Rise of the Warrior Cop
 

An interesting question to ponder in today's world - Is it time to reconsider the militarization of American policing?

Richard

Rise of the Warrior Cop
WSJ, 19 July 2013
Part 1 of 2

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.

The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard no such announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more than 250. Six of the officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart himself was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes, including the murder of Officer Francom.

The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr. Stewart's basement. There was no evidence that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana. Mr. Stewart's father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.

Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints from dozens of citizens about the way drug warrants are served in the city. As for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April, and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the legality of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.

The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.

The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Such police units are trained in methods similar to those used by the special forces in the military. They learn to break into homes with battering rams and to use incendiary devices called flashbang grenades, which are designed to blind and deafen anyone nearby. Their usual aim is to "clear" a building—that is, to remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants as quickly as possible.

The country's first official SWAT team started in the late 1960s in Los Angeles. By 1975, there were approximately 500 such units. Today, there are thousands. According to surveys conducted by the criminologist Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, just 13% of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team in 1983. By 2005, the figure was up to 80%.

The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units has grown accordingly. In the 1970s, there were just a few hundred a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005 (the last year for which Dr. Kraska collected data), there were approximately 50,000 raids.

A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Department of Education's SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially reported to be under investigation for not paying her student loans, though the agency later said she was suspected of defrauding the federal student loan program.

The details of the case aside, the story generated headlines because of the revelation that the Department of Education had such a unit. None of these federal departments has responded to my requests for information about why they consider such high-powered military-style teams necessary.

Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe's emperors and monarchs.

The idea for the first SWAT team in Los Angeles arose during the domestic strife and civil unrest of the mid-1960s. Daryl Gates, then an inspector with the Los Angeles Police Department, had grown frustrated with his department's inability to respond effectively to incidents like the 1965 Watts riots. So his thoughts turned to the military. He was drawn in particular to Marine Special Forces and began to envision an elite group of police officers who could respond in a similar manner to dangerous domestic disturbances.

Mr. Gates initially had difficulty getting his idea accepted. Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker thought the concept risked a breach in the divide between the military and law enforcement. But with the arrival of a new chief, Thomas Reddin, in 1966, Mr. Gates got the green light to start training a unit. By 1969, his SWAT team was ready for its maiden raid against a holdout cell of the Black Panthers.

At about the same time, President Richard Nixon was declaring war on drugs. Among the new, tough-minded law-enforcement measures included in this campaign was the no-knock raid—a policy that allowed drug cops to break into homes without the traditional knock and announcement. After fierce debate, Congress passed a bill authorizing no-knock raids for federal narcotics agents in 1970.

Over the next several years, stories emerged of federal agents breaking down the doors of private homes (often without a warrant) and terrorizing innocent citizens and families. Congress repealed the no-knock law in 1974, but the policy would soon make a comeback (without congressional authorization).

During the Reagan administration, SWAT-team methods converged with the drug war. By the end of the 1980s, joint task forces brought together police officers and soldiers for drug interdiction. National Guard helicopters and U-2 spy planes flew the California skies in search of marijuana plants. When suspects were identified, battle-clad troops from the National Guard, the DEA and other federal and local law enforcement agencies would swoop in to eradicate the plants and capture the people growing them.

Advocates of these tactics said that drug dealers were acquiring ever bigger weapons and the police needed to stay a step ahead in the arms race. There were indeed a few high-profile incidents in which police were outgunned, but no data exist suggesting that it was a widespread problem. A study done in 1991 by the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute found that less than one-eighth of 1% of homicides in the U.S. were committed with a military-grade weapon. Subsequent studies by the Justice Department in 1995 and the National Institute for Justice in 2004 came to similar conclusions: The overwhelming majority of serious crimes are committed with handguns, and not particularly powerful ones.

The new century brought the war on terror and, with it, new rationales and new resources for militarizing police forces. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Department of Homeland Security has handed out $35 billion in grants since its creation in 2002, with much of the money going to purchase military gear such as armored personnel carriers. In 2011 alone, a Pentagon program for bolstering the capabilities of local law enforcement gave away $500 million of equipment, an all-time high.

The past decade also has seen an alarming degree of mission creep for U.S. SWAT teams. When the craze for poker kicked into high gear, a number of police departments responded by deploying SWAT teams to raid games in garages, basements and VFW halls where illegal gambling was suspected. According to news reports and conversations with poker organizations, there have been dozens of these raids, in cities such as Baltimore, Charleston, S.C., and Dallas.

(Cont'd)

Rise of the Warrior Cop
WSJ, 19 July 2013
Part 2 of 2

In 2006, 38-year-old optometrist Sal Culosi was shot and killed by a Fairfax County, Va., SWAT officer. The investigation began when an undercover detective overheard Mr. Culosi wagering on college football games with some buddies at a bar. The department sent a SWAT team after Mr. Culosi, who had no prior criminal record or any history of violence. As the SWAT team descended, one officer fired a single bullet that pierced Mr. Culosi's heart. The police say that the shot was an accident. Mr. Culosi's family suspects the officer saw Mr. Culosi reaching for his cellphone and thought he had a gun.

Assault-style raids have even been used in recent years to enforce regulatory law. Armed federal agents from the Fish & Wildlife Service raided the floor of the Gibson Guitar factory in Nashville in 2009, on suspicion of using hardwoods that had been illegally harvested in Madagascar. Gibson settled in 2012, paying a $300,000 fine and admitting to violating the Lacey Act. In 2010, the police department in New Haven, Conn., sent its SWAT team to raid a bar where police believed there was underage drinking. For sheer absurdity, it is hard to beat the 2006 story about the Tibetan monks who had overstayed their visas while visiting America on a peace mission. In Iowa, the hapless holy men were apprehended by a SWAT team in full gear.

Unfortunately, the activities of aggressive, heavily armed SWAT units often result in needless bloodshed: Innocent bystanders have lost their lives and so, too, have police officers who were thought to be assailants and were fired on, as (allegedly) in the case of Matthew David Stewart.

In my own research, I have collected over 50 examples in which innocent people were killed in raids to enforce warrants for crimes that are either nonviolent or consensual (that is, crimes such as drug use or gambling, in which all parties participate voluntarily). These victims were bystanders, or the police later found no evidence of the crime for which the victim was being investigated. They include Katherine Johnston, a 92-year-old woman killed by an Atlanta narcotics team acting on a bad tip from an informant in 2006; Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old accidentally shot by a California SWAT officer during a 2000 drug raid; and Eurie Stamps, killed in a 2011 raid on his home in Framingham, Mass., when an officer says his gun mistakenly discharged. Mr. Stamps wasn't a suspect in the investigation.

What would it take to dial back such excessive police measures? The obvious place to start would be ending the federal grants that encourage police forces to acquire gear that is more appropriate for the battlefield. Beyond that, it is crucial to change the culture of militarization in American law enforcement.

Consider today's police recruitment videos (widely available on YouTube), which often feature cops rappelling from helicopters, shooting big guns, kicking down doors and tackling suspects. Such campaigns embody an American policing culture that has become too isolated, confrontational and militaristic, and they tend to attract recruits for the wrong reasons.

If you browse online police discussion boards, or chat with younger cops today, you will often encounter some version of the phrase, "Whatever I need to do to get home safe." It is a sentiment that suggests that every interaction with a citizen may be the officer's last. Nor does it help when political leaders lend support to this militaristic self-image, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did in 2011 by declaring, "I have my own army in the NYPD—the seventh largest army in the world."

The motivation of the average American cop should not focus on just making it to the end of his shift. The LAPD may have given us the first SWAT team, but its motto is still exactly the right ideal for American police officers: To protect and serve.

SWAT teams have their place, of course, but they should be saved for those relatively rare situations when police-initiated violence is the only hope to prevent the loss of life. They certainly have no place as modern-day vice squads.

Many longtime and retired law-enforcement officers have told me of their worry that the trend toward militarization is too far gone. Those who think there is still a chance at reform tend to embrace the idea of community policing, an approach that depends more on civil society than on brute force.

In this very different view of policing, cops walk beats, interact with citizens and consider themselves part of the neighborhoods they patrol—and therefore have a stake in those communities. It's all about a baton-twirling "Officer Friendly" rather than a Taser-toting RoboCop.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...LEFTTopStories

Makes me nostalgic for the days we didn't even have a lock on the door to our house. There was never any need.

Things started changing right around the time LBJ came into power.

Thought that was a well done piece.

So where do we draw the line? NYC was able to turn around violent crime without the use of military weapons and tactics.

Maybe it is a use it because we got it syndrome like the NSA collecting info because they can. Is it a mentality that we need to turn back around?

Go back to the "Protect and Serve" that is still the motto of many police departments despite the few Supreme Court rulings stating the police do not have a duty.

:munchin

I read this piece yesterday, and I came to the conclusion that the police are basically looking for a fight when these raids are executed. You know, CQB is just so sexy and all.

It would make more sense to me that since the police control the roads, they should set up surveillance, catch the guy as he is leaving his driveway, and then execute their search warrant as opposed to in the middle of the night. You can ask the suspect if there is anyone else home, and glean operational intel prior to kicking down the door. I realize that there will be circumstances that call for nighttime raids, but given the mistakes that are being made I would think that the police would work to mitigate the errors, especially if there is a chance you are hitting the wrong house or have possibly bad intel.

Since I have nothing to hide and know I am not wanted for anything (well, the wife wants me for housework among other things), I know I would react alot differently being pulled over by a black and white as opposed to a 3am door kicking session executed by a bunch of heavily armed Type A personalities in mixed uniforms screaming commands at me.

You can control more of the environment (to include a time and place of your choosing, as well as cutting down on unknown factors such as building layout and number of potential hostiles) with an ambush versus a siege. An ambush also severely limits the options of the bad guy if executed correctly.

Wait .... WHAT !?!?!?!

The Dept of Education has a SWAT team ????!!!

Next you'll be telling me, the Library of Congress has a SWAT team. Best to get that over due book back .... ASAP. :eek:

Good article.
With home invasions a known entity who wouldn't react to your front door being smashed in.
If I'm dead asleep am I going to hear "Police".....and in my own home would I believe it really is the Police and not a ruse.
Real crooks get it and may go dormant as they know the Police have reason to be there....law abiding citizens do not.
SWAT is used way too much and is not based upon the lethality of the criminal or crime....it is used too much because the SWAT elements look for work to remain relevant.

The real problem is that when the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems tend to look like nails.

The SWAT teams are not cheap.

They (and their equipment and training) have to be justified by utilization.

So instead of Officer Friendly stopping by for a chat, or asking you to come down to the station house, a dozen heavily armed intruders (who have obtained a no-notice warrant), kick in your door at zero dark thirty, cuff everyone up who has survived, and go about trashing your home.

As most communities have few scenarios where a SWAT team would be required, they have been assigned additional duties to include warrant service and raids for less and less severe crimes.

Criminals have adopted this same MO and use it, frequently under the guise of being police, to conduct home invasions.

Resist, and you run the chance of being incarcerated, should you survive.

Compound this with the emerging harassment technique of calling in an anonymous report on someone you dislike in hopes of targeting them for a paramilitary assault on their home or place of business. Nothing like seeing a couple of dozen heavily-armed officers descending to kick in the door and dragging off a potential rival, even if they aren't guilty, right?

LAPD started the SWAT concept with highly trained individuals serving a specific purpose in a huge metropolitan area. Today, most small towns with 10,000 residents or more have some sort of tactical team of dubious qualifications. And yes, to a large extent, the Federal money has a lot to do with it.

I believe that we should qualify and license SWAT teams and limit their employment to serious offenses requiring a paramilitary effort.

TR

LAPD, kinda, sorta, did this under Chief Gates. I used to listen, on a scanner, to them trailing bad guys with a Bell 47 and 4 cars: one ahead, one behind, and 2 flanking. They would follow the guy for hours until he went to roost. A couple of hours would go by while they secured the warrant. When they showed up, invariably, he'd be gone. They NEVER left anyone behind to make sure that the BG stayed at the location. :rolleyes: They were ordered by a court ruling, after the Rodney King incident, to disband this unit. Great idea poorly executed.

Pat

Interesting story from not the most unbiased source:

Florida Nurse Terrorized by US Marshals in Warrantless Raid

Handlers
 

There is something to be said about training the handlers/officials, on when/how to employ these assets.

Interesting article. Too much use of these type of tactics in situations were there was no reason for the amount of force used. Also the judges that sign warrants need to be held accountable for the reason the allowed a no knock warrant. Unfortunately these tactics could quickly escalate a situation that could have been handled with simple police procedures. As I recall it wasn't all the cops in body armor and assault weapons that found the Boston bomber, but a home owner smoking a cigarette in his yard

This is an incredible abuse of power, I would not have opened my door either, the marhsals interview is not too flattering for him.

TR, great response regarding SWATs employment.

Rise of the Warrior Cop
 

Exellent hammer and nail analogy.

I have trained with SWAT teams from all over my region. They range from full-time teams to “throw together” teams. There is a big difference in the two.
Where I see the biggest chance for misuse is when either the team is new or the Command is new. The team being new, or a new focus on it’s use, is just like you said Sir. They have invested a good deal of money making the team operational. Now they are trying to justify their investment. The team has arrested x felons, x lbs of dope, etc. And new Commanders trying to make a name are a bit of problem. But I think the general culture of the department plays a big role in the misuse by Command. The agency who operates aggressively will give an aggressive Commander more latitude to run aggressively.

The professional teams have “Threat Assessment” or “Risk Matrix”tools that determine if the use of SWAT is approved. This helps minimize the influence of overly aggressive Command staff.
Just my .02
Sincerely,

From a retired Cop friend

"These guys are operating on a Movie sense of enforcement.



You read the scenario here.




The better way:

1. Show up in daylight.




2. Come in a police uniform, not like you were going into Fallujah.




3. Make it clear that you have a warrant. (Means a Judge was involved)




4. Have 3 or 4 people, so that one can keep an eye on the person whose house is being searched.







-----

Coming in the dead of night is what burglars do.




This guys "Murder" charge will result in a Not Guilty-- because Self Defense is a popular concept in Utah

Not necessarily so.

I started the SWAT team for my agency in 1980; prior to that the only unit of tactical significance was a counter-sniper team. My department sent an officer from the training section to two different SWAT schools, one in Texas, the other in Florida. When he came back he knew he still didn't have the expertise to train and operate a team. He asked me to help. I told him I would, but only if I could also go through the course/vetting process. He agreed.

It took three months to prepare, but in the end although we had five trainers running the course (including me when I wasn't acting as a student), I taught over fifty percent of the course, running it in most respects like a mini-Ranger school doing things like running a mile in an M-17 protective mask because they have to be able to fight hand-to-hand wearing it.

The main difference between my agency's team and everybody else's ... and still is to a great extent from what I've seen ... is that we run a TOC staffed only by SWAT personnel for every operation. When you combine the intelligence we gather before and during mission execution with the discipline we developed during the training phase (I can place a man in a position in sub-zero temperatures and come back six hours later and know he'll be in the exact same position, not down at the donut shop) we could operate where others wouldn't expect us, make entries in unexpected places (I taught explosive entry to central Indiana tactical units that were involved in security for the Tenth Pan American Games in Indianapolis in 1986 ... long before other non-federal agencies ever contemplated such techniques.) to resolve incidents with minimum injuries and/or loss of life.

I taught them to think outside the box ... and that their most formidable weapon was their brain ... not the 'toys'. So ... it was not only Special Weapons, but also Special Tactics, military in style, conditioned by a different set of rules of engagement ... the rules captured in state statute, federal code and the state and federal constitutions.

Bottom line: whether it was SWAT or regular street operations I always preached that you treat everyone like a million bucks, the only difference was that you always had a plan to kill'em (that you hopefully didn't have to execute); that was the essential element of being prepared to protect and serve.

I had six police action shootings during my thirty-four year law enforcement career, but only one occurred during a SWAT operation.

.

"Warrior cops", they're joking right......
 

I've trained a few SWAT teams and police snipers, that said anyone waking me up at 3:00 AM by knocking down my door had better made peace with their maker before hand as I will do my best to kill them all.

As was mentioned that was extremely excessive force for that situation, and as was also mentioned, the individual should have been met on the street, in broad daylight and arrested.
There is no way anyone would have heard "POLICE" in a dead sleep, the cops know it and we know it. Especially when many bedrooms are opposite the front door. The next noise heard is the front door coming down, yeah, that would get someone's attention, in a very bad way. And those $800 gun lights attached to every swat team members weapon and shined in the face of the victim would make it impossible to identify a police uniform.

There's only one reason for the police to employ a SWAT team, for high risk warrants, this was not a high risk warrant (I don't care if they say it was.... that's BS.). And from reading the article it was a poorly trained team, twelve against one and he wounds half and one is dead. (Not having read the after action report I would venture to say the individual did not do all the wounding and might not have killed the officer either, but he wound up dead anyway, friendly fire maybe, only the police know, 39 shots vs. 250 by police, makes one wonder.)

How well trained are most cops when it comes to shooting situations, not very. Remember the 20 people wounded recently on the streets of NYC when two NYC cops opened fire on one individual? All 20 (I don't remember the exact number) were shot by those two cops, only one was a bad-guy. Remember the recent man-hunt in Calif for the police officer that went on a killing spree? How many cops shot innocent people on that hunt?

I take offense to the Warrior Cop title, cops are not "warriors", real warriors are trained to kill the enemy, cops are NOT trained to kill the enemy but to "defend" themselves while effecting an arrest.

As this swat team found out the hard way, not everyone is going to cower when their door gets busted down in the dead of the night. This was IMO a very bad shoot and a very bad idea to start with.

Save the swat teams for the bank robbers and serial killers, some guy with a few pot plants does not justify a swat team arrest.

"Warrior cops", they're joking right......

That article is so full of facts:rolleyes: It takes you down the road to make you believe that it was a SWAT Entry but it was not. It was a bunch of officers from different agencies composed of a narcotices task force. I guess Strike Force sounds so much cooler and no one is fact checking the writer of the article.

The SWAT word is so thrown out there just like the word Special Forces.

I have to agree with TS. No knock warrant service is usually reserved for drug evidence recovery ... and I'm no big fan of those even though I worked on a narcotics task force for the FBI (never did one). Through first hand observation I've learned that narcotics laws don't work. It's just a big game with enforcement making it big business.

If you don't have that requirement then you don't have that kind of situation.

I would also make the observation that while LEOs are not warriors, the skill sets are very similar -- that's why I became one, and that's why folks like TS are asked to train them. It's the ROE that are very different -- and includes defending others as well as one's self ... the protect part of "protect and serve."

One final note, as a LEO you can't protect anybody if you get dead ... so when I train LEOs I emphasize situational awareness so they don't get dead ... and that, with marksmanship, goes a long way toward winning a gunfight.

.

It seems that the threshold for drug evidence is getting pretty low. There seem to be increasing reporting of arrested offenders turning 'witness' and giving up low level users to appease the arresting/investigating officers who are more than happy to deploy SWAT/tactical teams under the guise that it is a drug bust.

It becomes especially fucked up when they invite Reality TV crews along for the ride....

Columbia, MO SWAT :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF2nM9wsBYs

News article: LINK

He plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of paraphernalia and released with a $300 fine....

This is a glaring example of what SWAT/Tactical Teams should not be....

You are correct, but it doesn't matter to me what it's makeup, it was 12 heavily armed LEO's making entry into a home that, IMO, was not justified given the circumstances.

I've discussed the militarization of American Law Enforcement before and it needs to end. MRAPS, Drones, machineguns, it needs to end.

But ... But .... who will save the children ???

:confused: :eek:

Response to SWAT Teams.
"A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior."

I do wonder why the Departments of Education and Interior need a SWAT team, but I can understand why Fish & Wildlife Service and NASA has them.

Fish and wildlife are tasked with apprehending poachers, who are typically armed. NASA has many high value targets for terrorists.

SWAT teams and the like are an essential part of today's Law-enforcement community. The argument that SWAT teams in small communities are not necessary has no merit. Small communities such as Columbine, Aurora, and Newtown to name a few give fresh examples why these "soft targets" need a response team to address heavily armed offenders. Barney Fife with one bullet in his pocket for his revolver and a kind thought will not stop an offender that has prepared with semi automatic carbines, pistols with large capacity magazines and body armor. Boston's offenders armed with IEDs, attacked hundreds then ambushed and killed an officer.

Domestic terrorism is no longer a hypothetical nor abstract idea. It's a reality that has to be addressed as a constant threat.

"Federal Law prohibits military personnel from enforcing the law within the United States except as expressly authorized by the Constitution or an act of Congress"

Response teams fill the void that exist between patrol officers and the military. The mind set of officers trained to meet these domestic threats are couched in Law and the Use of Force model more appropriate for addressing these attacks within our communities. Military leaders have related that combat Rules of Engagement are not suited for this environment.

Like anything else, the quality of service is only as good as the training and material. Unfortunately training is a rarer commodity than material. Smaller communities utilize their officers in multiple roles that limit their availability to train. Larger departments facing budget woes, have the ability to field dedicated teams but have manpower shortages that would otherwise enable appropriate training for first responders. Every community, large or small deserves officers that are equipped and trained to serve and protect.

Lack of sufficient training and manpower does not negate the need. It does increase the potential for tragedies and liability. All too often politicians place a higher priority on placating those seeking handouts with our taxes, than enabling first responders to train and prepare to meet the challenges of today's threats.

Your post
 

Excuse me.

NASA needs a SWAT Team because of all it's high value targets? Where is the NASA SWAT Team located? Where are the high value targets located? I'll bet most of the high value targets are located a great distance from the SWAT Team.

Fish & Wildlife? You've got to be kidding. Again, is the officer on the beat driving around with one in his pocket? I don't think so.

Everybody needs a SWAT Team?

Don't think so. You get one you want to use it - as we can see from the basic point of this thread.

SWAT Teams have gone way beyond their mission while looking for a job.

What is the average duration of an active-shooter situation? What is the average response time for law enforcement?

SWAT teams allow the Feds to get around that pesky Constitutional constraint about using the military against Americans on US soil.

Department of Education SWAT team, seriously?
 

If some dude told me at a bar that he was a member of the Department of Education's SWAT team, I would have peed my pants laughing.......

And now that I know there actually is a Department of Education SWAT team, I'd still pee my pants laughing if someone told me they were a member.......

The joke is on us, we're paying for this incompetence.......

You've obviously drunk the kool aid. Let me guess, you're on a SWAT team?

That's a general statement, we in my agency nor does the surrounding agencies don't have Drones, MRAPs, and machine guns.

As for making that entry, it's all about leadership and that's in every profession. I can point out countless bad leadership calls within our own Regiment.

Too many variables go into that. Where it happens, size of department, time of day etc.

Large cities can have officers on scene in seconds depending on time (commute traffic, baseball games, foot ball games, etc). Smaller agencies will have longer response times.

Seconds?
 

Did you mean seconds? Or more like minutes for a response?

It takes me about 2 minutes to get the one mile to Food Lion. Granted I don't have a Blue Light - but everybody has to get to the car, crank it up, back it up (notice all the cops in my neighborhood don't back into their driveway) and get rolling then turn in and stop.

Seconds as in police officer onviews the incident vs being dispatched. During one of our big weekend events, police officers onviewed multiple shootings and caught the suspects since officers were on scene in seconds.

"onviews the incident"
 

Could you explain to me what "onviews the incident" means? To me it sounds like they were prepositioned because of something happening.

On view is a term that we (my city) uses when an officer, or deputy, (uniformed or plain clothes) and Inspectors see's something and calls it on on a radio vs being dispatched.

Oh, I see. So what % of the total crimes in your area are "on viewed".

Don't know. I'm not on patrol anymore and I haven't had to look at the stats in years. We have a data base for crimestats by districts. Each of our 10 districts and Airport will have different stats based upon population density, officers, issues, etc. The more busier districts will have more on view incidents vs the slower districts.

I just wanted to
 

I just wanted to know how well "on viewed" stats fit in with SWAT Team use.

Seems to me there would need to be a SWAT Team every 10 blocks or so.

With officers on duty every police department is going to have "on viewed" incidents.

But I'm willing to bet "on viewed" is a very small percentage of total crimes in any given city.

And most of the major events/perps named in this thread were not "on viewed".

That's a good question. Are you talking about full time SWAT Units, Part time, or regional or agencies with a combo? Most major cities have a matrix or risk assessment that dictates when SWAT usage is covered. When I was on the part time team, I on viewed lots of stuff and that was because SWAT was a collotoral assignement and my main assignment was patrol. Being on the full time SWAT Platoon and a SWAT Team Leader, I don't on view anything since my job scope is different.

Of course every dept will have on view incidents, my point and I'm willing to bet is the larger agencies will have the staffing and resources to on view more than smaller agencies.

SWAT v. Regular LEOs
 

Here in Colorado we have the dubious honor of suffering through two of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history; Columbine H.S. and the Aurora Theater shooting.

At Columbine, PD was one scene within a few minutes, but did not go inside the building. They waited for SWAT to show up, before entering the building. This gave the two shooters (I refuse to mention their names, or any other mass casualty shooter, giving them the fame they crave) time to enter the library and inflict the most damage. Once SWAT arrived on scene and penetrated the building, did the two shooters then take their own lives.

It was because of this incident and the incident at Platte Valley H.S. in Baily, that PDs here in Colorado (don't know about the rest of the country) changed their tactics when involved in an active shooter incident.

Now instead of waiting on SWAT, LEOS are now trained/given the green light to enter the building/area and neutralize the shooter, if possible. This was the case in Aurora.

Granted, the LEO station was less than two miles away from the theater, and when the first 911 calls came in, PD was on scene in a matter of minutes. They surrounded the building and had actually entered the theater, but had to pull back out due to the home made "gas" that that shooter had deployed.

This shooter hadn't realized that PD would be on scene as quickly as they were, seeing that he hoped that his improvised explosives that he had in his apt. would have distracted the PD enough that he could have gotten away, as was almost the case. He in fact, almost did get away. He had just exited the theater out the back and was noticed by several LEOs who were securing the back. The LEOs thought he was SWAT, seeing that he (the shooter) was dressed as one; tactical clothing, body armor, k-pot, gas mask, ect. It wasn't until one of the LEOS radioed command asking if SWAT was on scene, that they were told that SWAT hadn't even left the station. It was then that the LEOs in the back did a 180 and secure the shooter.

The problem with the Aurora theater incident was coordinating the other responding assets (EMS and Fire).

IMO ... SWAT teams are over rated. Yes, they provide a valuable asset to the mix, but to use them as they have been/are being used is just short of the U.S. becoming a militaristic country.

As has been mentioned, NASA, Dept. of Fish and Game and the Education Dept ( :rolleyes: ) as well as several other govt. depts. all have SWAT teams. This not only borders on the absurd, but crosses into the realm of, "You've got to be fucking kidding me". Next thing you know, anyone who is on a PDs SWAT team will want to be wearing berets.