SWAT
[2] The United States National Tactical Officers Association's definition of SWAT is: SWAT: A designated law enforcement team whose members are recruited, selected, trained, equipped and assigned to resolve critical incidents involving a threat to public safety which would otherwise exceed the capabilities of traditional law enforcement first responders and/or investigative units.
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.
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".
[9]: 112 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.
[10][11] 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.
[8] 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.
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.
[10] Early police powers and tactics used by SWAT teams were aided by legislation passed in 1967-8 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.
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.
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.
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.
The program modified existing federal aid structures to local police, making it easier to transfer money and equipment to fight the War on Drugs.
[13]: 73–75 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.
[15][16] 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.
"[17] The article further reported that street officers were increasingly being armed with rifles, and issued heavy body armor and ballistic helmets, items traditionally associated with SWAT units.
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.
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.
[21]: 13–14 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.
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.
However, this unit also provides a wide range of services in addition to SWAT functions, including search and rescue, and car accident vehicle extrication, normally handled by fire departments or other agencies.
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.
Many SWAT units also have access to specialized equipment such as ballistic shields, entry tools, battering rams, armored vehicles, thermal and night-vision devices, fiberscope cameras, and motion detectors.
