The Camden County Sheriff's Office isn't the only area law enforcement agency with a special weapons and tactics team.

The Currituck Sheriff's Office and the Elizabeth City Police Department also have SWAT teams. However, neither has the amount of weaponry as the smaller Camden department.

The Camden Sheriff's Office has 34 automatic weapons — 17 Romanian-made AK-47s and 17 Bushmaster rifles — in its inventory for SWAT use, thanks to an agreement with security contractor Blackwater Worldwide. Under terms of that agreement, Blackwater financed the purchase of the weapons in 2005 and agreed to store most of them at its armory in Moyock.

Camden Sheriff Tony Perry said his department decided against using the AK-47s for its SWAT team, however, settling instead on the Bushmaster rifles.

The AK-47s remained at Blackwater's armory until several weeks ago, when they were confiscated by agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The ATF is apparently investigating the arms agreement between the Camden Sheriff's Office and Blackwater Worldwide.

The Camden Sheriff's Office has 16 sworn deputies serving a county of approximately 9,000 residents.

Lt. Matthew Beickert, of the Currituck Sheriff's Office, said the department, which has 54 total personnel, has a nine-member special emergency response, or SERT team. The SERT team is equipped with approximately 15 weapons: nine semi-automatic AR-15 rifles, four German-made Heckler and Koch UMP .40-caliber submachine guns and two Remington .308-caliber bolt-action sniper rifles.

Beickert, who supervises the SERT team, said the AR-15s were chosen because their longer range was better suited for a rural area. The semiautomatic rifles can also propel ammunition capable of puncturing body armor, he said.

It was this body armor-piercing capability that initially led the Currituck department to form the SERT team in 2000, Beickert said.

Currituck sheriff's officials were alarmed by reports of school shootings as well as by a shootout in Los Angeles in which police weapons couldn't penetrate the crime suspects' body armor.

"That did play a huge part in why we did get the AR-15s," Beickert said.

The department chose the UMP .40s submachine guns because they can fire the same ammunition as the deputies' .40-caliber sidearms, he said.

Currituck Sheriff Susan Johnson said SERT team members work overtime to complete their monthly training. But the expense is worth having an emergency response team, she said.

"We just wanted that specialized trained unit," she said.

The Elizabeth City Police Department, which has 56 sworn officers, has an eight-member SWAT team. Officer Jamie Judge, the team's designated sniper, said the special unit is assigned five AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, three MP5 9mm submachine guns — also made by Heckler and Koch — and several sniper rifles.

The sheriff's department in the area's most populated county doesn't have a SWAT team, Pasquotank Sheriff Randy Cartwright says, because of the expense required to equip, train and maintain one.

That doesn't mean Cartwright is opposed to forming one, however.

"We need to have one in case we have an emergency," he said.

Since Cartwright became sheriff in 1994, he said his office has had to call in the State Bureau of Investigation or the Elizabeth City Police Department for assistance fewer than 10 times, mostly to assist in hostage situations or when deputies serve high-risk search warrants. The last time was during the sheriff's office's search for shooting suspect Nathaniel Graham last year.

The Pasquotank Sheriff's Office employs 44 full-time sworn deputies, serving a county population, which includes Elizabeth City, of about 40,000.

Two other area sheriff's offices also don't have SWAT teams.

Perquimans County Sheriff Eric Tilley said his department, with 12 sworn deputies, is too small to have a SWAT team. Perquimans' population is more than 12,000.

Chowan Sheriff Dwayne Goodwin also doesn't have one for similar reasons. Goodwin employs 19 sworn deputies and his office serves a population estimated at more than 14,000.