Diane Lee
Staff Writer
About half of the Manhattan Beach Police Department’s SWAT team toured Mira Costa High School on Dec. 15 in an effort to familiarize themselves with the campus.
This tour is done every year to familiarize new officers and re-familiarize old officers with the campus. The SWAT team will also tour the other schools in Manhattan Beach as part of their training that happens twice every month.
The tour was led by Vice Principal Paula Spence and School Resource Officer John Loy. It was held that day because it was a double late start. The SWAT team arrived at about nine in the morning and walked around the school for three hours.
Principal Ben Dale was informed about their visit last Friday, but he couldn’t participate in the tour because of department meetings.
“I did meet the SWAT team, and they seemed to be very pleasant and professional,” Dale said.
The SWAT team is a specially-trained unit that enters school when there is an especially dangerous situation. There are 12 officers in the Manhattan Beach’s own SWAT team, and six of them came to the tour.
“As part of their training today, they came up to Costa and got a very detailed tour of the campus the way it is now, and the way it will be in the future with the new buildings. They are always going through training and trying to be up-to-date on all of our schools,” Loy said.
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