which began as joke when discussing what to put on the old vehicle’s marquee, Arsenault explained.

The vehicle also carries the name of Ithaca Police Investigator Michael A. Padula, who was stabbed to death in 1996 by a woman with a history of mental illness, and according to the department’s SWAT web site, the team was begun as a direct result.

“This SWAT team was formed in tragedy,” Florino said. “There’s so much of their sweat and toil that went into their vehicle, and they’re too modest too mention it.”

By Raymond Drumsta

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