LONG HOURS IN DARK WATERS

For the police officers whose work takes them to the murky depths of Dallas lakes, a successfully completed job usually involves a horrific discovery.

In the summer of 2010 several Dallas police officers, clad in thick dry suits and heavy scuba gear, descended on the shore of a pond in the 6700 block of Northaven in Preston Hollow. Day after day for weeks on end, they took turns searching the inky water for a piece of evidence linked to a 27-year-old cold case. And while they had little luck locating clues related to that particular crime, they did turn up other items, recalls dive team commander Jack Bragg.

“In that little pond, we found six or eight motorcycles and motorcycle parts, a metal safe, several weapons including assault rifles and a handgun,” recalls Bragg. “None, by the way, were what we were looking for.”

The job of a police diver demands painstaking levels of patience. It requires a deeply rooted understanding of procedure and the critical thinking skills necessary to apply it to an infinite variety of high-stake situations, Bragg explains. Team members pride themselves on operating pragmatically even in the most outrageous situations.

“We are very methodical. We are grandmas when it comes to collecting evidence slow and meticulous. We aren’t going to be the reason some guy gets off because evidence was mishandled.”

The Dallas Police Department Underwater Recovery team is made up of about 22 police officers who also are specially trained divers. Team commander Jack Bragg, Captain Jack to most, works full time as the coordinator of the dive team, a DPD fieldservice unit that falls under the SWAT department.

The rest of the divers are posted elsewhere fulltime; two work as patrol officers at the Northwest, others at Northeast, South Central, and Southwest subdivisions, respectively. Others work narcotics or Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR).

When divers are needed typically for the recovery of evidence in a crime, a drowning victim or a submerged vehicle — Bragg rounds up available team members. Calls can happen as often as three times in one day or as infrequently as three times in as many months.

Essentially, Underwater Recovery Team members investigate and gather evidence at underwater crime scenes. They dive in 2060 minute intervals, depending on conditions. They must be as meticulous and clean as an officer at any other crime scene, even though the environments in which they work are filthy and unforgiving.

“You want to know what it looks like under that water?” asks diver Daniel Hale. “Here you go.” He holds up a “blackout mask.” The lenses have been painted opaque black. “That’s what you see down there.”

Low-to-zero visibility, one of myriad challenges faced by underwater investigators, forces officers to feel for the targeted object.

“When you are down there, it is difficult to tell the difference between a foam seat cushion and a human body,” notes Northwest patrol officer/Senior Dive Officer Scott Harn. And there are a lot of foam seat cushions in Bachman Lake, remarks another officer.

The dive team often is called out following a drowning, after Dallas Fire and Rescue workers have exhausted live-recovery efforts.

The first dive, technically, is treated as a rescue, says Bragg, but they have never saved anyone.

“We are looking for bodies.”

When the job calls for recovering a body, Bragg says, the team also must exercise discretion and compassion for the public.

Last May, for example, a man jumped into White Rock Lake and never resurfaced. Even with the aid of side scan sonar equipment, Bragg’s team searched some 16 hours before locating the body. By that time, the drowned man’s bereft parents as well as local media were gathered at the shore.

The divers “bagged and tagged” the young man’s body at the bottom of the lake before bringing him to surface, explains Bragg. They also positioned their small boat in a way that would shield the excavation from onlookers.

It is protocol. “We have a job to do, but we are also thinking about protecting the loved ones, trying to be as respectful as possible,” Bragg says.

Success is always bittersweet, the officers concur — imagine a job in which getting your hands on a dead body or a body part means success.

For our benefit, Bragg asks the group, which also includes Lewisville divers, how many dead bodies they had touched.

“I lost track,” one says. “Too many to count,” another notes.

Logistically, training for public safety diving is formulaic and precise.

On a Wednesday morning in August dive-