SWAT questions


Will people finally notice some of the out of control SWAT operations that result in wrongful deaths and false imprisonment?
Matthew Davis of the BBC is picking up on the SWAT issue that the Agitator Radley Balko has been running with. I saw the story on Drudge, but it looks like Radley is running it too.

I thought this part was telling.

Peter Kraska, an expert on police militarisation from Eastern Kentucky University, says that in the 1980s there were about 3,000 Swat team deployments annually across the US, but says now there are at least 40,000 per year.

"I have no problem with using these paramilitary style squads to go after known violent, armed criminals, but it is an extreme tactic to use against other sorts of suspects," he said.

Mr Kraska believes there has been an explosion of units in smaller towns and cities, where training and operational standards may not be as high as large cities - a growth he attributes to "the hysteria" of the country's war on drugs.

"I get several calls a month from people asking about local incidents - wrong address raids, excessive use of force, wrongful shootings - this stuff is happening all the time," he adds.

It's worth mentioning (and as Mr. Balko points out on his site) that the National Tactical Officers Association is a SWAT advocacy group and the Klinger study they cite has never been peer reviewed.

It's not that libertarians like Radley Balko are attacking the very thought of SWAT teams, it's that they want the debate in public. I firmly believe that most people don't know what is happening with SWAT teams and would be horrified if they knew how they are being used.

I know my own casual inquires kept running into a collective wall of silence, at least in the Arizona agencies I have tried to contact.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - March 21, 2006 at 08:48 AM  Tag


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