Inside the jail cell, the inmate shouted and banged on the wall with a makeshift weapon crafted from a towel wrapped around a padlock.

Outside, four Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies wearing bulletproof vests, helmets and gas masks lined up behind a riot shield and tried to defuse the situation.

“Put the weapon down!” ordered one deputy.

“Come on, Joe,” said another, crouching outside the door with a gun loaded with small balls of pepper powder. “I will use the PepperBall to gain compliance.”

As the shouting continued from inside the cell, the deputies decided to make their move. One positioned the pepper gun through the meal slot in the cell door and fired a few rounds at the back wall. A few seconds later, the deputies slid the door open and ran in.

The activity was all a drill, held in a mock jail cell with a deputy in a heavy padded suit playing the role of the inmate. It was one of the last days of training for the Sheriff’s Office Special Operations Team, a 19-member group poised to become Central Oregon’s second SWAT team.

Sheriff Larry Blanton said the team has been in the works for nearly two years, requiring hundreds of hours of training and more than $45,000 of equipment.

He said it’s not meant to compete with or replace the Central Oregon Emergency Response Team, the regional SWAT team that responds to high-risk incidents like hostage situations, suspects who have barricaded themselves inside a building or major drug busts that could turn violent. CERT has never had to call in outside SWAT help, but Blanton said there are enough complex situations in Deschutes County to warrant a second team.

“You never want to say you weren’t ready for or you didn’t anticipate an issue,” he said. “It’s something we’re trying to get ready for, because our job is to make sure we keep the citizens of Deschutes County safe.”

The team is made up of six patrol deputies, eight corrections deputies and two medics from the Redmond Fire Department, who also work as reserve deputies, under the direction of three sergeants from the Sheriff’s Office.

The new team, Blanton said, will do some of the same work as CERT, but also respond to situations in the jail or at the courthouse that require some stronger tactics, like an inmate who refuses to come out of his cell or the transport of a high-risk inmate.

Deputies on the team were selected in 2008 following a process that included written applications and firearms proficiency and physical agility tests. Since then, the team has trained twice a month and attended longer SWAT training sessions outside of Central Oregon.

In that period, the Sheriff’s Office began accumulating special equipment required for tactical missions. A personnel transporter previously used by the U.S. Forest Service for the Prineville Hotshots was purchased for about $2,500, while a used Suburban from the Bureau of Land Management cost about $6,000. Body armor cost about $2,000 for each team member. Blanton said his office is still tallying the final cost of getting the operation up and running.

The team has also been outfitted with a variety of weapons, ranging from assault rifles to handguns, Tasers and canisters of pepper spray. Much of it was purchased specifically for special operations work.

“We try to carry in as many nonlethal resources as we can,” said Sgt. Dan Bilyeu, one of the team’s commanders. “The object is to resolve the situation, capture the bad guy, with minimal injury to everyone.”

Blanton said the new team will respond only to calls inside Deschutes County, unlike CERT, which covers Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson Counties and is sometimes asked to help out in other areas.

CERT has seven members from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, along with one member from the Crook County Sheriff’s Office, one from the Prineville Police Department and three from the Redmond Police Department. Three medics and an emergency room doctor from Bend also serve on CERT, along with 22 members of the Bend Police Department.

CERT commander Lt. Paul Kansky of the Bend Police Department said his team is called out about 20 times per year. Sometimes a smaller number of CERT members are asked to respond to calls or help out with the Central Oregon Drug Enforcement team, which handles major drug cases.

Kansky said CERT can call in the Salem-based Oregon State Police SWAT team when it needs help but has never had to do so. He said it’s unlikely that the two local SWAT teams would join together on a single incident because the specialized nature of the work requires teams that have trained together.

Blanton said he believes there are enough incidents in Deschutes County to require two tactical teams, in part because a single situation could require a large number of people for long periods of time and leave the county at risk if something else happened.

“If the CERT team is deployed to an incident in the city of Bend or other places in the tri-county region, and we have a situation and need to do something tactically, it doesn’t look good for the Sheriff’s Office not to be ready,” he said.

At a training session on Wednesday, members of the team said they also see a need for another tactical team.

Deputy Mike Sundberg, who currently works on patrol and previously served with the CODE team, said having a group within the Sheriff’s Office learning new skills will help boost the level of operations across the department.

“Having an agency with 20 people trained at this level is huge,” he said.

Michael Molan, a corrections deputy who has worked at the Deschutes County jail for eight years, said he signed up because he wanted to try something new that would help his work in and out of the jail.

“It gives me a chance to provide a service to the community that I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” he said.

Team members have put in long hours, often on their days off. And like the situations they could be called to, the training comes with some added risk.

On Thursday, Deputy Zach Steward was shot in the arm by Deputy Zach Neemann as the two were participating in a building entry training exercise. Steward was treated at St. Charles Redmond and released the same day, and an investigation by the Sheriff’s Office, Redmond Police Department and Oregon State Police determined that the shooting was accidental.

Blanton said the shooting was unfortunate but hasn’t altered the team’s focus or the timeline for when it will become operational. Team leaders will meet early next week to decide when the group will be ready to go.

The team’s debut comes as Blanton’s office is pushing for an expanded jail with a $44 million bond, set to go on the ballot in the May election. Blanton has said growth in the county has created a need for more services and space at the jail — and says that growth has also created a need for a team that can handle complicated incidents at the jail and elsewhere.

“A lot of people would think putting a team like this together comes with a great deal of additional liability, and I would agree with that,” he said. “But one thing that’s important to understand is we have to deal with these situations on an almost daily basis.”