The MPD’s Bomb Unit measures — and defuses — the region’s most explosive threats.

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It was the kind of news alert — in the form of a tweet last December — that makes one pause in the day’s review of events: “Officers have responded to the following locations. [Four Memphis addresses were included in the tweet.] We have been made aware of multiple bomb threats that have been made via email …”

The Twitter account was that belonging to the Memphis Police Department, not some attention-seeking troll with 48 followers you’ll block with one more obnoxious take. When the MPD takes a bomb threat seriously enough to broadcast an alert on social media, we should all take that threat seriously.

Bomb squad. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more intimidating two syllables for a group of human beings. Great nickname for a football team (one that passes a lot) or perhaps a sharp-shooting basketball club. But what about a community’s actual bomb squad, those human beings tasked with monitoring, on a daily basis, what are, quite literally, explosive threats?

Those who take calls from someone merely passing through town, but concerned about an abandoned bag at the bus station. Those who determine if a local high school is legitimately under attack, or merely the stage for yet another ill-advised prank. (We’ll note here, nice and early, that making a bomb threat — whether or not an actual explosive has been placed — is a felony.)

We’re a unit that operates behind the scenes,” explains Lt. Tom Warrick, the man currently calling the shots for the MPD’s bomb unit. “We try and operate low-key, so we don’t initiate a whole lot of public alarm. Most of the calls we go out on turn out to be bogus. If they turn out to be real, there will be public notification.”

Warrick has been with the MPD since 1993, the last 17 years in the TACT unit, a division of specialized personnel trained to handle the hottest of scenarios, from hostage situations and barricades to, yes, bomb threats. The TACT unit is called when a police officer identifies a crisis — or potential crisis — beyond the reach of standard personnel and equipment. Merely qualifying for duty as a TACT officer — let alone a bomb technician — is rigorous, with no more than one percent of the police force ever donning the menacing cobra featured on an MPD TACT officer’s shoulder patch.

“Our testing standards are so high,” explains Warrick. “[Officers] have to be physically fit and pass a psychological evaluation. They have to be able to make good decisions under high stress. They have to be able to hit what they’re shooting at. And work well with other team members. You have to have been an officer for three years, and there’s a bid process based on seniority. But there’s a caveat: a one-month training school. Just being the senior guy doesn’t mean you’ll make the unit.” The MPD likes to keep around 25 officers on the TACT unit, though the number recently dropped to only 14. (Women have served on the unit, though there are none currently.)

The son of a Navy man, Warrick was born in Atlanta and spent much of his youth in Hawaii before his family settled in Memphis when he was 15 (he graduated from Country Day School in 1982). Warrick spent three years in the ROTC program at what was then Memphis State University before joining the Army in 1985. After a couple of years in a Ranger special-forces unit, Warrick served the balance of his tour in Germany and witnessed the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He worked briefly for FedEx after being discharged from the Army in 1991, but felt a calling to be a police officer. As for what led him specifically to defusing bombs and measuring threats of calamity — he joined the TACT unit in 2003 — Warrick shares one significant trait with every other memberof his team.

“Fear not the challenge. Challenge the fear.” — Lt. Tom Warrick, Bomb Unit director for 17 years.

“We’re all type-A personalities,” notes Warrick. “We’re all looking for challenges. We have a saying we keep on the wall: Fear not the challenge. Challenge the fear. Fear is the biggest challenge. If you don’t understand something, people have a tendency to fear it. In order to break that fear, you learn about it. That’s what we do.”

Work as a bomb technician — the FBI administers the final qualifying program, a six-week course in Huntsville, Alabama — doesn’t necessarily translate into a career. Officers sometimes rotate into and out of the unit. “Some people use it to up their game,” says Warrick, “to improve their skills as an officer; then they move on. We’ve had guys move from the TACT unit to aviation.” Among the MPD’s TACT officers, seven serve on the bomb unit, with one — Sgt. Sean Silvers — devoted solely to bomb duty.

“We learn everything from basic electronics and robotics to X-ray interpretation,” says Warrick. “Identifying the components of a device. Determining if a suspicious package is an actual device, or just a suitcase with homeless clothes in it.”

A native of New Jersey, Silvers found his way to the Mid-South when he went to grad school at Arkansas State, where he studied communications. (As an undergrad, Silvers studied criminal justice at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City.) If you see a truck in your neighborhood with what looks like an enormous black crock-pot — a Single Vent Explosive Containment Vessel — on the trailer, it’s likely Silvers behind the wheel. If a bomb can’t be safely defused where it’s discovered, it will be transferred in the containment tank. “If we have unstable explosives on the scene, we’ll use our explosives [also on the trailer] to countercharge those,” explains Silvers. “The containment vessel is designed to transfer [explosive energy] upward. We try to avoid overpasses.” In more than 15 years on the job, Silvers has not witnessed a bomb exploding within the containment vessel.

One invaluable member of the bomb unit doesn’t have to wrestle with the challenge of fear, and the loss of life or limb would be measured not in heartache, but in financial expense. The Remotec F6A is plugged by the U.S. Army as being “the most versatile, heavy-duty robot on the market. Speed and agility unite to make it the first choice for a wide range of missions, and its proven stair-climbing ability, rugged and dependable chassis, and an arm capable of lifting 65 pounds mean that the F6A is more than strong enough to handle any task.” Including the task of safely securing — “mitigating” in bomb-unit parlance — an explosive.

The F6A weighs close to 900 pounds and is equipped with LED lighting, cameras on the front and rear, and a gripper. In addition, the robot has the most powerful “water gun” known to man, a twin-barrel apparatus capable of blasting an explosive device. “Water is our primary disruptor,” explains Warrick. “It can do awesome work. It can blow open a package and scatter it into a hundred pieces.” The robot can be remote-controlled from a distance of 500 yards. “As long as we can see it, we can control it,” says Warrick. The MPD’s unit is almost 20 years old, but underwent a major upgrade — one that cost nearly $100,000 in grant money — in 2007.

The squad has a mobile trailer that serves as a control room: the Bomb Unit Response Equipment Trailer. It features a closet that houses the bomb suit, computers for relaying X-ray images, and a panel for navigating the F6A.

In a scenario in which the F6A cannot access a device (enclosed spaces, complicated accessibility options), an officer will don the bomb suit. Weighing 80 pounds and costing upwards of $40,000, the suit covers every inch of a human body, with a helmet that would fit in the latest Marvel blockbuster. Layers of Kevlar, plastic, and foam overlap to absorb and deflect the projectiles and air pressure of an explosion. “When something explodes,” notes Warrick, “you have heat, fire, fragmentation, and over-pressure. Those are the four elements of an explosion.” The suit has to be replaced every five years, making it a premium budget item for the bomb unit.

Any call — at any time of day or night — must be taken seriously by Warrick and his team. Among those challenges they embrace: the knowledge that most “threats” end when the phone is hung up. Nonetheless, man-hours must be sacrificed to confirming an actual explosion is not imminent.

“We investigate the threats,” emphasizes Warrick. “We don’t necessarily send out alerts for all threats. A patrol officer will arrive and make the first assessment. Based on a business owner’s or school official’s feeling on the validity of the threat, he’ll take a report. We get school bomb threats all the time. Kids know bomb-threat protocol is to evacuate the school. We’ll send out a K-9 unit — we have explosive-sniffing canines — [if the threat is considered legitimate].”

“When we have to blow up a device, we’ll rebuild it. We’re trying to figure out the mentality of the [bomb-maker]. We can always put it back together.” — Lt. Tom Warrick

According to Warrick, profiling the next murderous bomb attack is all but impossible. If someone is angry enough, with an agenda and the means to make an explosive, the crime is easy to execute. American history is filled with the names of killers who acted on religious beliefs; as enemies of technology or the government; as merely attention-seekers. In 2012, here in Memphis, two explosives detonated at Craigmont High School. (There were no fatalities and only one injury that required a hospital visit.) The deadly component of that bomb? Drano.

Remarkably, the MPD bomb unit has not lost an officer under Warrick’s watch. “I’ve been lucky,” says Warrick. “Safety is our biggest concern.” If an explosive is identified, the bomb unit alerts the media — to clear any public space — and calls a fire-and-rescue team to join the operation, on the off chance of a detonation during the “render safe activity.”

“We assess the threat based on the size and possible net explosive weight,” explains Warrick. “We establish a safe stand-off distance, evacuate houses, cars. We establish a perimeter. Then we’ll go into threat-assessment mode. We try and do everything as remote as possible, with the robot. Using the robot’s X-ray capability, we’ll determine if a device has all the components — starting with a switch or initiation source — to be an explosive and then how best to defeat it, to render it safe.”

According to the ATF (the agency was renamed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001), 25 percent of explosions in 2016 — those considered and recorded as incidents — were accidental. A gas leak. Kids playing with matches in the wrong place. Bombings accounted for 63 percent of the explosions that year with more than half of those classified as non-IED (Improvised Explosive Device): commercial materials, military grade, fireworks, or homemade explosives. There’s no uniform ingredient, no standard m.o. for a bomb squad to study and master. Which makes the job of a bomb tech all the more — that word again — challenging.

“When we have to blow up a device,” notes Warrick, “we’ll go back and rebuild it. We’re trying to figure out the mentality of the [bomb-maker]. We can always put it back together.”

Those four simultaneous threats last December? The MPD’s tweet concluded with the following: “Each location has been checked and no devices have been located. This is an ongoing investigation.” An all-too-typical false alarm, but one every member of the bomb unit welcomes as opposed to an actual life-threatening weapon of destruction.

The MPD bomb squad is a team of pros accustomed to the absence of ordinary in its coverage of a 250-mile radius surrounding Memphis. “A bomb unit doesn’t have a typical day,” says Warrick. “Training, maintaining our equipment, and waiting on that call-out. We have a mutual-aid agreement with the FBI. Any of our bomb techs can be used in the event of a major catastrophe in another jurisdiction. And we’ll send them.”