[pnh102]

Most SWAT teams are a waste of money. You almost never hear about them going after actual violent, dangerous criminals these days. It is always some low-level suspect... and then they shoot his dogs just for fun.

I'd love to see this expense eliminated at the local level. At worst, most local police departments could share a SWAT team.

[The Magical Mischief Tour]

You almost never hear about them going after actual violent, dangerous criminals these days.

Well, there is a really good reason for that, one that was actually pointed out by one of the nations leading SWAT Team Training Units Bob O'Brien, who writes at Police One Magazine.

He pointed to the FBI statistics of violent crimes reported and investigated, the number of emergency SWAT callouts, verses the actual number of SWAT reported raids and the reason for such raids.

He showed where nationwide round 3% of the total yearly SWAT operations were for actual violent crimes such as active shooters, hostage situation and other such crimes where one can clearly see the need for such a group.

The most common use for SWAT Teams were for search warrants and drug raids where first time offenders were targeted and the most common results was either nothing being found in the search or misdemeanor amounts of dope.

And as Radley Balko points out SWAT TEams are 15 times more likely to kill someone during a raid than to have a member of the team even assaulted much less killed.

[nerdwithagun]

You have a point to a degree. However, how often would the news report SWAT doing a good job? To some level eliminating them here and there might be good, but I think better management when and where they go might be better.

[Bel Riose]

Most SWAT teams are a waste of money. You almost never hear about them going after actual violent, dangerous criminals these days.

Going after real criminals is too much like work! It might even be dangerous!!