This whole business of SWAT teams aggravates me. There are very few times when a SWAT team is actually needed. A better course of action would be to surround the place and wait the suspect out.
Nowadays every police department thinks they have to have all that neat SWAT gear. Once they get it they have to play with it. Once they have it on, they are “all dressed up, and nowhere to go”, so they have to FIND a place to raid.
“When you just got a hammer for Christmas, EVERYTHING looks like a nail.”
A SWAT team is a COMBAT assault team, to be used against enemy combatants. The launch of a SWAT team is not asking for trouble, it is BEGGING for trouble. Especially when you have bad intel, or even worse, the wrong address!
Those criminal idiots at WACO, Janet Reno and Larry Potts, were too d*amn high & mighty to simply put a county deputy & squad car on each corner of the property then wait Koresh out. No, they had to have an assault with tanks, CS gas & what really looked like a flame thrower nozzle on the left front of one tank, just inside the treads.
Watch some of the SWAT training videos. They throw in a few flash-bangs, kick in the door and charge in shouting
“NVUHAVZSDKJ;OUHRGZVZ ZFV.LNSV O’PJJVZIR!!!”
Seriously, can anyone who is wide awake understand what they are saying, let alone someone just awakened from a sound sleep?
/rant ....for now, at least.
Amen, Mr. Birds.