SWAT Email
The Agitator blog
Here's one from a SWAT officer:
While Mr. Balko's article was very astute and helpful, it did not identify the root causes' of the swat team problem in this country.
The lack of serious and intensive training and the education that it requires' to become a "Real" swat team member. There is almost no psychiatric testing to check on the suitability of the candidate. There is no where near enough fire arms training, surveillance training, or dynamic entry training given to the average police officer to prepare him or her for this role. It seems' that perhaps' the sergeant in charge has seen the movie "Delta force" watched a few swat training videos', and "two weeks' ago I couldn't even spell swat team, now I are one!
For example, A warrenton police officer stood next to me at the local range one day. He needed to "qualify". His first three shots were in the kill zone at seven yards. I thought to myself,"He'll be all right". But when his fifty qualifying shots were finished, they were sprayed all over the place! He passed! Meanwhile, I was shooting at the same target at four times' the distance and had a group about one third the size of his. Swat training requires a dedication far beyond the abilities of the "average" police officer on the street and just because the equipment is available doe's NOT mean it should be handed out the every "Hee, Haw," who wants to carry it in his or her trunk. Another case in point, a Manasass city under cover officer firing at a fifty yard silhouette target with an AR-15 rifle resting on a bench was having trouble getting a small enough group to "Qualify" [Remember this is an "Under cover Narcotics' agent,] I walked over to his station said to him, "You don't need a rifle to hit the target when it's so close to you", and proceeded to pump three shots into the center of the target with a forty five caliber pistol with no problem at all.
The lack of resources' isn't the problem anymore, it's the lack of training and suitability screening that creates the problem and until the administrators wake up, I'm sorry to say there will be many more such tragedies such as what happened to Mr. Culosi and his family in the future.
Of, course what the author says shouldn't happen is exactly what is happening. The Pentagon's giveaway of surplus equipment (over 3 million pieces since the program begain in about 1987) to local police departments has caused those departments to decide they'd better figure out a way to put the equipment to use. So they form a SWAT team. And now that they have a SWAT team, they figure they'd better use it. So they start using it for dubious tasks, like executing search warrants. There are town that use SWAT teams for routine patrols, too. One used its time for crowd control during a parade. Greenwich, Connecticut used to deploy its SWAT team to retail outlets every time the state lottery topped a $1 million.
I've researched numerous small towns who've sold the city counci and a skeptical public on the idea of a SWAT team by citing the need to have an anwer to school shootings, hostage situations, and terrorism. All well and good. The problem is, once the team's in place, they can't resist the urge to call it out for far more mundane tasks, most notably serving drug warrants on nonviolent offenders (the federal government distorts this process, too -- there's lots of federal money available for documented drug arrests. There's very little for apprehending more violent crime).
I have no problem with SWAT teams in general, provided they're used in those rare, dangerous situations where the suspect presents a real and immediate threat to the public safety. Unfortunately, eight of ten SWAT callouts these days don't meet that condition.
Posted by Radley Balko
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