Америка полициясының арнайы жасақ тобы

American law enforcement unit

In the United States, a SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team is a generic term for a police tactical unit. SWAT units are generally trained, equipped, and deployed to resolve "high risk situations", often those regular police units are not trained or equipped to handle, such as shootouts, standoffs, raids, hostage takings, and terrorism. SWAT units are equipped with specialized weapons and equipment not normally issued to regular police units, such as automatic firearms, high caliber sniper rifles, stun grenades, body armor, ballistic shields, night vision devices, and armored vehicles, among others. SWAT units are often trained in special tactics such as close quarters combat, door breaching, crisis negotiation, and de escalation. The first SWAT units were formed in the 1960s to handle riot control and violent confrontations with criminals. The number and usage of SWAT units increased in the 1980s during the War on Drugs and the 1990s following incidents such as the North Hollywood shootout and Columbine High School massacre, with further increases in the 2000s for counterterrorism interests in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In the United States by 2005, SWAT teams were deployed 50,000 times every year, almost 80% of the time to serve search warrants, most often for narcotics. By 2015, the number of annual SWAT deployments had increased to nearly 80,000 times a year.

According to the Historical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, the term "SWAT" was used as an acronym for the "Special Weapons and Tactics" established as a 100 man specialized unit in 1964 by the Philadelphia Police Department in response to an alarming increase in bank robberies. The purpose of this unit was to react quickly and decisively to bank robberies while they were in progress, using a large number of specially trained officers who had a great amount of firepower at their disposal. The tactic worked and was used to resolve other types of incidents involving heavily armed criminals. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Special Weapons and Tactics was established in 1967. LAPD inspector Daryl Gates envisioned the "SWAT" acronym to be "Special Weapons Attack Team" but this was not accepted by deputy chief Edward M. Davis who instead approved Special Weapons and Tactics. The LAPD promoted what became known as SWAT teams for a variety of reasons. After the racially charged Watts riots in Los Angeles in August 1965, the LAPD began considering tactics it could use when faced with urban unrest, rioting, or widespread violence. Daryl Gates, who led the LAPD response to the riots, would later write that police at the time did not face a single mob, but rather "people attacking from all directions". New York University professor Christian Parenti has written that SWAT teams were originally conceived of as an "urban counterinsurgency bulwark". Another reason for the creation of SWAT teams was the fear of lone or barricaded gunmen who might outperform police in a shootout, as happened in Austin with Charles Whitman. SWAT type operations were conducted north of Los Angeles in the farming community of Delano, California on the border between Kern and Tulare Counties in the San Joaquin Valley. At the time, the United Farm Workers union led by César Chavez was staging numerous protests in Delano in a strike that would last over five years. Early police powers and tactics used by SWAT teams were aided by legislation passed in 1967 8 with the help of Republican House representative Donald Santarelli. The legislation was promoted within the context of fears over the civil rights movement, race riots, the Black Panther Party, and the emerging War on Drugs.

In 1981 U. S. Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, giving police access to military intelligence, infrastructure, and weaponry in the fight against drugs. Reagan subsequently declared drugs to be a threat to U. S. national security. In 1972, paramilitary police units launched a few hundred drug raids annually within the United States. In the early 1980s, SWAT drug raid numbers increased to 3000 annually, and by 1996, 30,000 raids annually.

According to criminal justice professor Cyndi Banks, the War on Terror, like the War on Drugs, became the context of a significant expansion of SWAT policing. Whereas some have attributed this expansion to "mission creep" and the militarization of police, other scholars argue that increased SWAT policing is a response to real or perceived moral panics associated with fear of crime and terrorism. Banks writes that SWAT team employment of military veterans has influenced their tactics and perspective. most often to serve drug related warrants in private homes. According to a study by the ACLU, just under 80% of SWAT deployments were used to serve arrest warrants. Officers have cited safety as the main reason for use of SWAT teams, stating that SWAT units would frequently be called if there were a possibility a suspect might be armed. For instance, in 2006, only two police officers were killed in the arrest of 2 million drug suspects, a low casualty rate possibly stemming from the military equipment and tactics used in the raids. Radley Balko, an analyst for the libertarian Cato Institute, argued in his book Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America that increased SWAT raids have made no knock raids, and danger to innocents and suspects, far greater. Another study, Warrior Cops: The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police Departments by Diane Cecilia Weber, also of the Cato Institute, raised concern about the increasing use of SWAT teams for ordinary policing tasks.

The relative infrequency of SWAT call outs means these expensively trained and equipped officers cannot be left to sit around, waiting for an emergency. In many departments the officers are normally deployed to regular duties, but are available for SWAT calls via pagers, mobile phones, or radio transceivers. Even in larger police agencies, SWAT personnel will normally be seen in crime suppression roles—specialized and more dangerous than regular patrol, but the officers would not be carrying their distinctive armor and weapons. Since officers have to be on call out most of the day, they may be assigned to regular patrol duties. To decrease response times to situations that require a SWAT team, it is now a common practice to place SWAT equipment and weaponry in secured lockers in the trunks of specialized police cruisers instead of forcing officers to travel to gather their equipment or only use a single dedicated SWAT vehicle. By illustration, the LAPD's website shows that in 2003, their SWAT units were activated 255 times for 133 SWAT calls and 122 times to serve high risk warrants. The NYPD's Emergency Service Unit is one of the few police special response units that operate autonomously 24 hours a day. However, this unit also provides a wide range of services in addition to SWAT functions, including search and rescue, and car accident vehicle extrication, normally handled by fire departments or other agencies. The need to summon widely dispersed personnel, then equip and brief them, makes for a long lag between the initial emergency and actual SWAT deployment on the ground. The problems of delayed police response at Columbine led to changes in police response, mainly rapid deployment of line officers to deal with an active shooter, rather than setting up a perimeter and waiting for SWAT to arrive.

SWAT teams use equipment designed for a variety of specialist situations including close quarters combat (CQC) in an urban environment. The particular pieces of equipment vary from unit to unit, but there are some consistent trends in what they wear and use. Much of their equipment is indistinguishable from that supplied to the military, not least because much of it is military surplus.

SWAT personnel wear similar uniforms to those worn by military personnel. Traditional SWAT uniforms are usually solid tones of dark blue, black, grey, tan, or olive green, though uniforms with military camouflage have become popular with some SWAT units since the 2000s. Early SWAT units were equipped with a variety of headgear such as M1 helmets, motorcycle helmets, bump helmets, or even soft patrol caps. Modern SWAT units use helmets similar to those issued by the U. S. military, such as the PASGT helmet or Future Assault Shell Technology helmet, though they may also use riot helmets or soft headgear such as caps. Balaclavas and goggles are often used to protect the face and protect the identities of team members. Ballistic vests, sometimes including rigid plate inserts, are standard issue.

SWAT units are equipped with special weapons that are not normally used by regular police units, typically military firearms such as assault rifles, submachine guns, riot shotguns, sniper rifles, riot control agents, smoke grenades, stun grenades, and stinger grenades. Though these armaments make SWAT teams resemble military infantry squads, they are still law enforcement units tasked with arrest, and are thus often also equipped with less lethal weapons such as tasers, pepper spray, pepperballs, baton rounds, bean bag rounds, and rubber bullets to incapacitate suspects. Many SWAT units also have access to specialized equipment such as ballistic shields, entry tools, battering rams, armored vehicles, thermal and night vision devices, fiberscope cameras, and motion detectors. Canine units may also be incorporated within SWAT teams, or may be used on an ad hoc basis.

SWAT units often employ SWAT vehicles, also called "armored rescue vehicles" (ARV), for insertion, maneuvering, and during operations such as the rescue of personnel and civilians who may be in danger of receiving fire from suspects if extracted through other methods. Common armored SWAT vehicles include the Lenco BearCat, Lenco BEAR, BAE Caiman, Cadillac Gage Ranger, Cadillac Gage Commando, and similar vehicles. Some departments use decommissioned, disarmed military vehicles acquired from the Law Enforcement Support Office. Alternatively, SWAT teams may use unmarked police cars to respond faster, provide better mobility when splitting up, or avoid detection. Police aircraft, commonly helicopters, are used to provide aerial reconnaissance or insertion via rappelling or fast roping. The use of armored vehicles by SWAT teams is controversial, and it has been alleged that police armored vehicles escalate situations that could otherwise be resolved peacefully. Some smaller police departments and sheriff's departments also acquire armored vehicles despite few incidents occurring in their jurisdictions that would necessitate their use.