A new Sheriff’s Quick Response Team is being developed by the Cass County Sheriff’s Office to respond to multi-location coordinated attacks, mass casualty events, active shooters, barricaded subjects, hostage rescue, and high-risk incident planning.
Sheriff Jesse Jahner says with summer gatherings coming up, the Sheriff’s Office sees a need to add more security and preparedness to their force.
"We just want to make sure that we are training in tactical planning and ways to protect citizens in these large gatherings and things of that nature."
Jahner says there are 10 deputies assigned to the team. These deputies will receive additional monthly training and equipment to increase response times in high-risk situations.
He says the response team isn’t a substitute for the SWAT team, rather, they are a group of trained individuals that are deployed as part of the normal force of deputies.
"With the ten people that we have, they are kind of spread out within our organization, so that way, we always have people on the street, or for the majority of the time we have people on the street that have this training and have some of this equipment."
Sherriff Jahner says this type of response comes in the wake of recent large event gatherings and violent tragedies in some of the US’s major cities. He says their goal is to be progressive in their approach to providing public safety to the citizens of Cass County.
The Sheriff’s Quick Response Team will be fully operational within the next few months.