With any team, practice and preparation are a key to success. That is no different with the McMinnville Police Department Special Weapons And Tactics (MPD SWAT) team. In order to stay prepared for any situation which might arise, the SWAT team, under Commander Ben Cantrell, routinely holds training exercises. The most recent round of training occurred at the Southern Standard building at 105 College St. Wednesday night. 

Cantrell and his team place great importance on the training exercises and take them very seriously. "We train twice a month, every month. We train every type of scenario we can think of - outdoors, indoors, weapons training, munitions training, negotiations training," Cantrell said. 

In an attempt to keep the training fresh and unpredictable, the SWAT team trains at a wide variety of buildings around the county. "We never train at the same building twice in a year. We've trained at all of the schools, private and public, in Warren County multiple times. We've trained at numerous churches and businesses. We train in houses as well. Any building we can get into, we train at. Every building has its own set of challenges.  It helps us be better prepared to go into any kind of building," Cantrell said. 

The multiple sessions held in school buildings helps team members have a mental layout of each school should a situation arise. "We train in schools so we have a good idea of what it looks like and what's coming up and how we would work through various problems so it's not a new problem for us should we have to face it," Cantrell said. 

Training sessions consists of several runs confronting a variety of situations and includes role players portraying suspects which have to be dealt with. "In our scenarios, we win some and we lose some. We learn from every scenario and we learn from every callout. We incorporate role players almost every single run within the training. That way, we're not just making a dry run. This is something we take very seriously," Cantrell said. 

The constant training keeps the SWAT team members on their toes and up-to-date on the latest tactics needed to deal with a wide variety of situations. "We do bigger scenarios about four times a year. We just try to keep it fresh," Cantrell said.