Criticism Of SWAT Teams

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They were able to respond and be efficient in processing the scene in what would normally have taken days. SWAT teams all across the United States have learned not to wait and develop more effective strategies after the Columbine School shooting in Colorado (Chang & Winton, 2015). Historically the military was not allowed to enforce local laws, but to be soldiers of war. While there was no real law to disallow local law enforcement from having military gear, it was not until 1968 that the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, that money was available to purchase the supplies. At this time SWAT teams were established to help with race tensions and riots. Police started to be viewed as an aggressive and cruel social institution. President Ronald Regan increased the amount of militarized SWAT teams to help combat the war against drugs (Schultz, 2014). This is where the criticism of SWAT began with the ACLU. It was believed that seeing police decked out in riot gear, not being able to see their faces, and carrying large guns, caused tensions to run high and made people feel like they were living in a military state with reduced freedom. The ACLU feels that this combination of issues will lead people to …show more content…
The ACLU states that people wouldn’t act out if they didn’t feel SWAT had so much power over them (ACLU, 2016). Throughout history and today, when there is a SWAT presence, there is a group who will stand off with them. In the 1960’s it was the race riots (Francis, 2016), and the riots in Baltimore in April 2015 over the shooting of a black man, Freddy Gray (Graham, 2015). All of these riots have one theme in common, the belief that having heavily armed SWAT teams present increased the tension and eventually lead to the

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