SWAT Madness

I watched a good portion of A&E's 24 marathon over the weekend, gearing up for the two-hour season premier on Sunday, January 15.

As almost everyone knows, 24 is a fictional drama - and an addictive one at that - about an American counterterrorism unit combatting foreign and domestic terrorists. But airing during the commercial breaks on A&E were advertisments for its new reality show, Dallas SWAT, which premieres Thursday night.

I've followed Radley Balko's writing for quite some time now, and he's dedicated a lot of his blogging to chronicling police department oversteps, namely no-knock raids that are conducted either by plain-clothes cops or officers eqipped with full SWAT gear and weaponry, that have resulted in unnecessary bullying and even the deaths of innocent civilians. Rather than attempt to recount these examples, you'd be better served to check out Balko's stuff at theagitator.com. But as soon as I saw these commercials for Dallas SWAT, I immediately wondered what he'd have to say about this show. I wasn't disappointed when I visited his blog today to see if he'd touched on this yet.

Have a look at these photos. These are civilian police. Those weapons are aimed at civilians, not enemy combatants. The University of Northern Kentucky Peter Krasks has surveyed thousands of police departments across the country, and has found that in the vast majority of SWAT call-outs, the person on the other end of those assault weapons you see in those photos is a nonviolent marijuana offender.

Surely there are criminal situations, especially in bigger cities, that call for SWAT involvement. But as with anything else, any benefit has costs. It is indisputable that one unnecessary cost of SWAT raids is unfortunate deaths of innocents, non-violent offenders, and officers that have been shot by people who shouldn't have been raided in the first place who simply thought they were being attacked.

What are the odds A&E will explore this side of the story in its programming?