Kirstie Gentry reshaping west Georgia’s SWAT team

Caroline Silva, Tribune News Service

There were times when Kirstie Gentry wasn’t sure she’d pass all the required training and tests to be part of a SWAT team. During the strenuous weeklong course, she would confide in her best friend, who would push her to stay focused on the goal. “We would talk, and we would say, ‘Just keep doing it. You signed up for it. You can do it,’” her friend, Summer Vise, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Even though it was challenging, she still did it.” Gentry didn’t just complete the course; she made small-town history.

The 27-year-old recently became the first woman to join the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office’s SWAT team, where she serves as a medic. In an already male-dominated field, few women join SWAT teams. Across metro Atlanta, similar milestones are emerging, such as when Fulton County sheriff’s deputy LaShira Norwood became that agency’s first female sniper. Still, agencies tend to have only about one or two women on their SWAT teams. Though Gentry is capable of tearing down a door, clearing a home in search of a barricaded suspect and proficiently using a rifle, her role on the team looks a bit different. The former EMT said she drives a van full of medical equipment, coordinates with the ambulance and treats the wounds of those injured at the scene before the threat is even resolved.

She joined the sheriff’s office in 2024 as a detention officer at the jail. It was then that she began training with the SWAT team as a medic in April. She eventually became a patrol deputy and passed all the required SWAT testing in late October of this year, securing one of just 20 spots on the team. When she isn’t on a SWAT call, she is patrolling parts of the county. “It was intimidating when we first started coming out (to scenes), but the team’s great. They’ve all been super nice, super great to me,” Gentry said while being interviewed recently at the agency’s training facility. “I think everybody on the team has probably taught me something at some point.” While the position of SWAT medic is relatively new to the agency, it’s become essential, team member Sgt. Jeremy McCormick said. EMTs in an ambulance can only get so close to an active scene, but Gentry is right there alongside other SWAT members. She explained she can reach a victim, injured SWAT member or suspect much quicker.

Her years as an EMT prepared her for the job. After graduating high school in 2016, Gentry took classes to pursue a career in nursing. By 2018, she pivoted to EMT school and began working at West Georgia Ambulance, where she also met her husband, Kaleb Finley. She eventually tossed around the idea of becoming a SWAT medic. Finley followed right behind her, and they now work on the SWAT team together. “It’s not the same, but it gave me a good idea of kind of how things ran, so it was a lot easier for me to transition than maybe somebody that was new altogether,” Gentry said about her experience as an EMT.

SWAT school is an intensive 48-hour, weeklong course. Law enforcement members must first “shoot in”; McCormick described it as a fast-paced shooting test where deputies can only miss a target about three times. The course also involves running on a track and up and down stairs wearing a heavy uniform, utilizing a gas mask around live gas, learning to clear buildings and rooms, shooting practice and several tests. The sheriff’s office has had a SWAT team for as long as Chief Deputy Brad Robinson, who joined the agency in 1986, can remember. But it was about 10 years ago that he said the agency upped its standards and began pouring money into resources and equipment. “I don’t like to lower standards for any group of people when they’re doing a job. I think the standards need to be the same because it’s lifesaving measures that we’re out there for, and I think she dug down deep and found that within herself, and I appreciate her doing that,” Robinson said.

Robinson said he hopes Gentry serves as an example to other women who might not think they are cut out for SWAT. Vise, who has known Gentry since her teenage years despite only becoming close in adulthood while working together at West Georgia Ambulance, said she wasn’t surprised when her friend became the first woman on the team, though she was proud. Gentry shared only modest smiles and spoke little about herself while discussing her achievement. Vise said Gentry doesn’t view the accomplishment as anything extraordinary, but simply part of her job as a law enforcement officer. Her co-workers, however, emphasised the importance of her role. Within the team, Gentry is known for being dependable and hardworking, McCormick said.

And when certain situations arise — such as those involving women and children, including pat-downs — Robinson recognized that a female on the team can make interactions smoother and more effective. “Sometimes the women have more of a motherly instinct than the men,” Robinson said, “so I can see where it’s going to be a positive more than a negative to have a female or two on our SWAT team.”