SWATing

“Our Overuse of SWAT Teams Makes Us Less Safe” — Adam Ruins Everything, 2019, 4:35 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klo4HI7c_TM

There are over 400 incidences of “SWATing” each year in the United States, some of which have resulted in injury or death. SWATing is a cruel prank where a fake hostage situation is reported to authorities (often done on gamers in the middle of a livestream). Moreover, our police force is becoming increasingly militarized via financial incentives from the war on drugs and access to used military equipment. Some estimates say that in 2014, SWAT teams were deployed more than 80,000 times (compared to 3,000 in 1980). SWAT teams were invented in the 1960s to deal with hostage situations and prison escapes. Nowadays, these situations only make up 7% of SWAT deployments as most of their time is spent on non-violent drug searches. Two-thirds of SWAT raids do not even result in discovering a weapon and 40% do not find drugs. New York City also estimates that 10% of no-knock SWAT teams bust into the wrong address. Why might this trend continue into the future? What can be done to stop this violent trend?