Reminds me of scenes from a Russian TV series about life in Moscow under Stalin. At any moment a bunch of guys dressed in black could burst in, arrest people, cart away papers etc. and there was no recourse. This was the NKVD, later called the KGB.

Unfortunately, eventually the criminal gangs discovered that they could do the same thing, and since their victims thought they were cops, the criminals got away with murder, intimidation, etc. After the fall of the Soviet Union, these criminals became known as the Russian Mafia and exported their criminal operations to more lucrative countries like the USA where they still operate today.

How hard is it for modern criminals to get a hold of uniforms and vehicles to impersonate a police SWAT team?