MIDLAND, Texas — The Midland Police Department's Bomb Squad have been pretty busy lately.
"'Bomb Squads' are kind of the misnomer," said Bryan Rackow, deputy chief of MPD. "We deal with any kind of hazardous threat, so it's not just bombs, we can deal with radiological threats, we can deal with biological chemical threats and radiological threats."
Bomb Techs are few and far in between, as there’s only about 33,000 in the whole United States.
Some of them live right in Midland. The Bomb Squad gets called on average, about two times a month. One recently was the hostage situation in March.
Helping MPD rescue the two victims in a little more than 24 hours.
Once a year, the police department likes to hold a media day.
"We like to give you guys (the media) a chance to see what the Bomb Squad does," Chief Rackow said. "What our basic equipment setups are and also have answer any questions we can."
That way regular people can understand what goes into being a member of departments like the Bomb Squad.
And they let us be as hands-on as we wanted.
"We're gonna give you a chance to be a bomb tech," Chief Rackow said.
"We're going to let you get in the suits," Chief Rackow said.
"We're gonna let you go down range on a package," Chief Rackow said. "It is not an armed package, but you're gonna get to run an x-ray. "
Most bomb squads are required to have three 10-hour training days a month.
They go through this training to make sure that even though they have the word “bomb” in their names, they arrive and leave a scene as sneakily as a cat.
"Most of the time we try to get in and get out of any kind of calls and not impact any community more than necessary, that's our main goal," Chief Rackow said. "A lot of people don't realize we (the department in general) have a Bomb Squad solely for that effect because we're in and out."
The equipment isn’t cheap. Which is why they rely on donations with an explosive price tag from donors like Diamondback Energy. It's all to keep them ready to go in case another event like a hostage situation happens.
"We look for avenues for financial support where the first responders can't access their traditional sources of funding," said Danny Wesson, chief of operations for Diamondback Energy. "The Bomb Squad is a perfect example of that. They don't have many traditional sources of funding and for this equipment is, you know, it's quite expensive and hard for them to access."
According to MPD, Diamondback gave the department $22,604 for initiators. These initiators let the Bomb Squad do their basic job and keeps the team away from a dangerous area.
Donations, like the one in the photo seen above, help keep the community safe.
Demonstrations, like the one shown to media Wednesday, help the public appreciate what these officers do everyday.
And showing how "bomb" these officers really are.