SWAT

Definition

The United States National Tactical Officers Association's definition of SWAT is:

History

Riots and political conflicts of the 1960s

According to the Historical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, the term "SWAT" was used as an acronym for the "Special Weapons and Tactics" established as a 100-man specialized unit in 1964 by the Philadelphia Police Department in response to an alarming increase in bank robberies. The purpose of this unit was to react quickly and decisively to bank robberies while they were in progress, using a large number of specially trained officers who had a great amount of firepower at their disposal. The tactic worked and was used to resolve other types of incidents involving heavily armed criminals.{{cite book

The LAPD promoted what became known as SWAT teams for a variety of reasons. After the racially-charged Watts riots in Los Angeles in August 1965, the LAPD began considering tactics it could use when faced with urban unrest, rioting, or widespread violence. Daryl Gates, who led the LAPD response to the riots, would later write that police at the time did not face a single mob, but rather "people attacking from all directions". New York University professor Christian Parenti has written that SWAT teams were originally conceived of as an "urban counterinsurgency bulwark".{{cite book | url-access = registration

Another reason for the creation of SWAT teams was the fear of lone or barricaded gunmen who might outperform police in a shootout, as happened in Austin with Charles Whitman.

After the LAPD's establishment of its own SWAT team, many law enforcement agencies in United States established their own specialized units under various names. Gates explained in his autobiography Chief: My Life in the LAPD that he neither developed SWAT tactics nor the associated and often distinctive equipment; but that he supported the underlying concept, tried to empower his people to develop it, and generally lent them moral support.{{cite web | access-date = June 19, 2006

SWAT-type operations were conducted north of Los Angeles in the farming community of Delano, California on the border between Kern and Tulare Counties in the San Joaquin Valley. At the time, the United Farm Workers union led by César Chavez was staging numerous protests in Delano in a strike that would last over five years from 1965 to 1970. Though the strike never turned violent, the Delano Police Department responded by forming ad-hoc SWAT-type units involving crowd and riot control, sniper skills, and surveillance. Television news stations and print media carried live and delayed reportage of these events across the United States. Personnel from the LAPD, having seen these broadcasts, contacted Delano and inquired about the program. One officer then obtained permission to observe the Delano Police Department's special weapons and tactics units in action, and afterwards, he took what he had learned back to Los Angeles, where his knowledge was used and expanded on to form the LAPD's own first SWAT unit.

John Nelson was the officer who conceived the idea to form a specially trained and equipped unit in the LAPD, intended to respond to and manage critical situations involving shootings while minimizing police casualties. Inspector Gates approved this idea, and he formed a small select group of volunteer officers. This first SWAT unit initially consisted of fifteen teams of four men each, making a total staff of sixty. These officers were given special status and benefits, and were required to attend special monthly training sessions. The unit also served as a security unit for police facilities during civil unrest. The LAPD SWAT units were organized as "D Platoon" in the Metro division.{{cite web | access-date = June 19, 2006

Early police powers and tactics used by SWAT teams were aided by legislation passed in 1967–68 with the help of Republican House representative Donald Santarelli. The legislation was promoted within the context of fears over the civil rights movement, race riots, the Black Panther Party, and the emerging war on drugs.

The first significant deployment of the LAPD SWAT was on December 9, 1969, when an attempt by the LAPD to serve arrest warrants against the Black Panthers led to a four-hour standoff at their Los Angeles headquarters at 41st and Central, during which over 5,000 rounds were exchanged between police and the Panthers. During the shootout, Daryl Gates called the Department of Defense, requesting and receiving permission to use a grenade launcher; however, it was never actually used. The Panthers eventually surrendered, with four Panthers and four officers being injured. All six arrested Panthers were acquitted of the most serious charges brought against them, including conspiracy to murder police officers, because it was ruled that they acted in self-defense.

By 1974, there was a general acceptance of SWAT as a police resource in Los Angeles.

1974 Symbionese Liberation Army shootout

On the afternoon of May 17, 1974, elements of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a group of heavily armed left-wing guerrillas, barricaded themselves in a residence on East 54th Street at Compton Avenue in Los Angeles. Coverage of the siege was broadcast to millions via television and radio and featured in the world press for days afterwards. SWAT teams engaged in a several-hour gun battle with the SLA; no police were wounded, but the six SLA members died in the conflict, which ended when the house caught fire and burned to the ground.

By the time of the SLA shootout, SWAT teams had reorganized into six 10-man teams, each team being divided further into two five-man units, called elements. An element consisted of an element leader, two assaulters, a scout, and a rear-guard. The normal complement of weapons was a sniper rifle (a .243-caliber bolt-action, based on the ordnance expended by officers at the shootout), two .223-caliber semi-automatic rifles, and two shotguns. SWAT officers also carried their service revolvers in shoulder holsters. Standard gear included a first aid kit, gloves, and a military gas mask. At a time when officers were usually issued six-shot revolvers and shotguns, it was a significant change to have police armed with semi-automatic rifles. The encounter with the heavily armed Symbionese Liberation Army, however, sparked a trend towards SWAT teams being issued body armor and automatic weapons of various types.

A report issued by the LAPD after the SLA shootout offers one of the few firsthand accounts by the department regarding SWAT history, operations, and organization. On page 100 of the report, the department cites four trends which prompted the development of SWAT. These included riots such as the Watts riots, which in the 1960s forced the LAPD and other police departments into tactical situations for which they were ill-prepared; the emergence of snipers as a challenge to civil order; political assassinations; and the threat of urban guerrilla warfare by militant groups. "The unpredictability of the sniper and his anticipation of normal police response increase the chances of death or injury to officers. To commit conventionally trained officers to a confrontation with a guerrilla-trained militant group would likely result in a high number of casualties among the officers and the escape of the guerrillas." To deal with these under conditions of urban violence, the LAPD formed SWAT, notes the report. The report states on page 109, "The purpose of SWAT is to provide protection, support, security, firepower, and rescue to police operations in high personal risk situations where specialized tactics are necessary to minimize casualties."{{cite web | access-date = July 4, 2008 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120226115805/http://www.trutv.com/newname.html | archive-date = February 26, 2012

War on drugs: 1980s and 1990s

In 1981, the U.S. Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, giving police access to military intelligence, infrastructure, and weaponry in the fight against drugs. Reagan subsequently declared drugs to be a threat to U.S. national security. In 1988 the Reagan administration encouraged Congress to create the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Program. The program modified existing federal aid structures to local police, making it easier to transfer money and equipment to fight the war on drugs. Police forces also received increased assistance from the DEA. The money resulted in the creation of many narcotics task forces, and SWAT teams became an important part of these forces.{{cite book | title-link = The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

In 1972, paramilitary police units launched a few hundred drug raids annually within the United States. In the early 1980s, SWAT drug raid numbers increased to 3000 annually, and by 1996, 30,000 raids annually. During the 1990s, according to The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, weapons donations from the Department of Defense greatly bolstered the number of SWAT teams and the extent of their operations. The paper reported that the military transferred nearly 100,000 pieces of military equipment to Wisconsin police departments in the 1990s.

Criminal justice professors Peter Kraska and Victor Kappeler, in their study Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units, surveyed police departments nationwide and found that their deployment of paramilitary units had grown tenfold between the early 1980s and late 1990s.{{cite journal

Columbine shooting

The Columbine High School massacre in Colorado on April 20, 1999 was another seminal event in SWAT tactics and police response. As perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were shooting students and staff inside the school, officers did not intervene in the shooting, but instead set a perimeter as they were trained to do. By the time they did enter the school, 12 people were killed and Harris and Klebold had committed suicide. They were also heavily criticized for not saving teacher Dave Sanders, who had died from blood loss, three hours after the SWAT first entered the school. As noted in an article in the Christian Science Monitor, "Instead of being taught to wait for the SWAT team to arrive, street officers are receiving the training and weaponry to take immediate action during incidents that clearly involve suspects' use of deadly force."{{cite web | access-date = June 19, 2006 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20050904193551/http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?%2Fdurable%2F2000%2F05%2F31%2Ffp2s2-csm.shtml | archive-date = September 4, 2005 | access-date = June 19, 2006 | archive-date = July 25, 2006 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060725004357/http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/mpdpolicy/7-900/7-900.asp#P94_7168

Post-9/11 and the war on terror

According to criminal justice professor Cyndi Banks, the war on terror, like the war on drugs, became the context of a significant expansion of SWAT policing.{{cite book

Countering the view that post-9/11 SWAT policing represents the militarization of police forces, scholar den Heyer writes that SWAT policing is part of a natural progression towards police professionalization. Den Heyer also argues that while SWAT teams continue to be deployed to execute large numbers of drug warrants, this is a rational use of available police resources. Other defenders of SWAT deployments state that police have every reason to minimize risks to themselves during raids.

By 2005, the number of yearly SWAT deployments in the United States had increased to 50,000,{{cite book

Officers have cited safety as the main reason for use of SWAT teams, stating that SWAT units would frequently be called if there were a possibility a suspect might be armed. For instance, in 2006, only two police officers were killed in the arrest of 2 million drug suspects, a low casualty rate possibly stemming from the military equipment and tactics used in the raids.

On February 7, 2008, a siege and subsequent firefight with a shooter in the Winnetka neighborhood of Los Angeles led to the first line-of-duty death of a member of the LAPD's SWAT team in its 41 years of existence.{{cite news | access-date = June 5, 2009 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090115134112/http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fivedead9feb09,1,5439551.story?ctrack=1&cset=true | archive-date = January 15, 2009

Radley Balko, an analyst for the libertarian Cato Institute, argued in his book Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America that increased SWAT raids have made no-knock raids, and danger to innocents and suspects, far greater. Another study, Warrior Cops: The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police Departments by Diane Cecilia Weber, also of the Cato Institute, raised concern about the increasing use of SWAT teams for ordinary policing tasks.{{cite web | access-date = June 19, 2012

Organization

The relative infrequency of SWAT call-outs means these expensively trained and equipped officers cannot be left to sit around, waiting for an emergency. In many departments the officers are normally deployed to regular duties, but are available for SWAT calls via pagers, mobile phones, or radio transceivers. Even in larger police agencies, SWAT personnel will normally be seen in crime suppression roles—specialized and more dangerous than regular patrol, but the officers would not be carrying their distinctive armor and weapons.

Since officers have to be on call-out most of the day, they may be assigned to regular patrol duties. To decrease response times to situations that require a SWAT team, it is now a common practice to place SWAT equipment and weaponry in secured lockers in the trunks of specialized police cruisers instead of forcing officers to travel to gather their equipment or only use a single dedicated SWAT vehicle.

By illustration, the LAPD's website shows that in 2003, their SWAT units were activated 255 times for 133 SWAT calls and 122 times to serve high-risk warrants.{{cite web | access-date = June 5, 2009

The need to summon widely dispersed personnel, then equip and brief them, makes for a long lag between the initial emergency and actual SWAT deployment on the ground. The problems of delayed police response at Columbine led to changes in police response,{{cite web | access-date = June 5, 2009

SWAT equipment

SWAT teams use equipment designed for a variety of specialist situations including close-quarters combat (CQC) in an urban environment. The particular pieces of equipment vary from unit to unit, but there are some consistent trends in what they wear and use.{{cite web | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130428025627/http://www.wicomicosheriff.com/sert.htm | archive-date = April 28, 2013 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140819222309/http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ferguson-shooting-missouri-swat-teams-armed-m4-assault-rifles-1461507 | archive-date = August 19, 2014 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20141209035113/http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/Pages/default.aspx | archive-date = December 9, 2014

Clothing

SWAT personnel wear similar uniforms to those worn by military personnel. Traditional SWAT uniforms are usually solid tones of dark blue, black, grey, tan, or olive green, though uniforms with military camouflage have become popular with some SWAT units since the 2000s.{{cite book

Early SWAT units were equipped with a variety of headgear such as M1 helmets, motorcycle helmets, bump helmets, or even soft patrol caps.{{cite book

Weapons and equipment

SWAT units are equipped with special weapons that are not normally used by regular police units, typically military firearms such as assault rifles, submachine guns, riot shotguns, sniper rifles, riot control agents, smoke grenades, stun grenades, and stinger grenades.{{cite book | access-date = June 5, 2009 | archive-date = September 4, 2015 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150904125331/http://www.hendonpub.com/resources/article_archive/results/details?id=3395 | access-date = June 5, 2009 | access-date = June 5, 2009

Canine units may also be incorporated within SWAT teams, or may be used on an ad hoc basis.{{cite web | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100620193823/http://www.policemag.com/Blog/SWAT/Story/2009/10/How-to-Coexist-with-a-K-9-Unit.aspx | archive-date = June 20, 2010

Vehicles

Main article: SWAT vehicle

SWAT units often employ SWAT vehicles, also called "armored rescue vehicles" (ARV),{{cite web | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121105205538/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1421340761.html | archive-date = November 5, 2012 | access-date = January 25, 2011

Police aircraft, commonly helicopters, are used to provide aerial reconnaissance or insertion via rappelling or fast-roping.

The use of armored vehicles by SWAT teams is controversial, and it has been alleged that police armored vehicles escalate situations that could otherwise be resolved peacefully. Some smaller police departments and sheriff's departments also acquire armored vehicles despite few incidents occurring in their jurisdictions that would necessitate their use.

China

SWAT vehicles in China are typically colored black. Many SWAT teams in China also perform duties of normal patrol officers when not responding to special incidents. In some smaller Public Security Bureaus, SWAT units are also used to handle police dogs.

Chinese SWAT often train in fast-roping, sniping and pit maneuvering.

Specialized SWAT

Prison SWAT

Some Chinese prisons also operate Prison SWAT teams (). They are used to respond to sudden incidents at prisons (e.g. Prison riots), provide security when prisoners go to hospital, patrol duties along with searching for contraband. In Guangdong, Prison SWAT is also responsible for firefighting within the prison.

In some prisons with Female prisoners, there have been All-Female SWAT teams to handle issues in the Female prison area, most famously at Sichuan Province Qiaowo Prison.

Notable incidents

United States

• 1973 Brooklyn hostage crisis
• Shannon Street massacre
• 1985 MOVE bombing
• North Hollywood shootout
• Hurricane Katrina disaster relief
• Virginia Tech shooting
• 2009 shootings of Oakland police officers
• 2009 shooting of Pittsburgh police officers
• Killing of Aiyana Jones
• Jose Guerena shooting
• Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
• 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers
• Pulse nightclub shooting
• 2017 Las Vegas shooting
• Killing of Duncan Lemp
• Shooting of Jason Harley Kloepfer
• 2020 deployment of federal forces
• Uvalde school shooting

China

• Arrest of Fa Ziying (Nanchang SWAT)

• Disaster relief after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake (Shenzhen SWAT)

• Yang Jia attacks (Zhabei SWAT)

• Security during the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Beijing SWAT)

• 2011 Hotan Attack (Hotan SWAT)

• 2013 Wo Shing Wo Dragonhead election raid (Shenzhen SWAT)

• June 2013 Shanshan riots (Shanshan County SWAT)

• 2014 Kunming attack (Kunming SWAT)

• 2018 Shangqiu Police-Chengguan clashes (Shangqiu SWAT)

References

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