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Former cop here: I think the biggest misconception about SWAT teams is that what makes them different is that they carry rifles instead of handguns. (In fact, i

Former cop here: I think the biggest misconception about SWAT teams is that what makes them different is that they carry rifles instead of handguns. (In fact, in most departments every officer carries a rifle in his/her patrol car.) A SWAT team is a group of officers who train as a team for high-risk situations like drug warrants and, yes, hostage situations. By contrast, most other officers are trained to respond solo or in pairs, and often don't spend nearly as much time practicing things like room clearance. If the police are going to break down your door, you want the best-trained most experienced officers doing it. The SWAT guys are calmer, more professional, and less likely to pull the trigger when startled.

Johnny555 8y ago
If the police are going to break down your door But I don't, in general, want the police to break down my door at all since they are almost certainly at the wrong address. And there's a pretty good chance that they'll shoot my dog (who will be barking menacingly from the stairs) even if they don't shoot me.
hobls 8y ago
I’m sure that’s true somewhere like NYC, and maybe it’s even true in Seattle, but it appears to be distinctly less true in smaller towns. In small town America it’s literally just the same cops playing army dress up.
- gingerbread-man 8y ago
  It depends on how large the town is. Even in medium-sized cities (pop. <1M), it's rare to have a dedicated full-time tactical team. Usually it's a group of 6-20 patrol officers who get a few days each month to train together for various scenarios.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    The question is what training they get. I bet at least in some areas it's a lot about cool weapons and how to run into a building, not about deescalation. I remember years ago there was an incident in Northern Virginia where they went after a few guys who were betting on football http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011205936.html?noredirect=on http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01.... So the cops went in with a swat team and ended up shooting one guy. No weapons were on site and nobody there had a criminal history. The cops just went in with full force and when somebody made a wrong move they shot him. Same for for the mayor of Berwyn Heights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor%27s_residence_drug_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor.... Excessive force from start without even trying to solve it peacefully. Stuff like this simply shouldn't happen. It seems a lot of swat teams only focus on using force.
  - hobls 8y ago
    Yeah, that’s why I said maybe Seattle. I sort of suspect not. (And I live here.)
elygre 8y ago
People with skills often want to use those skills. Train someone to break down doors, and they will want to break down doors. (Can also be seen in tech: send someone to a training class on your fancy networking gear, and they will immediately starts fiddling with it. Things are sure to go south.)
- gingerbread-man 8y ago
  This is VERY true, particularly when it comes to the #1 use of tactical teams: "high-risk" warrant service. When judges issue search warrants, they rarely if ever specify how that warrant is to be executed: uniformed officers knocking on your front door, or a SWAT team throwing flashbangs in through your bedroom window.
  - PJDK 8y ago
    This response points towards a fairly simple fix. To execute a warrant with a swat team or similar, that should also require a judges approval based on some appropriate formula.
flatline 8y ago
But most solo officers or those in pairs don’t have a high expectation of an armed response when responding to a routine call. I mean, there is a certain background expectation of encountering violence for a police officer, but when a SWAT team is called that expectation is basically a certainty. So while the officers may be trained, they are intending to act forcefully from the outset. I think the best thing to come from this is tempering that expectation with the possibility that a call could be swatting.
- gingerbread-man 8y ago
  You'd be surprised by how many SWAT calls are anticlimactic: basically all of them. The #1 thing SWAT teams do is serve high-risk search warrants on drug houses at 4am when everyone inside is asleep. Contrast that with a rookie officer who just got dispatched to a "house, five hostages inside, caller says they're being held at gunpoint."
  - pas 8y ago
    Executing high-risk search warrants on drug houses seems pretty intense, even if they don't have to fire a single bullet. Most of the cases involves people that are armed and might be under the influence of some drug, making their behavior erratic and irrational. And for this SWAT seems to be necessary. Checking out prank calls in the middle of the day should not require them, unless it's a real hostage situation. (Answering a home invasion without securing the perimeter seems a very dumb idea, yet that happens most of the case, the "team" stands around at the front door yelling and then breaching the door.)
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    All these situation should be handled by surrounding the house with overwhelming force and then calmly assessing the situation, not just running in after a few seconds.
  - tehwebguy 8y ago
    Sounds to me like this is 100% unnecessary and only happens because cops/SWAT think it sounds more fun to suit up & kick in some doors at 4:00 AM than to do proper boring surveillance and wait outside in the daylight.
partiallypro 8y ago
Evidence suggests otherwise in regards to them being "calm." Look up "puppycide" perpetuated by SWAT teams, or incidents of SWAT teams raiding the wrong house and even killing people completely unarmed. The fact is that there shouldn't be a "no knock" raid because of a phone call. Some SWAT raids can yield as little as 8oz of pot and everyone pats themselves on the back as if it were justified. It's utterly ridiculous. I don't care if someone calls and says Osama Bin Laden is alive and well in a Missouri suburb, no knock raids are not needed 95% of the time. Even elite forces survey the area and situation before raiding it, if at all; but not the police. How insane is it that the police have lower rules of engagement than a Marine in Afghanistan?
arminiusreturns 8y ago
You are both wrong and missing the point, which is; they shouldn't be breaking down doors in the first place based off the shoddy info given, full fucking stop. See the professionalism of this Arizona SWAT for an example https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4LzwZV6hFQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4LzwZV6hFQ I'm a former Marine who was trained in advanced CQB/CQC and have crosstrained all kinds of LEAs/LEOs and SWAT tends to be the very worst trained, undisciplined bunch of wannabe's this side of the equator. It actually became a joke in the shoot house how many former POGs who never saw combat and were naively gung-ho gear-queers made up the majority of the SWATs coming through. We had more trigger discipline in a fucking combat zone than these guys. tldr; quit your bullshit
- hef19898 8y ago
  Could be an inherent risk of militarizing a police force. You have the gear to look the like, and gear wants to be used. Add people attracted more by the gear and not the task at hand to superiors wanting to use the gear and it can get ugly. When your only tool is hammer eyery problem tunrs into a nail, right? EDIT: When German police was on alert two years ago after some incidents they did send 20-something guys with SMGs to guard and patrol in trains. Usually I choose a car they already passed for my communte, somehow I didn't have a lot of confidence in how they would react if there really was a situation that warrented police. Normally in Germany police is all about deescalation, but they don't carry automatic most of the time neither.
- pas 8y ago
  https://abcnews.go.com/US/arizona-swat-team-cleared-marines-killing/story?id=13842029 https://abcnews.go.com/US/arizona-swat-team-cleared-marines-... :( I can't believe how amateur these guys are. They just stand there, no one checked the corner, no one was looking at not-the-fucking-front-door, and when they finally decided to go in, almost everyone was in the line of potential incoming fire. 13 year-olds do it better in Call of Mario.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
anon08142018 8y ago
Just read a book called "Rise of the warrior cop" that explains many SWAT teams were funded by the federal government, not out of necessity, just due to politics. There were many, many, citations that would suggest SWAT members are not trained any better and tend to in fact be overly aggressive and not held to many standards at all.

Johnny555 8y ago

If the police are going to break down your door But I don't, in general, want the police to break down my door at all since they are almost certainly at the wrong address. And there's a pretty good chance that they'll shoot my dog (who will be barking menacingly from the stairs) even if they don't shoot me.

hobls 8y ago

I’m sure that’s true somewhere like NYC, and maybe it’s even true in Seattle, but it appears to be distinctly less true in smaller towns. In small town America it’s literally just the same cops playing army dress up.

gingerbread-man 8y ago
It depends on how large the town is. Even in medium-sized cities (pop. <1M), it's rare to have a dedicated full-time tactical team. Usually it's a group of 6-20 patrol officers who get a few days each month to train together for various scenarios.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  The question is what training they get. I bet at least in some areas it's a lot about cool weapons and how to run into a building, not about deescalation. I remember years ago there was an incident in Northern Virginia where they went after a few guys who were betting on football http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011205936.html?noredirect=on http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01.... So the cops went in with a swat team and ended up shooting one guy. No weapons were on site and nobody there had a criminal history. The cops just went in with full force and when somebody made a wrong move they shot him. Same for for the mayor of Berwyn Heights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor%27s_residence_drug_raid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor.... Excessive force from start without even trying to solve it peacefully. Stuff like this simply shouldn't happen. It seems a lot of swat teams only focus on using force.
- hobls 8y ago
  Yeah, that’s why I said maybe Seattle. I sort of suspect not. (And I live here.)

elygre 8y ago

People with skills often want to use those skills. Train someone to break down doors, and they will want to break down doors. (Can also be seen in tech: send someone to a training class on your fancy networking gear, and they will immediately starts fiddling with it. Things are sure to go south.)

gingerbread-man 8y ago
This is VERY true, particularly when it comes to the #1 use of tactical teams: "high-risk" warrant service. When judges issue search warrants, they rarely if ever specify how that warrant is to be executed: uniformed officers knocking on your front door, or a SWAT team throwing flashbangs in through your bedroom window.
- PJDK 8y ago
  This response points towards a fairly simple fix. To execute a warrant with a swat team or similar, that should also require a judges approval based on some appropriate formula.

flatline 8y ago

But most solo officers or those in pairs don’t have a high expectation of an armed response when responding to a routine call. I mean, there is a certain background expectation of encountering violence for a police officer, but when a SWAT team is called that expectation is basically a certainty. So while the officers may be trained, they are intending to act forcefully from the outset. I think the best thing to come from this is tempering that expectation with the possibility that a call could be swatting.

gingerbread-man 8y ago
You'd be surprised by how many SWAT calls are anticlimactic: basically all of them. The #1 thing SWAT teams do is serve high-risk search warrants on drug houses at 4am when everyone inside is asleep. Contrast that with a rookie officer who just got dispatched to a "house, five hostages inside, caller says they're being held at gunpoint."
- pas 8y ago
  Executing high-risk search warrants on drug houses seems pretty intense, even if they don't have to fire a single bullet. Most of the cases involves people that are armed and might be under the influence of some drug, making their behavior erratic and irrational. And for this SWAT seems to be necessary. Checking out prank calls in the middle of the day should not require them, unless it's a real hostage situation. (Answering a home invasion without securing the perimeter seems a very dumb idea, yet that happens most of the case, the "team" stands around at the front door yelling and then breaching the door.)
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  All these situation should be handled by surrounding the house with overwhelming force and then calmly assessing the situation, not just running in after a few seconds.
- tehwebguy 8y ago
  Sounds to me like this is 100% unnecessary and only happens because cops/SWAT think it sounds more fun to suit up & kick in some doors at 4:00 AM than to do proper boring surveillance and wait outside in the daylight.

partiallypro 8y ago

Evidence suggests otherwise in regards to them being "calm." Look up "puppycide" perpetuated by SWAT teams, or incidents of SWAT teams raiding the wrong house and even killing people completely unarmed. The fact is that there shouldn't be a "no knock" raid because of a phone call. Some SWAT raids can yield as little as 8oz of pot and everyone pats themselves on the back as if it were justified. It's utterly ridiculous. I don't care if someone calls and says Osama Bin Laden is alive and well in a Missouri suburb, no knock raids are not needed 95% of the time. Even elite forces survey the area and situation before raiding it, if at all; but not the police. How insane is it that the police have lower rules of engagement than a Marine in Afghanistan?

arminiusreturns 8y ago

You are both wrong and missing the point, which is; they shouldn't be breaking down doors in the first place based off the shoddy info given, full fucking stop. See the professionalism of this Arizona SWAT for an example https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4LzwZV6hFQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4LzwZV6hFQ I'm a former Marine who was trained in advanced CQB/CQC and have crosstrained all kinds of LEAs/LEOs and SWAT tends to be the very worst trained, undisciplined bunch of wannabe's this side of the equator. It actually became a joke in the shoot house how many former POGs who never saw combat and were naively gung-ho gear-queers made up the majority of the SWATs coming through. We had more trigger discipline in a fucking combat zone than these guys. tldr; quit your bullshit

hef19898 8y ago
Could be an inherent risk of militarizing a police force. You have the gear to look the like, and gear wants to be used. Add people attracted more by the gear and not the task at hand to superiors wanting to use the gear and it can get ugly. When your only tool is hammer eyery problem tunrs into a nail, right? EDIT: When German police was on alert two years ago after some incidents they did send 20-something guys with SMGs to guard and patrol in trains. Usually I choose a car they already passed for my communte, somehow I didn't have a lot of confidence in how they would react if there really was a situation that warrented police. Normally in Germany police is all about deescalation, but they don't carry automatic most of the time neither.
pas 8y ago
https://abcnews.go.com/US/arizona-swat-team-cleared-marines-killing/story?id=13842029 https://abcnews.go.com/US/arizona-swat-team-cleared-marines-... :( I can't believe how amateur these guys are. They just stand there, no one checked the corner, no one was looking at not-the-fucking-front-door, and when they finally decided to go in, almost everyone was in the line of potential incoming fire. 13 year-olds do it better in Call of Mario.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

anon08142018 8y ago

Just read a book called "Rise of the warrior cop" that explains many SWAT teams were funded by the federal government, not out of necessity, just due to politics. There were many, many, citations that would suggest SWAT members are not trained any better and tend to in fact be overly aggressive and not held to many standards at all.