How SWAT Teams Work by Ed Grabianowski

Inside this Article

1. Introduction to How SWAT Teams Work
2. Recruitment and Training
3. Basic SWAT Team Gear
4. Tactics and Planning
5. Conducting a Raid
6. Criticism of SWAT Teams

A police officer is on patrol when he gets a call about a domestic dispute. When he arrives at the scene, he finds that an armed man has taken his girlfriend hostage and barricaded himself inside his apartment. The officer calls for backup, but when the other officers arrive, they realize that their standard guns won't shoot through the barricades. They don't have surveillance equipment to see inside the apartment, which would give them crucial information about the assailant and the hostage. If the assailant starts shooting at them, they don't have body armor to protect them from his bullets. They could use gas to incapacitate him, but they don't have access to it. They haven't been trained to storm the apartment and incapacitate the attacker with minimal risk of injury to the hostage, the officers and the assailant.
Luckily, most police forces have a special unit with the equipment and training needed to resolve exactly this kind of situation: the SWAT team. A SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team is an elite unit within a police force, used for exceptional situations that require increased firepower or specialized tactics. The officers in a SWAT unit have undergone special training and have access to an arsenal of weaponry, armor and surveillance devices beyond standard-issue police gear. Much of this gear comes in the form of military surplus.

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