SWAT honored for shootout actions  Share with others:  Print
Email Read Later  On April 4, police Sgt. Sam Todd was finishing
a training session in Texas when he discovered that he had 25
voice mail messages, all asking about a gun battle in
Pittsburgh.  The calls came from emergency response officers
from across the country who wanted to know what had happened to
the city's nationally renowned SWAT team and what, if anything,
they could do to help.  Sgt. Todd, president of the Ohio
Tactical Officers Association and a police officer in Kent,
gathered the facts: three Pittsburgh officers were dead, and a
gunman had fired nearly 800 rounds of ammunition during a
40-minute shootout.  But Pittsburgh SWAT members had contained
the bloodshed. The alleged shooter, 22-year-old Richard
Poplawski, had surrendered.  "The firefight would rival stuff
that goes on in the military," Sgt. Todd said last week. "The
fact that they stood in there and did the best they could to get
the guy arrested -- there aren't too many guys,