Gates explained in his autobiography Chief: My Life in the LAPD that he neither developed SWAT tactics nor the associated and often distinctive equipment but that he supported the underlying concept, tried to empower his people to develop it, and generally lent them moral support. Īfter the LAPD's establishment of its own SWAT team, many law enforcement agencies across the United States established their own specialized units under various names. Daryl Gates, who led the LAPD response to the riots, would later write that police at the time didn't 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." : 112Īnother 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. 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. The LAPD promoted what became known as SWAT teams for a variety of reasons. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Inspector Daryl Gates has said that he first envisioned "SWAT" as an acronym for "Special Weapons Attack Team" in 1967, but later accepted "Special Weapons and Tactics" on the advice of his deputy chief, Edward M.
The tactic worked and was later soon to resolve other types of incidents involving heavily armed criminals. The purpose of this unit was to react quickly and decisively to bank robberies while they were in progress, by utilizing a large number of specially trained officers who had at their disposal a great amount of firepower. Īccording 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 LAPD Metropolitan Division's "D" Platoon is one of the world's most prominent SWAT units and was the second SWAT team established in the United States, after that of the Philadelphia Police Department in 1964. In addition, they may use specialized equipment including heavy body armor, ballistic shields, entry tools, armored vehicles, thermal and night vision devices, and motion detectors for covertly determining the positions of hostages or hostage takers, inside enclosed structures. SWAT units are often equipped with automatic and specialized firearms, including submachine guns, assault rifles, riot shotguns, sniper rifles, riot guns, riot control agents, smoke, and stun grenades.
SWAT teams are increasingly equipped with military-type hardware and trained to deploy against threats of terrorism, for crowd control, hostage taking, and in situations beyond the capabilities of ordinary law enforcement, sometimes deemed "high-risk". By 2015 that number had increased to nearly 80,000 times a year.
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. Although they were first created in the 1960s to handle riot control or violent confrontations with criminals, the number and usage of SWAT teams increased in the 1980s and 1990s during the War on Drugs and later in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In the United States, a SWAT ( special weapons and tactics) team is a police tactical unit that uses specialized or military equipment and tactics. FBI agents undergoing hostage rescue training and helicopter fast rope insertion training Law enforcement