The following is an opinion and may be an unjust one:
They had toys and a rare chance to play with them.
I don't think much else is required or stands in the way.
That's one of many things the author of "The Rise of the Warrior Cop" argues.
He also argues a fundamental flaw in recruiting for SWAT and similar police units: these squads should be all about de-escalation and defusing violent and complex situations, but instead are full of guys who just want to blow shit up. The kind of police officers who would like to join SWAT, he argues, is precisely the kind who should be rejected.
Good luck fixing that, though.
No, they weren't.
Cops were a mob, and their primary purpose was originally to hold the other mobs in check.
> Can you imagine them pulling any of this in an old Italian or Irish neighborhood?
Yes. In the North, the original major police forces were basically ethnic gangs given government sponsorship and deployed first and foremost to do battle with other ethnic gangs, so that’s exactly the kind of neighborhood the police would be using major force on, if it wasn't the one they were drawn from.
That’s so what less the case now because the police became an independent political force with a union and lobby that tends to be decisive in local elections, so they became able to effectively pick their own targets, and going in strongest against soft targets and mostly avoiding the harder ones is a lot safer, if you have the clout to swing it.