What is the STAR team, and what does it do?
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BINGHAM COUNTY — Lt. Gary Yancey with the Bingham County Sheriff’s Office remembers the day he responded to a call that involved a standoff with a man squatting in a house.
“When the patrol guys showed up, (the man) threatened to put them all in body bags and actually fired at them,” Yancey said.
The incident happened three years ago in the area of 800 North and 150 West. The man had been in the house for at least a couple of weeks. It was under renovation, and the homeowners were not living there at the time.
According to law enforcement, the man barricaded himself inside the home and fired multiple times at deputies. As a result, the STAR and Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office SWAT teams were called.
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Throughout the day, law enforcement attempted negotiations for the man to surrender peacefully, but he continued to fire rounds at them randomly and, at one point, hit a patrol car and an armored SWAT vehicle.
Two members of law enforcement returned fire, which wounded him. He was taken to a hospital and died of his injuries.
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Yancey said it was a “very dangerous” call that would have been hard without the STAR and SWAT teams.
“The equipment we are able to have and the training we are able to have as a team makes it a lot better when we have to work in bigger situations like that,” Yancey said.
What is STAR?
STAR stands for Southeast Idaho Special Tactics and Response Team. It’s essentially a SWAT team with a different name.
Yancey has been with the Bingham County Sheriff’s Office since 1999, and he is the commander of the STAR team. He’s been in the position since October and was previously the assistant commander.
“Mainly, we do the high-risk arrest warrants. It is our biggest job — hostage-barricaded suspects, high risk or risk of people who pose violent threats, active shooter incidents, and major incidents such as a civil disturbance,” Yancey said.
The team can also be used in search-and-rescue missions too.
There are 35 people on STAR, including medics, negotiators, snipers, and an entry team, which approaches homes and buildings.
It’s composed of multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Bingham County Sheriff’s Office, Blackfoot Police Department, Bannock County Sheriff’s Office and Caribou County Sheriff’s Office.
The seven counties
Before 2008, the STAR team was only part of the Bannock County Sheriff’s Office. Then in 2008, Bannock County formed a larger team, with other counties.
The team covers seven counties: Bingham, Bannock, Oneida, Caribou, Franklin, Bear Lake and Power.
“The team is self-governed and is overseen by all seven sheriffs. They are like our board of trustees, you could say,” Yancey said. “The seven sheriffs are the bosses of the team. They are equal bosses. It’s not one sheriff over the other.”
Members dress in green, and they have tactical helmets, goggles and gas masks. It also has a BearCat, which is an armored vehicle, and it has equipment like 40-millimeter launchers for tear gas.
Each county pays money every year into a fund to help get equipment for the STAR team and to keep it running. Yancey said each entity pays $2,500 a year to a general team equipment fund and then has its own budget for uniforms and equipment.
Yancey said the STAR team has been beneficial to all the counties.
“Each sheriff has the ability to activate the team. If they call me and say, ‘Hey, we got this down here,’ they’ll send me what they have … then we’ll respond,” he said.
Cost and manpower
Caribou County Sheriff Adam Mabey told EastIdahoNews.com the team helps a smaller county like his with cost and manpower.
“If I have a situation where I have a barricaded subject… then I can call on them to come over to assist. That way, it provides me a resource that my county couldn’t necessarily afford,” Mabey said. “When they set up, they’ve got the entry teams, they’ve got the sniper teams, they’ve got the ability to have the manpower necessary.”
Bannock County Sheriff Tony Manu echoed Mabey and the importance of the team.
“Cost-effective, manpower and just a lot of it is resources. It’s hard for these smaller agencies to have the resources for big events that could happen. You think about it, you get a major event or an incident, and you could have something that requires your whole sheriff’s office, and if you get in a shooting, you could possibly have your whole sheriff’s office on it if you are a small entity,” Manu said.
Although it could take some time for the full STAR team to reach Mabey’s county and others, it’s considered a good option.
“A lot of those counties that are far away, their whole sheriff’s office might be 10 people. We have people in Bannock County or people in those counties on the team, and so we will have them show up and start taking care of things until we can get a full team there,” Yancey said.
Mabey said that he has eight deputies in his department, with one of them being on the STAR team.
“Let’s say we have an individual who barricades themself in a house. We have a domestic, and the individual locks himself in the house. We know he is armed. He’s not going to come out,” Mabey said. “Then we’ll set up a perimeter, and we will call for the STAR team to come in.”
While in his three and a half years as sheriff, Mabey has not had to call the STAR team out. He said he is grateful for the resource in case of an emergency.
“It’s a vital service. It’s easy to overlook it until you need it. They do things that are high risk, low frequency,” Manu said. “So they deal with the high-risk things that don’t happen a lot, but when it does happen, you are glad that you do have a team because that’s what they deal with.”
Oneida County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Doug Williams is a former member of the STAR team. He remembers two incidents that the team responded to in the county over seven years ago.
Williams said one was a family threat with a suspect that had a knife and a gun. The other incident was a suspect that sliced a woman’s throat open while camping and ran. In both situations, the suspects were arrested without harm.
“They have also helped with high-threat-level search warrants,” Williams said in an email to EastIdahoNews.com. “(STAR) provides an organized, structured response to critical, high risk situations which are beyond the capabilities of our sheriff’s office.”
STAR training
Yancey said the STAR team trains every other Wednesday for four hours in one of the seven counties. He said that at the end of April, it will have a full evacuation at Firth Middle School with kids for training purposes.
“We throw a scenario in to try to help and make sure we’re well prepared,” he said.
EastIdahoNews.com reported on a training that happened in November. There were flashing lights, police cars and loud booms in the Blackfoot area. Various scenarios were run from start to finish. Tear gas canisters were deployed.
“It was a simulated barricaded-suspect scenario and a simulated hostage rescue scenario and then a couple of mini scenarios for K9 deployment,” said Jordyn Nebeker, chief deputy with Bingham County Sheriff’s Office in a previous interview.
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Nebeker had said it was important for the team to train to have experience dealing with different scenarios and learn to make decisions under stress.
Being on the team takes a lot of high-intensity training.
“One requirement that we do have now is they have to attend ‘Hell Week’ in Utah County, which is a week-long, 90-hour hard SWAT training that they have to go down and pass that,” Yancey said. “We’ve been doing that for the last three years, sending a lot of recruits down there.”
The team is here for the community
Yancey said the team tries to be involved in community events as much as possible. It brings the BearCat to D.A.R.E. Day or Shop with a Cop so people can understand what it’s used for and what STAR is.
“You’ll hear people say we got Army trucks. It’s not an Army truck. We’re not military. It’s an armored vehicle. It’s to get us in and out safely. We don’t patrol in it,” Yancey said.
He wants people to know that if a situation arises, the STAR team will be there.
“Everybody we’ve got on the team has earned their place on there. They are very well trained, and I’d go through the door with any one of them,” Yancey said. “We’ve got a great community around here and very supportive.”
