As a teenager, Aaron Landers discovered how he wanted to spend his life by shadowing his father on his job as assistant chief of the Effingham Police Department. “I would ride along with him on the midnight shift,” Landers said. “Once it gets in your blood, that’s it. You have a great time and you honestly can’t find anything else you’d want to do.” After graduating from high school, Landers spent 2 1/2 years as a munitions systems specialist in the Air Force building bombs for aircraft. Landers’ tour of duty included six months in Operation Desert Storm and took him to Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries. His military experience lends itself well to his work as a police officer with the UI Division of Public Safety. He has served on the explosive ordnance disposal team for four years, on the SWAT team for six months and as a field training officer for two years.
Tell me about what you do on the bomb squad.
It’s a joint team between the Champaign and UI police departments, usually with three officers and two commanders from each department. Our home turf is basically District 10, but we’ll go anywhere in the state if needed.
We respond to anything that may involve explosives, such as suspicious packages. We confiscate explosives for smaller departments. We do training for them.
My purpose as bomb-squad liaison on the SWAT team is to (provide expertise) if it is suspected that a person might have booby traps or explosives or if it’s a terrorist type of situation. Then there’s at least one person who knows how to render-safe improvised explosive devices.
How often does the bomb squad get called out?
We average about 12 callouts a year. We haven’t had a lot of suspicious packages in general, but we do run across pipe bombs and stuff. Two weeks ago we went to Watseka when their police found a whole bunch of M80s and M100s, self-made fireworks that are incredibly dangerous. They’ll blow your hands off or kill you. We helped dispose of them. I have to go back to testify in court soon, which is another service that we provide.
What’s your favorite part of what you do?
I like being on the inside of interesting situations and the weird things that you see on TV or in the newspapers. It’s nice to know a little bit more about what’s going on. Every day you run into something different, especially on weekends. You run into some stuff that you really just have no idea where people were coming from when they did it. You have to say about once a day, ‘What were you thinking?’
I really like the explosives work because it always keeps you guessing. I get about one e-mail a day from the ATF or the FBI giving us new information about new kinds of explosives and ways to put things together.
Do you work with robots?
We have a robot, but it’s kind of old. We use it more for surveillance. The robot limits the number of times that we have to actually touch or move explosives. It gives us a huge advantage not to have to touch things, which is kind of important for staying healthy in this career field.
We just put in for a grant, and there’s a relatively good chance that we may get a new robot. It’s a multifaceted robot that’s huge – about 600 to 800 pounds – and can open doors and move people. We’re really hoping to get it because it will help us out a lot.
What’s the most challenging part?
Staying current with new trends, laws and procedures. Also, here on campus we deal with so many different kinds of people. We’ve got people from all over the world, and their ideas on things may be completely different. And you never know if the people you’re going to talk to speak English. You have to feel your way through situations sometimes.
What do you do when you’re not working?
I hate to sound so cliché, but I just like to spend time with my wife and family hanging out and cooling off.