If there is ever - God forbid - an active shooter scenario in Racine County, police departments here will get assistance from agencies in both Milwaukee and Waukesha counties as members of the SMART system.
SMART (Sububan Mutual Aid Response Team) includes all the police departments of Milwaukee and Waukesha counties, with the exception of the Milwaukee Police Department, and it's designed to make calling for assistance during a major incident faster and easier.
Sturtevant Police Chief Sean Marschke explained that SMART is a tier system of eight levels, with Level 1 at the bottom - more local response - and Level 8 being the most dire, which would bring assistance from departments as far north as Fox Point.
"This was a long time coming," said Marschke. "The fire departments have a mutual aid system and now we do, too."
The system was also set up with an eye on not taxing police departments who respond to a SMART call, so the rule is that only one officer from each PD would answer a SMART call at a time. Response time without lights and siren has to be within an hour from answering agencies.
"Only requiring one officer to go, even for the smallest departments like Sturtevant, isn't that much of a hardship," Marschke added. "The one-hour rule non-emergency response is to avoid accidents while officers are on their way."
Most often, local agencies need help with traffic control while they take point for the incident, but SMART also triggers the need for supervisors.
"If there's something big going down, and we have all these responding officers, we would also need additional incident command," Marschke noted.
Mount Pleasant Police Chief Tim Zarzecki said becoming members of the SMART system is good policy because major incidents, from crime to damaging weather events like tornadoes, are unpredictable.
"We don't have to reinvent the wheel, which saves time," he noted. "But when something happens, SMART allows a quickly coordinated response of law enforcement."
Marschke presented the SMART proposal Tuesday to Sturtevant trustees during the regularly scheduled continual committee meeting. Trustees are expected to pass a resolution at the June 18 board meeting.
Zarzecki is making his presentation to the Mount Pleasant Village Board on June 24.
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