THE SWAT-IFICATION
OF AMERICA
wanted an elite team of specialized cops similar to groups like
the Army Rangers or Navy SEALs
that could respond to riots, barricades, shootouts, or hostage-takings with more skill and precision
than everyday patrol officers.
The concept caught on, particularly after a couple of high-profile,
televised confrontations between
Gates’ SWAT team and a Black Panther holdout in 1969, and then with
the Symbionese Liberation Army
in 1973. Given the rioting, protests, and general social unrest of
the time, Gates’ idea quickly grew
popular in law enforcement circles,
particularly in cities worried about
rioting and domestic terrorism.
From Gates’ lone team in LA,
according to a New York Times investigation, the number of SWAT
teams in the U.S. grew to 500 by
1975. By 1982, nearly 60 percent
of American cities with 50,000 or
more people had a SWAT team.
Throughout those early years,
SWAT teams were generally used
as Gates had intended.
They deployed when there was
a suspect, gunman or escaped fugitive who posed an immediate
threat to the public, using force to
defuse an already violent situation.
By 1995, however, nearly 90
HUFFINGTON
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percent of cities with 50,000 or
more people had a SWAT team —
and many had several, according
to Peter Kraska, a criminologist at
Eastern Kentucky University, who
in the late 1990s conducted two
highly publicized surveys of police
departments across the country,
“WE’VE KNOWN FOR A WHILE NOW
THAT AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOODS
ARE INCREASINGLY BEING POLICED
BY COPS ARMED WITH THE
WEAPONS AND TACTICS OF WAR.”
and a follow-up survey several
years later. Even in smaller towns
— municipalities with 25,000 to
50,000 people — Kraska found
that the number of SWAT teams
increased by more than 300 percent between 1984 and 1995. By
2000, 75 percent of those towns
also had their own SWAT team.
Kraska estimates that total
number of SWAT raids in America
jumped from just a few hundred
per year in the 1970s, to a few
thousand by the early 1980s, to
around 50,000 by the mid-2000s.
The vast majority of those
raids are to serve warrants on
people suspected of nonviolent