I had no issues with SWAT before, in recent years though every wide spot in the road is forming a SWAT team, collecting military vehicles and gear. Smaller police forces cannot afford to dedicate men to units like that so their training has to be less than ideal. Not to mention when they have budget talks they have to justify having a SWAT team. The only way to justify the money spent is to use the SWAT team; from a budget standpoint the more they use it the better. In my opinion that is why SWAT is being used to serve regular warrants, and against garden variety potheads in some cases.
In too many places we have small town police officers, with little or no real SWAT training- yet they have all the toys the big boys do. They are also encouraged to use those toys at every opportunity. What could possibly go wrong?
Tammy very well said, and on the money. I too have spent most of my life inherently giving cops the benefit of the doubt and accepting the new toys and gear.
But I cannot ignore what is going on all around us. Freepers and other conservatives who think this militarization of cop departments isn’t connected to the IRS, TSA, ATF, BLM militarization and the growth of government power and government unions are fooling themselves, head buried deeply in sand.