RJ SANGOSTI/THE DENVER POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
THE SWAT-IFICATION
OF AMERICA
were going to send the SWAT team
out on routine patrols in ‘problem
neighborhoods’ to stop and harass
the people who lived in them. After the story made national news,
they changed that policy. But how
many places is this happening
where it isn’t making news? That’s
one of the things we’re hoping to
find out,” Dansky said.
One problem the ACLU may
run into is a lack of cooperation
from the police agencies it’s investigating. Kraska said that when
he conducted his surveys in the
1990s, police departments were
forthcoming, and even boastful
HUFFINGTON
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about their SWAT teams. “We had
a really high response rate,” he
said. “But when the reports came
out and were critical, and the
press coverage was critical, they
stopped cooperating.” Kraska said
the response rate for his follow-up
survey dropped off, and that police agencies haven’t cooperated
with subsequent similar efforts by
other criminologists.
In 2009, Maryland passed a
SWAT transparency law. It requires every police agency in the
state with a SWAT team to provide data twice per year on the
number of times the SWAT team
is deployed, the reason for the
deployment, whether any shots
were fired, and whether the raid
A SWAT
team made a
forcible entry
into the home
of David Lee
Rothe (left),
who had
barricaded
himself in
his home in
his upscale
neighborhood
after facing
foreclosure
in 2010.