West Bountiful » Covered in camouflage fatigues and already dragging their feet from a grueling 2:30 a.m. 7-mile run, a group of SWAT wannabes files out from the back of nondescript vans.

Thanks to blackened windows, the men and women -- current police officers -- have no idea where they are.

"You're somewhere in Utah," said Capt. Tim Doubt, a former SWAT commander and 17-year SWAT member, as the 31 recruits huddle next to a chain-link fence and hurriedly sort through backpacks.

The trainers -- current team members who all have been through SWAT school before -- shout orders at the newbies like military drill sergeants. The recruits, clad with Kevlar vests and helmets that add 10 to 15 pounds to their already tired bodies, drop to pushup formation in the mud.

"I can't shoot at you, so we're going to simulate that stress," Doubt yells at the men and women. "I'm taking bets on which one of you is going to throw up first."

This is only day one of six for the 2009 recruits, who on Sunday already have been on the move since 2:30 a.m. The crowd has thinned even over the first three hours -- one recruit dropped out and another needed an ambulance.

The rest are in for a training session that aims to push them to their limits through a harsh test of physical, mental and emotional endurance. They'll get just three to four hours of sleep each night. But most don't even know that yet, Doubt said Sunday.

He acknowledged the trainers will play mental games with the recruits. For example, trainers will wait until the recruits are physically and mentally exhausted, then ask them repeatedly to dump out their packs, retrieve certain objects, then repack their equipment within two minutes.

The stress forces the men and women to show their character flaws. But, Doubt said, they also have to know how to drop everything and "go."

In his 17 years on SWAT, Doubt has had to strip down to his underwear in the middle of an intersection to get in his uniform, and he has run out the door on Christmas morning as his kids were preparing to open gifts.

By the end of the week, about seven, or 20 percent of the recruits, might drop out if 2009 is an average year. For the men and women who make it through, they'll only have a shot at SWAT once existing members leave the team.

For some, the odds are even worse. There are no women on Salt Lake City's 28-member SWAT team, and there have been only two female members in the past decade, said SWAT Commander Lt. Issac Atencio.

After struggling over and over to bash through a door on Sunday morning's obstacle course using a heavy battering ram, then racing to catch her breath after completing what she called a "brutal" course, Tiffany Commagere said women have it harder at some points because they tend to have less upper-body strength.

"But it'll be worth it in the end," said Commagere, an officer of three-and-a-half years with the Salt Lake City Police Department, who currently works the graveyard shift patrolling the west side of the city. "And you get to see your real person on the inside."

Those who broke through a door, leapt a wall, scaled a steep berm, crawled through a mud puddle, hauled a heavy load of tires, jumped a fence and hobbled across a finish line all hope to take on a job more hazardous than their current position. It offers no additional pay and promises to carry the extra hardship of being on call 24/7.

"Why do we do this?" SWAT member Aaron Broomhead shouted as the group stood in a single-file line early Sunday.

One voice returned: "To condition our minds and bodies."

Said another: "Because we love it."

sgehrke@sltrib.com