On Tuesday, September 10, police officers from across Saint Charles county came to Francis Howell North to practice more destructive breaching techniques in a safe environment. The old building is scheduled to be demolished which made it the perfect opportunity to train officers.

“It’s hard to train explosive breaches because you’re tearing things up,” said North’s School Resource Officer Travis Scherder. “It’s hard to get a hold of a building that the owners will give you access to, and it doesn’t matter what you tear up. It was just a really good opportunity. I mean, they even had officers from as far as Cape Girardeau.”

This day of training took place all day Tuesday. The Saint Charles County Regional SWAT Team was there with a Bomb Squad on standby to help with the explosives. The Saint Charles SWAT Team is composed of some of the best officers from around the county. This training opportunity was put together by Officer Scherder.

“One of the Saint Peter’s guys that’s on the SWAT team is a good friend of mine,” said Officer Scherder. “I was telling him about how we had the big empty building over there that was getting torn down. I said it would be a good place to do some training, and he was really interested. I hooked him up with S.M. Wilson and we were able to work out some dates for them to get in there and do some training.”

This training involved using explosive breaching techniques to get through large doors or barricades. These are fast yet destructive techniques that are at times vital for SWAT to be able to get into a room quickly. The training also involved regular breaching practices that are essential for the SWAT team.

“They went in there, and they did a whole bunch of different breaches on doors, some of them interior doors, just breaching to get into a room, practicing on that because they’re big, heavy, solid wooden corridors,” said Officer Scherder. “They’re good to train on, with big metal frames. So they’re tough.“