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Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

How about police just not use SWAT teams so much? It's ridiculous that you can get someone "swatted" with mere heresay; but SWAT teams have swelled in number and are now being used for far more than what they were originally intended. SWAT teams raiding the wrong homes, shooting family dogs, killing innocent people, etc...are all a symptom of a larger problem, as is this. You shouldn't have to sign up for anything to not get attacked by a SWAT team, how absolutely absurd. A list does not solve the deeper issue.

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Former cop here: I think the biggest misconception about SWAT teams is that what makes them different is that they carry rifles instead of handguns. (In fact, in most departments every officer carries a rifle in his/her patrol car.)

A SWAT team is a group of officers who train as a team for high-risk situations like drug warrants and, yes, hostage situations. By contrast, most other officers are trained to respond solo or in pairs, and often don't spend nearly as much time practicing things like room clearance. If the police are going to break down your door, you want the best-trained most experienced officers doing it. The SWAT guys are calmer, more professional, and less likely to pull the trigger when startled.

If the police are going to break down your door

But I don't, in general, want the police to break down my door at all since they are almost certainly at the wrong address. And there's a pretty good chance that they'll shoot my dog (who will be barking menacingly from the stairs) even if they don't shoot me.

I’m sure that’s true somewhere like NYC, and maybe it’s even true in Seattle, but it appears to be distinctly less true in smaller towns. In small town America it’s literally just the same cops playing army dress up.

It depends on how large the town is. Even in medium-sized cities (pop. <1M), it's rare to have a dedicated full-time tactical team. Usually it's a group of 6-20 patrol officers who get a few days each month to train together for various scenarios.

The question is what training they get. I bet at least in some areas it's a lot about cool weapons and how to run into a building, not about deescalation.

I remember years ago there was an incident in Northern Virginia where they went after a few guys who were betting on football http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01.... So the cops went in with a swat team and ended up shooting one guy. No weapons were on site and nobody there had a criminal history. The cops just went in with full force and when somebody made a wrong move they shot him. Same for for the mayor of Berwyn Heights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor.... Excessive force from start without even trying to solve it peacefully.

Stuff like this simply shouldn't happen. It seems a lot of swat teams only focus on using force.

Yeah, that’s why I said maybe Seattle. I sort of suspect not. (And I live here.)

People with skills often want to use those skills. Train someone to break down doors, and they will want to break down doors.

(Can also be seen in tech: send someone to a training class on your fancy networking gear, and they will immediately starts fiddling with it. Things are sure to go south.)

This is VERY true, particularly when it comes to the #1 use of tactical teams: "high-risk" warrant service. When judges issue search warrants, they rarely if ever specify how that warrant is to be executed: uniformed officers knocking on your front door, or a SWAT team throwing flashbangs in through your bedroom window.

This response points towards a fairly simple fix. To execute a warrant with a swat team or similar, that should also require a judges approval based on some appropriate formula.

But most solo officers or those in pairs don’t have a high expectation of an armed response when responding to a routine call. I mean, there is a certain background expectation of encountering violence for a police officer, but when a SWAT team is called that expectation is basically a certainty. So while the officers may be trained, they are intending to act forcefully from the outset. I think the best thing to come from this is tempering that expectation with the possibility that a call could be swatting.

You'd be surprised by how many SWAT calls are anticlimactic: basically all of them. The #1 thing SWAT teams do is serve high-risk search warrants on drug houses at 4am when everyone inside is asleep.

Contrast that with a rookie officer who just got dispatched to a "house, five hostages inside, caller says they're being held at gunpoint."

Executing high-risk search warrants on drug houses seems pretty intense, even if they don't have to fire a single bullet. Most of the cases involves people that are armed and might be under the influence of some drug, making their behavior erratic and irrational.

And for this SWAT seems to be necessary. Checking out prank calls in the middle of the day should not require them, unless it's a real hostage situation. (Answering a home invasion without securing the perimeter seems a very dumb idea, yet that happens most of the case, the "team" stands around at the front door yelling and then breaching the door.)

All these situation should be handled by surrounding the house with overwhelming force and then calmly assessing the situation, not just running in after a few seconds.

Sounds to me like this is 100% unnecessary and only happens because cops/SWAT think it sounds more fun to suit up & kick in some doors at 4:00 AM than to do proper boring surveillance and wait outside in the daylight.

They definitely do surveillance, but the risk of somebody (officer or suspect) getting shot is much lower if the cops go in when everyone else is asleep.

Of course, it leads to some interesting conversations: "Ok buddy, you're under arrest. Time to put some pants on."

Evidence suggests otherwise in regards to them being "calm." Look up "puppycide" perpetuated by SWAT teams, or incidents of SWAT teams raiding the wrong house and even killing people completely unarmed. The fact is that there shouldn't be a "no knock" raid because of a phone call. Some SWAT raids can yield as little as 8oz of pot and everyone pats themselves on the back as if it were justified. It's utterly ridiculous. I don't care if someone calls and says Osama Bin Laden is alive and well in a Missouri suburb, no knock raids are not needed 95% of the time. Even elite forces survey the area and situation before raiding it, if at all; but not the police. How insane is it that the police have lower rules of engagement than a Marine in Afghanistan?

You are both wrong and missing the point, which is; they shouldn't be breaking down doors in the first place based off the shoddy info given, full fucking stop.

See the professionalism of this Arizona SWAT for an example https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l4LzwZV6hFQ

I'm a former Marine who was trained in advanced CQB/CQC and have crosstrained all kinds of LEAs/LEOs and SWAT tends to be the very worst trained, undisciplined bunch of wannabe's this side of the equator. It actually became a joke in the shoot house how many former POGs who never saw combat and were naively gung-ho gear-queers made up the majority of the SWATs coming through. We had more trigger discipline in a fucking combat zone than these guys.

tldr; quit your bullshit

Could be an inherent risk of militarizing a police force. You have the gear to look the like, and gear wants to be used. Add people attracted more by the gear and not the task at hand to superiors wanting to use the gear and it can get ugly.

When your only tool is hammer eyery problem tunrs into a nail, right?

EDIT: When German police was on alert two years ago after some incidents they did send 20-something guys with SMGs to guard and patrol in trains. Usually I choose a car they already passed for my communte, somehow I didn't have a lot of confidence in how they would react if there really was a situation that warrented police. Normally in Germany police is all about deescalation, but they don't carry automatic most of the time neither.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/arizona-swat-team-cleared-marines-... :(

I can't believe how amateur these guys are. They just stand there, no one checked the corner, no one was looking at not-the-fucking-front-door, and when they finally decided to go in, almost everyone was in the line of potential incoming fire. 13 year-olds do it better in Call of Mario.

Just read a book called "Rise of the warrior cop" that explains many SWAT teams were funded by the federal government, not out of necessity, just due to politics.

There were many, many, citations that would suggest SWAT members are not trained any better and tend to in fact be overly aggressive and not held to many standards at all.

I think the way they use swat teams is insane. I mean, I’m not American, but the fact that American police will send their swat team to storm a house that they have no idea what is going on in is completely insane.

You never rush a house, you assess the situation and the act accordingly. Receiving an anonymous phone call is not assessing the situation.

It’s almost like they are all guns no brains, and it’s incredibly dangerous. Rushing into an unknown situation is just incredibly stupid on all accounts. The fact they haven’t learned the lesson by now though, speaks volumes, and I don’t think registering for anti-swatting is learning the lesson at all.

The whole militarization of the police has resonated dreadfully with the ascension and worship of the military. And the US now has "law enforcement" instead of "peace officers". The incentives have been completely reversed.

It's definitely possible, since AFAIK swatting does not happen in Europe

From the few instances I've seen they aren't usually SWAT teams, 'swatting' was just the first term for it which got popular.

They are LEOs in heavy-duty combat gear, no? It's almost guaranteed that they usually lack the special weapons and tactics training.

But didn't you know? We're all in imminent danger from... uhh... terrorists! And drugs! Think of the children, donate to your local SWAT team today! They need more funding for surplus military equipment after all.

I just love this photo of the MRAP vehicle the Lynnwood SWAT team has. Really makes me feel safer. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/police-in-wa...

Edit: For those not familiar with Washington, Lynnwood is a kind of dense suburb north of Seattle. Not really where I'd expect to need a military vehicle, but you never know I guess...

Former cop here: many departments get those vehicles from the DOD for free. (They bought thousands of them to protect troops in Iraq+Afghanistan from IEDs.) Everyone knows MRAPs weren't designed for law enforcement, but you just can't beat that price.

Yes, you can. Do not take them. If you must take them, dispose of them.

Fair enough, free is a pretty good price after all. But if anything, I honestly feel less safe knowing that the police department next door to me has that in their possession. Perhaps that's unfounded, but to me it really seems like a small part of a much larger and very concerning trend.

Edit: Unfortunately I can't track down a photo, but I seem to remember them having it out when they closed down Highway 99 for that shooting about a year ago. It's quite surreal seeing one of those blocking off a local highway, as though they're expecting to encounter IEDs or heavily armed enemy combatants in the middle of the city.

You should expect to feel less safe when a police force has them: those vehicles and weapons are designed to protect the user at the possible expense of the life of literally everybody else

> you just can't beat that price

That is interesting information.

What is the limit? Free air to air missiles? The argument should not be that it is pricey but that it is dangerous.

Those departments do need to pay for modifications, upkeep and training. Free still seems too expensive to justify.

I can see both sides of this but not sure what the solution is. Imagine there is a real threat and 2 cops show up in a squad car instead of the swat team. By the time swat arrives everyone is dead and the cops get blamed once again. “It took them 25 minutes to get out there!! What are we paying them to do, eat donuts?!”

As for militarization vs peace keeping I can also understand both sides of the argument. Imagine you are a cop and while 95% of th situations you encounter are harmless, the other 5% could kill you. Would you not rather have the best equipment possible for your own protection? Would you listen to some asshole tell you “that’s the inherent risk of the job so deal with it”? No, you wouldn’t.

I really dislike how people paint issues as black and white, right and wrong and quickly come up with some reasoning for their argument without ever considering all angles. The world and the issues we deal with are a lot more complicated than people make them out to be. I know humans compartmentalize as a flight or fight response but we need to give rational thought to every issue and not jump to conclusions.

Sure, call the swat team and have them surround the area quickly. But don't just run in with guns blazing. That makes absolutely no sense.

nit: I believe it's _Lynnwood_, Washington.

Lynwood seems to be more commonly known as the city in Los Angeles County, or Weird Al's _Straight_ _Outta_ _Lynwood_.

Whoops, fixed. That's... kind of weird that the one in California varies by a single letter. Spell check was never going to save me on this one.

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