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SWAT Nation
In the post-Columbine hysteria, even the tiny town of Windsor has voted to
arm its police with assault weapons. Where's it all going to lead?
By Christian Parenti
FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW of a future American police state, travel south from the
comfortable illusions of the San Francisco Bay Area into the dirty air of
California's Central Valley on Interstate 99 to Fresno, a sprawling, poorly
planned city of 350,000. Pass the forest of pole-perched McDonald's, Best
Western, and Motel 6 signs and turn off on one of the city's southern exits
into the ghetto of the southwest side. There, on the dim side streets, among
the little bungalows and dying rail yards, massive paramilitary police
operations are under way on almost any night.
On one such evening, three squads of 10 police officers in combat boots,
black jumpsuits, military helmets, and bulletproof vests lock and load their
Heckler & Koch MP-54 submachine guns (the same weapons used by the elite
Navy SEALs) and fan out through the neighborhood. Meet Fresno's Violent
Crime Suppression Unit, local law enforcement's "special forces" and
America's most aggressive SWAT team. Since 1994 the VCSU has patrolled this
city's have-not suburbs in full military gear, with automatic assault rifles
at the ready. Backed by two helicopters with infrared scopes and an
Army-surplus armored personnel carrier, the unit is also equipped with
attack dogs, smoke bombs, tear gas, pepper spray, metal clubs, and
less-than-lethal "blunt trauma" projectiles.
"It's a war," explains a law enforcement spokeswoman.
In the name of crisis management, the VCSU is free to utilize aggressive and
unorthodox tactics. At times the unit deploys troops on foot to surround
"hot spot" corners or sweep through neighborhoods. At other times, it rolls
in a fleet of new Crown Victorias "like a wolf pack" looking for "contact"
(as a VCSU officer put it). Tonight the area of operation is a desolate
African-American neighborhood known on the street as the Dog Pound. Most
"contacts" involve swooping down on corners and forcing pedestrians to the
ground, searching them, running warrant checks, taking photos, and entering
all the new "intelligence" into a state database from the high-tech "mobile
computer terminals" in each patrol car. All the suspects are black, all the
cops are white, and every encounter is scored to the furious growling and
barking of the VCSU's tightly leashed Alsatians.
"If you're 21, male, living in one of these neighborhoods and you're not in
our computer, then there's definitely something wrong," says VCSU officer
Paul Boyer as he enters information into his onboard laptop.
This little piece of apartheid-era Soweto stranded in California isn't as
unusual as one might think. Throughout the nation, paramilitary, SWAT, or
tactical policing--that is, law enforcement that uses the equipment,
training, rhetoric, and group tactics of war--are on the rise. According to
a study by sociologist Peter Kraska, the nation now has more than 30,000
such heavily armed, militarily trained police units.
First developed in 1966 by a young LAPD commander named Daryl Gates, SWAT
teams were conceived of as an urban counterinsurgency bulwark. One early
SWAT officer explained, "Those people out there--the radicals, the
revolutionaries, and the cop haters--are damned good at using shotguns [and]
bombs or setting ambushes, so we've got to be better at what we do."
Even the etymology of L.A.'s initial paramilitary unit reveals a political
subtext: Gates started with the acronym SWAT and then filled it in with the
name Special Weapons Attack Team. His superiors liked the acronym but found
the name a bit too provocative, so it was toned down to the more technical
sounding Special Weapons and Tactics.
As the '60s and early '70s rolled on, most large metropolitan police
departments set up tactical units of their own. Since the mid-'80s, there
has been a second wave of SWAT growth. Fueled by state and federal drug-war
pork, tactical units have now metastasized from big-city emergency response
specialists into standard parts of everyday policing. Even medium-sized
towns now have SWAT teams. And instead of only handling emergencies like the
occasional barricaded suspect, SWAT teams now conduct routine drug raids and
sometimes even patrol high-crime areas in place of regular beat cops.
Nationally, activity by paramilitary police units--as measured by the total
number of "callouts," or SWAT team mobilizations--quadrupled between 1980
and 1995, according to Kraska's study. And a CBS News survey of SWAT
encounters showed a 34 percent rise in police use of deadly force between
1995 and 1998. Increasingly, the Defense Department is supplying the gear
for this SWAT buildup. Between 1995 and 1997, the Department of Defense gave
local police departments more than 3,800 M-16 automatic assault rifles,
2,185 M-14 semiautomatic rifles, 73 M-79 grenade launchers, and 112 armored
personnel carriers--1.2 million pieces of military hardware in 1997 alone.
One tactical outfit calls its APC "Mother," while another in east Texas has
named its APCs "Bubba One" and "Bubba Two."
CRITICS OF SWAT say that this militarized training, weaponry, and
organization is leading to an ever more bellicose police culture. "The
fundamental problem with the SWAT model is that if police become soldiers,
the community becomes the enemy," says criminologist Tony Platt, one of the
first scholars to study SWAT. Also, the more paramilitary police units there
are, the more policing in general is militarized. For instance, Portland,
Ore., has already given some of its regular cops AR-15s (a version of the
M-16), as has Orlando, Fla. Numerous smaller towns, such as Pinole, are even
replacing standard police shotguns with H&K MP-54s.
The SWAT culture of militarism is also promulgated by the weapons industry,
professional associations, and a slew of magazines, books, and videos.
Foremost among these is the National Tactical Officers Association and its
publication Tactical Edge, which is marketed exclusively to police officers.
(Civilians are prohibited from subscribing or even logging on to the NTOA
website.) Less secretive and very widely read is SWAT, the subtitle of which
reads, "Special Weapons and Tactics for the Prepared American." Published by
Larry Flynt of Hustler fame, SWAT reads like pornography for gun nuts:
"During penetration, the prestressed Quik-Shok projectile expands rapidly
and then splits into three even sections. These segments or fragments
penetrate in separate directions in an ever-widening pattern inside a soft
target. Fragmentation is the main cause of tissue disruption."
There are literally dozens of similar publications, all of which push
products and a scary worldview. Articles in Tactical Edge and SWAT routinely
invoke the specter of "better-armed criminals--bigger and more violent
street gangs--increased numbers of extremists [and] increased violent
crime."
BACK in the Dog Pound, the VCSU is trawling for "bad guys." The night's
first bit of excitement starts at a routine traffic stop when a person flees
on foot into a nearby house. The VCSU surrounds the area; officers with
AR-15s and H&K MP-54s "hold the perimeter," as a line of five cops rushes
the door.
Technically, the police are not in "hot pursuit" and have no right to storm
the house, but the VCSU looks mad and their guns make it seem serious, so
the elderly woman behind the black metal gate quickly consents to a search.
Five big, white cops move into the blue cathode-ray-lit room and grab a
young African-American man named David.
"Come on. What? Man, I didn't do anything!" protests the suspect, his voice
momentarily breaking. As David is cuffed, the cops begin opening drawers and
lifting cushions in search of drugs. For all the sci-fi gear and military
jargon, the VCSU robocops call up an awful piece of the past: More than
anything else, they resemble the "patrollers" of the old South, the white
slave-catcher militias that spent their nights rousting people living in
plantation shacks in search of contraband, weapons, and signs of escape.
"Are you on parole? Probation? Huh?" demands a VCSU officer. "Let's go
outside, David."
The captive is searched, interrogated, and forced to the ground, while
flashlights are continually shined in his face. No drugs are found. But
David has lied in saying he isn't on parole--he is. "That's a violation of
parole, David," an officer says.
Another black man packed off to jail.
The next two hours are consumed by a standoff involving 30 cops from three
different agencies, two helicopters, and, on the other side, one teenager
who is merely wanted for questioning about brandishing a gun. Then it's back
to storming the "hot spot" corners, forcing "bad guys" to the ground, doing
"field interviews," and booking the occasional parole violator or petty drug
dealer.
Windsor brings in the heavy artillery.
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/07.01.99/swat2-9926.html
FROM ALBUQUERQUE to Miami, tactical units not only have harassed innocent
people but time and again have shot and killed unarmed civilians. In a
recent case in Bethlehem, Penn., a man was killed when a SWAT team shot him
and then burned his house down. And increasingly, tactical officers are
shooting each other because of confusion and overzealousness, as was
recently the case in Oxnard, where Sgt. Daniel Christian dispatched his
comrade Officer James Jensen with three shotgun blasts.
Perhaps the most infamous of the big tactical operations was Operation
Ready-Rock, launched several years ago in Chapel Hill, N.C., in which police
received a "blanket" warrant allowing them to search every person and
vehicle on the 100 block of North Graham Street. The police department's
warrant request explained, "We believe that there are no 'innocent' people
at this place. Only drug sellers and drug buyers are on the described
premises."
The 45 heavily armed raiders sealed off the street and made a "dynamic
entrance" into a pool hall by smashing in the front door. Holding the
occupants at gunpoint, they ransacked the bar for contraband while one
terrified patron urinated in his pants.
But even amid this paramilitary overkill, Southern courtesy prevailed:
Whites were allowed to leave the area, while more than 100 African-Americans
were searched. Only minor quantities of drugs were found.
A more recent example of an overly aggressive SWAT raid occurred late last
year in San Francisco. On Oct. 30, a masked tactical police force of 90
officers, armed with assault rifles and dressed in black fatigues, launched
a predawn raid on 13 apartments in the resident-owned Martin Luther King and
Marcus Garvey housing cooperatives. The police commandos blew doors off
their hinges and cleared rooms in which children were sleeping by tossing in
non-lethal "flash-bang grenades," designed to terrify and disorient
suspects. Police said the operation--intended to "put fear in the hearts" of
a gang called the Knock Out Posse--went off, more or less, without a hitch.
Residents of the complex disagree.
At a police commission meeting after the raid, furious and sobbing
African-American victims recounted in scabrous detail how police officers
slapped them, stepped on their necks, and pressed pistol and machine-gun
muzzles to their heads as other officers ransacked their homes, upturned
beds, and ripped open closets. For dramatic effect, a pit bull named
Bosco--which many residents described as well liked and friendly--was shot
inside an apartment, dragged bleeding outside, and shot again. A
straight-faced Deputy Chief Richard Holder told police commissioners that,
according to police "intelligence" gathered during "covert operations," the
dog was "known for its jumping ability and was shot in midair."
Among those held at gunpoint were city employees and grandmothers. Scores of
people with no charges against them and clear records, including weeping and
terrified children as young as 6, were cuffed and forced to sit half-dressed
in the cold dawn. According to Police Chief Fred Lau, this last
touch--cuffing the kids--was to keep the youngsters from "running around."
One raid victim was hospitalized after a series of seizures, while others
were so distraught they couldn't return to work for days.
All in all, the raid netted a pound of what narcotics Lieut. Kitt Crenshaw
described as "high-grade" marijuana, almost four ounces of crack cocaine,
seven pistols, and $4,000 in cash (80 percent of which the SFPD may get to
keep and spend thanks to state and federal asset-forfeiture laws). Residents
say the money wasn't drug lucre; rather, it had been collected from a circle
of friends to help pay for the funeral of a recently deceased resident,
Germain Brown.
A few cities with robust police accountability movements or progressive
leadership have kept their local tactical units in check. One such
department is that of New Haven, Conn. In 1990 the city elected its first
African-American mayor, John Daniels, who appointed maverick reformer
Nicholas Pastore as his police chief. "At that point, SWAT was going out
several times a week. We were in a full military mode--worst type of
policing in the world," recalls Pastore. "The whole city was suffering
trauma. We had politicians saying, 'the streets are a war zone, the police
have taken over,' and the police were driven by fear and adventure. SWAT was
a big part of that."
Pastore began a radical restructuring of the police department, dividing the
city into 10 small police districts, forcing officers to walk beats, and
creating community management teams that work with police, social services,
and other parts of government to address the root causes of violence. "The
community policing broke down the anonymity between the people and the
police. That creates accountability and cuts down on brutality. Brutality
thrives on anonymity," says Pastore. "Why do you think SWAT teams wear these
ninja suits, cover their badges, and wear executioner masks?"
Pastore has since moved on--he is now a research fellow at the Criminal
Justice Policy Foundation in New Haven--but his reforms remain. "We only had
four tactical callouts all of last year," says Lt. Gerald Atunes, who heads
New Haven's Emergency Response Team.
IN BERKELEY, a similar ethos of restraint is reflected even in its SWAT
team's name: the Barricaded Suspect, Hostage, and Negotiation Team (or HNT
for short). Although the HNT trains once a month, the unit is not deployed
as a group. Instead, officers convene only for emergencies such as big
shootouts, hostage takings, and riots, or when high-profile visiting
politicians require added protection.
Since the HNT was founded in 1976, it has only assembled 79 times.
Berkeley's approach to SWAT is not simply the result of enlightened
leadership. Since the late '60s, when the Black Panthers conducted
counterpolice patrols, Berkeley has seen a series of vigorous grassroots
police-accountability movements.
The latest is CopWatch, which runs an office, trains citizens in filing
complaints and lawsuits, publishes a quarterly report, and agitates before
the City Council and Police Review Commission. One of the outfit's tactics
is "cop watching." During these routine patrols, activists armed with
camcorders and a basic knowledge of the law observe and videotape the police
as the latter conduct stops, searches, and arrests. "We are always very
respectful and stay within the law. But we let the cops know that we won't
be intimidated and that we will exercise our right to observe," explains
Danielle Storer, who helped found the group in 1990.
However, Berkeley and New Haven are rare exceptions. More typical is the
situation in Greensboro, N.C., where eight years ago the public library's
bus-sized "bookmobile"--2,000 titles and two librarians--was retired for
lack of funds. Shortly thereafter, the bookmobile was bought by the police
department and converted into a mobile command-and-control center for its
tactical Special Response Team.
"It's a great piece of equipment," says police spokesman M. C. Bitner. "It's
really so much better than what we had."
In the previous van, one 6-foot-5-inch SRT officer had trouble standing up.
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This article is part of an ongoing series on the impact of guns in our
communities. It originally appeared in The Nation.
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[ Sonoma County | MetroActive Central | Archives ]
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>From the July 1-7, 1999 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.
Copyright © Metro Publishing Inc. Maintained by Boulevards New Media.
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