a beeline down a row of neatly trimmed lawns and low bushes.

Spitler slows for the briefest of moments and glances at the uniformed officer, who also has gotten out of his car. He, too, is running, gun in hand, after the fleeing suspect who has started pulling small plastic bags of white powder out of his pockets, dropping them like breadcrumbs along the way.

"This is where age and experience comes in," Spitler remarks. "We're just going to drive along here because he's going to collapse here in just a minute."

On cue, the suspect stops suddenly in the middle of someone's yard and Spitler swerves his van onto the curb. He jumps out and instantly has the suspect on the ground; it's quite a few paces before the patrolback, make the killing shot if necessary.

"I've worked with Skip for 15 years," says Spitler. "I just feed off him. I know where he's going to go, what he's going to do."

Dave Haas made the squad three years ago, Bob Knapp two years ago. Rich Shore is the newest, with a year on the unit. Despite their relative youth, all were experienced police officers before they joined the SAU.

They take the most ribbing. And they're still put a little farther back in the stack than they'd like to be. But when Dave Haas was shot by an armed robber two years ago, it was Fred Spitler who watched over him in the operating room while surgeons removed a bullet from his stomach.

Four months later, Haas was there with