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In an ongoing Q&A, libertarian writer Radley Balko is setting forth
his ideas about what is wrong with the American criminal justice
system. One lament concerns the rise of SWAT teams. "We're dressing
police officers in military attire, giving them military-grade
weaponry, training them in military tactics, then sending them into
American cities and neighborhoods and telling them they're fighting a
war," he wrote. "That's not a healthy development for a free society."
Tim Harper explored the rise of SWAT tactics in an October 2000 Atlantic article
that showed how the Columbine high school massacre transformed our
idea of local police departments, especially how officers ought to
react during hostage situations.
He writes:
Historically, the police in the United States have employed a standard response when confronted with armed suspects in schools, malls, banks, post offices, and other heavily populated buildings. The first officers to arrive never rushed in. Instead they set up perimeters and controlled the scene. They tried to contain the suspects, and called in a rigorously trained Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. The SWAT team arrived, assumed positions to keep the suspects pinned down, and negotiated with them until they surrendered. SWAT teams stormed buildings only when necessary to save lives, such as when hostages were being executed one by one.
Today, however, police officers are setting aside traditional tactics. They are being taught to enter a building if they are the first to arrive at the scene, to chase the gunman, and to kill or disable him as quickly as possible. This sweeping change in police tactics -- variously called rapid-response, emergency-response, or first-responder -- is a direct result of the shootings that occurred at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado...Interestingly, lawsuits filed against Colorado police departments by Columbine families helped spur the push for re-writing the book on these situations. As the article makes clear, lots of officers put through the new training were uncertain about, or even hostile to, their new role. Others found it an appropriate response to a national tragedy wherein different tactics could have saved lives.
Whether the change in police tactics has proved to be a wise reform or a foolish change is beyond my knowledge. But I am struck by the ability of single, anomalous events to reshape public policy, more powerfully even than research data and countless anecdotes suggesting that, for example, no-knock raids are resulting in the death of both innocent citizens and police officers fired upon by folks who don't realize they are cops.
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