Santa Fe gets grant to revive police bomb squad

Santa Fe is going get its bomb squad back. Eventually.

The city announced Thursday that the Santa Fe Police Department received a $24,000 grant from the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management that will pay for three staff members to attend the FBI’s Hazardous Devices School.

The first officer, however, won’t be admitted to the FBI academy until June 2019. According to city spokesman Matt Ross, the typical wait time for the academy is up to 18 months.

The local Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, which had been around since 1981, was down to one member after retirements in the department. Under federal standards, acting police Chief Andrew Padilla explained to The New Mexican, bomb squads have to have at least two people to operate.

Without enough bomb squad staff, police have relied on help from other agencies. For example, when suspicious packages were found last month at the downtown post office and at the Social Security Office of Fifth Street, forcing evacuations and street shutdowns, the local force called in bomb agents from the New Mexico State Police and Los Alamos for help.

Both of those incidents took about three hours to resolve. Neither of the suspicious packages was found to be a threat.

The new grant funds will pay for travel and accommodations for the three officers who will attend training at the Hazardous Devices School, Ross said. The academy itself, he said, is free.

“Our goal is the safest city in the state, in every neighborhood, and that means the flexibility to respond quickly and effectively to a full range of threats to public safety,” Padilla said in the news release. “Getting our [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] team up and running will get us back to being a fullservice community agency, and it’s been a top priority for us.”