What Lies Beneath — Kentucky Law Enforcement

Sep 8

Sep 8 What Lies Beneath

Dealing with crime and accident calls are a part of every law enforcement officer’s life. That said, not all crime and accidents stop at the water’s edge. That is where specialized water units, often called dive teams or underwater search and rescue units, come into play.

According to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, Kentucky has more navigable miles of water than any other state in the union, other than Alaska. Additionally, the state has more than 210,126 acres of waterway along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The state also boasts 227,908 acres of lakes and more than 10,000 miles of streams, not to mention the countless ponds that dot Kentucky’s landscape where vehicles can crash into, and the bad guys can attempt to hide evidence.

The Team

The Louisville Metro Police Department’s Underwater Search and Rescue Unit (USRU) has 22 members, divided into two teams of 11. Each team consists of a sergeant and 10 divers. According to training coordinator Officer Chad Crick, the USRU has one surface-support technician, two dive medics from the Louisville Emergency Medical Services and a dive physician.

Team members must be a member of LMPD with at least two years’ experience and certified as a scuba diver at the time of tryouts. Additionally, dive team members must be at the peak of physical and mental fitness, and adept at working in and around water, Crick said.

Officers trying out for the team must demonstrate the ability to:

Swim 75 feet underwater in one breath
Swim 400 yards in under nine minutes
Swim 800 yards (known as the combat swim) with a mask, fins and snorkel in under 15 minutes
Tread water for 20 minutes with hands out of the water the final three minutes.

“Members on the team have to maintain their skill by doing the aforementioned skills along with scuba ditch and don (diver goes under 12 feet, takes off all their gear, surfaces and takes a breath, then returns to the bottom and puts gear back on),” Crick added. “Recently, we have introduced an entanglement cage that divers must enter and extricate themselves from it. When members are introduced to swift water rescue, they have to be strong swimmers to mitigate the strong currents and obstructions they may face.”

Once an officer is accepted onto the team, they have to agree to a three-year commitment.

Water Hazards

The need to be in top physical and mental condition is necessary, as working in the water is extremely hazardous.

“Each body of water we dive in is unique with its challenges,” Crick said. “For example, it is hard to deploy a dive team to search a lake where a victim drowns in 60-plus feet of water. Without a good last seen point, the USRU will use sonar and establish targets marked by buoys. Then, a diver will ‘bounce dive’ that area to rule out that target.” A bounce dive is repeated diving to depths shallower than 21 meters with less than 15 minutes surface interval between consecutive dives.

Depth of the water determines how long a diver can stay down to conduct their search, Crick continued.

“The deeper the depth, the less time the diver has to search,” he explained. “In other instances, if you are looking for a weapon and the bottom of the pond is soft mud, this will pose a difficult challenge for the diver. If a current is present, this may cause your objects to move while underwater. Our divers will not dive in currents stronger than two knots (2.30 mph).”

Crick said nearly all water bodies have obstructions of some type, ranging from trees, tree stumps or submerged objects, which present difficult challenges divers have to overcome.

“These pose an extreme threat of entanglement to the diver,” he said. “Another challenge is contaminants in the water. If we are recovering a car, fluids such as gas, antifreeze and oil will be present in the water. Another example is the water itself. The water is a breeding ground for many microorganisms such as E. coli that could be harmful if the diver was to ingest it accidentally.”

The time of year also presents its challenges, Diver and LMPD Officer Erik Kemp said.

“The big difference between the seasons of diving is the type of exposure suit we use,” he explained. “A wintertime dive requires a dry suit and layer of insulation to keep us warm. During the summer we can often wear wetsuits when we dive, which keep us cooler. Some dives that require a dry suit if the water is contaminated, and we need to have a barrier. Regardless of the season, I keep several bottles of water and snacks in my go-bag so that I am ready to be there for an extended time should we find ourselves in an isolated area.”

Bringing Closure and Cracking Cases

Despite the challenges, divers know that a successful dive can help bring closure for family members of drowning victim or locate a key piece of evidence that can crack a case, Kemp said.

“Diving into the water where you can’t see anything and everything you do is by touch can be a mentally taxing task,” Kemp explained. “Depending on how long (a victim has) been submerged could seriously impact the state of the body. As a diver, I always keep in mind that I am returning someone’s loved one to them. It can be a very emotional scene when divers show up and family is in the area watching everything we do. I vividly remember my first recovery and the family was on the bank watching me as I went down. I found their loved one and brought them closure. Dives for evidence are less stressful because you are looking for an object, and as a detective myself, I know that I am searching for evidence for successful prosecution and justice for the victims.”

In the case of body recovery, divers have to overcome the physical and mental tolls of a dreadful and emotional situation.

“The most challenging dive I have been a part of was a dive in a Henry County case,” Kemp said. “A kid was missing for several hours, and the Kentucky State Police called for us to come to search a few ponds where the kid was known to frequent. Kid’s being involved in any police work always makes it hard. We had to go into that dive, knowing that if we found him, he would be deceased. We were able to recover him and return him to his family.”

Louisville and Beyond

Dive team members have to be ready at a moment’s notice, and dive areas are not always in the Louisville area, Crick said.

“Divers are called to the bodies of water where they are needed,” he explained. “It could be anything from the Ohio River at 3 a.m. to a pond in the middle of a pig farm in January. Either way, both dives will add stress to the diver instead of relieving it in the recreational sense. Divers don’t get to pick the conditions, location, time of day, time of year or operation type. We respond where the need is.”

Such was the case in June 2018, when the dive team was called to assist law enforcement in Grayson County.

“We were called upon to assist the Grayson County Sheriff’s Office and Kentucky State Police on a homicide investigation in which they had reason to believe that the murder suspect may have deposited evidence in a nearby farm pond,” he said. “Members of the Underwater Search and Recovery Unit (USRU) responded and conducted a dive operation on the pond. Divers were working in zero visibility water searching mainly by utilizing their hands to feel around. Within a short amount of time, the operation yielded great results. Through extraordinary teamwork, the unit recovered six unspent shell casings, three boxes of unspent ammunition, the barrel from a homemade shotgun and a cell phone that was stolen from the victim in the case. Because of their extraordinary skills and determination, they greatly assisted in the prosecution of the suspect.”

The Grayson County case is one example of how the team will lend a hand where needed. In fact, more than half of the dive team deployments involve assisting other agencies, Crick said.

“The LMPD Dive Team is the largest most highly trained dive team in Kentucky,” he said. “We are very diverse and provide many waterborne services. Our divers work hard each year to be the best diver they can. This job is a calling and not highly sought after.”