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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
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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