The man was sick and hospital-bound. Fearing his Jefferson County home would be burglarized, he had piled rows of boxes throughout the house, creating a maze that concealed three live grenades in different locations — each one rigged to explode when disturbed.
The space between boxes was so narrow “you couldn’t wear a bomb suit,” said Kurt Peterson, 48, a bomb technician on the Denver Police Department’s bomb squad, which joined with Jefferson County’s bomb squad to clear the house. “You could hardly turn.”
It took two days to render the home safe, but the incident — like much of the squad’s work — received little attention.
“A lot of our stuff doesn’t get publicized. That is OK with us; we don’t want copycats,” said Detective Joe Tennant, 56.
The case illustrates life for members of the bomb squad — they have to treat every call with the same seriousness, and they have to be ready to handle anything.
Denver’s bomb squad responded to 95 calls last year, up slightly from the 85 it rolled on in 2010. Most are false alarms, but in about 20 percent of cases, members find dangerous explosives, said Sgt. David Marker, 53, who heads the squad and is chairman of the National Bomb Squad Commanders Advisory Board.
It can be dangerous work, and squads throughout the region frequently help each other to defuse and remove explosives.
In April 1999, after Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris attacked at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Tennant watched a pipe bomb detonate as an Arapahoe County bomb squad member was lowering it into a disposal unit.
Luckily, the bomb specialist saw the bomb ignite and jumped just as the blast sent shrapnel flying. It was the end of a long day that had stretched into darkness. The two teens had left more than 90 explosive devices in the school during a rampage that ended after they killed 13 people, wounded more than 20 others and committed suicide.
Most days the squad faces far less danger.
Some of their time is spent blowing up confiscated ammunition and fireworks. And they constantly drill and practice their trade, refining their ability to remotely control high-tech equipment, such as camera- and microphone-equipped robots that can fire a stream of water powerful enough to penetrate a propane canister, and X-ray machines used to investigate the contents of suspicious objects.
The equipment isn’t cheap.
A new bomb suit — a heavy, protective outfit made from Kevlar and other materials — costs $25,000.
“Officer TNT,” a robot purchased from the department’s general fund in 2001 for $110,000, has had upgrades that boosted the total spent on it to $225,000, Marker said. A smaller, 60-pound robot cost $120,000, with much of the money coming from grants.
There is a steel bomb pot attached to a trailer and pulled by a van. The chamber can contain a powerful explosion. The bomb pot isn’t needed on the majority of calls.
In early December, the squad found two grenades in a pair of military-style ammunition boxes that an unknown person left near the intersection of East 17th Avenue and Emerson Street.
Both were disabled munitions, easily found for purchase and just as easily rearmed — the Jefferson County recluse had done just that, rigging his home to explode using similar grenades after packing them with an explosive.
Days after the squad found those harmless grenades, the unit responded to the University of Denver, where members found an oven containing “pristine military rounds” connected to electrical sensors and computers, Tennant said.
The rounds were part of an experiment that a professor was conducting, unbeknownst to colleagues.
Diligence can lead to criticism, especially when the response ties up traffic. When someone reported a toy robot cemented to a footbridge next to Coors Field, the squad blew it up — but not before rush hour traffic came to a standstill.
The incident sparked some grumbling, but “bombers can make a bomb look like anything,” said Tennant, who took a circuitous route to the bomb squad 13 years ago.
Like other members of the unit, Tennant has held other positions in the department. He was in the homicide unit when his wife, Judith Tennant, suggested that investigating murder cases was aging him.
He felt responsible to the victims of the murders he was investigating and to their survivors, Judith Tennant, 54, said. At the end of a day, he couldn’t leave the job behind.
“He just was tired and looking like he had so much weight on his shoulders,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Is it really worth that?’ “
Tennant took his wife’s counsel seriously.
One day, he came home and said, “I thought about that, and I decided to make a change, so I am going to be going to the bomb squad,” Judith Tennant said.
“I knew he was always interested in the bomb squad, but when he came home and told me, it was quite a shock,” she said.
But she eventually got used to the idea.
“I think the longer you are married to a police officer who is passionate about the job,” she said, “you realize it is more than a job to him — it is a calling.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
