In the United States, a SWAT team is a generic term for a police tactical unit.
Radley Prescott Balko is an American journalist, author, blogger, and speaker who writes about criminal justice, the drug war, and civil liberties. In 2022, he began publishing his work on Substack after being let go from The Washington Post, where he had worked as an opinion columnist for nine years. Balko has written several books, including The Rise of the Warrior Cop and The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist.
The Baltimore Police Department (BPD) is the municipal police department of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Dating back to 1784, the BPD, consisting of 2,935 employees in 2020, is organized into nine districts covering 80.9 square miles (210 km2) of land and 11.1 square miles (29 km2) of waterways. The department is sometimes referred to as the Baltimore City Police Department to distinguish it from the Baltimore County Police Department.
Cory Jermaine Maye is a former American prisoner. He was originally convicted of murder in the 2001 death of Prentiss, Mississippi, police officer Ron W. Jones, during a drug raid on the other half of Maye's duplex.
The Columbus Division of Police (CPD) is the primary law enforcement agency for the city of Columbus, Ohio, in the United States. It is the largest police department in Ohio, and among the twenty-five largest in the United States. It is composed of twenty precincts and numerous other investigative and support units. Chief Elaine Bryant assumed leadership of the Division in 2021. Special units of the Columbus Division of Police include a Helicopter Unit, Canine Unit, Mounted Unit, Community Response Teams, Marine Park Unit, and Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT).
The Puerto Rico Police, officially the Puerto Rico Police Bureau, is a law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over the entire Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is a division of the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety, alongside the Puerto Rico Special Investigations Bureau and the Puerto Rico Municipal Police and handles both traffic and criminal law enforcement in the commonwealth. As of 2020, the Puerto Rico Police force had 11,532 members. It is organized into thirteen regions within the island for operational purposes. Its headquarters are located at 601 Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue in San Juan.
Kathryn Johnston was an elderly woman from Atlanta, Georgia who was killed by undercover police officers in her home on Neal Street in northwest Atlanta on November 21, 2006, where she had lived for 17 years. Three officers had entered her home in what was later described as a 'botched' drug raid. Officers cut off burglar bars and broke down her door using a no-knock warrant. Police said Johnston fired at them and they fired in response; she fired one shot out the door over the officers' heads and they fired 39 shots, five or six of which hit her. None of the officers were injured by her gunfire, but Johnston was killed by the officers. Police injuries were later attributed to friendly fire from each other's weapons.
In the United States, a no-knock warrant is a warrant issued by a judge that allows law enforcement to enter a property without immediate prior notification of the residents, such as by knocking or ringing a doorbell. In most cases, law enforcement will identify themselves just before they forcefully enter the property. It is issued under the belief that any evidence they hope to find may be destroyed between the time that police identify themselves and the time they secure the area, or in the event where there is a large perceived threat to officer safety during the execution of the warrant.
The Atlanta Police Department (APD) is a law enforcement agency in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
The Dallas Police Department, established in 1881, is the principal law enforcement agency serving the city of Dallas, Texas.
The St. Louis County Police Department is the primary law enforcement agency St. Louis County in the U.S. state.
The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) is the primary law enforcement agency for the city of San Diego, California. The department was officially established on May 16, 1889.
Metropolitan Division, commonly referred to as Metro Division or just Metro, is an elite division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) under its Special Operations Group. Metropolitan Division is responsible for managing the LAPD's specialized crime suppression, K-9, mounted, and SWAT units, named "platoons".
Ryan David Frederick, born 1979 or 1980 (age 44–45) is a former prisoner of the state of Virginia. He was convicted in 2009 of voluntary manslaughter for killing a police officer who was serving a search warrant. Frederick has said that he acted in self-defense and did not know that the person breaking into his house was a police officer. The case is notable for the magnitude of support the defendant received from his community, the press, and blogs, as well as for the relative leniency of the charge the jury chose for conviction in the death of an on-duty police officer. Frederick was reportedly released in 2016.
On November 29, 2009, four police officers of Lakewood, Washington were fatally shot at the Forza Coffee shop, located at 11401 Steele Street #108 South in the Parkland unincorporated area of Pierce County, Washington, near Tacoma. A gunman, later identified as Maurice Clemmons, entered the shop, shot the officers while they worked on laptops, and fled the scene with a single gunshot wound in his torso. After a massive two-day manhunt that spanned several nearby cities, an officer recognized Clemmons near a stalled car in south Seattle. When he refused orders to stop, he was shot and killed by a Seattle Police Department officer.
Brian Aitken is an American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Topple Ad Network, founder and Chairman of Ads for our Future, and author of a best-selling memoir, The Blue Tent Sky, which can be found in numerous law school libraries including the University of Texas Tarlton Law Library, University of Iowa Law Library, Indiana University Ruth Lilly Law Library, Patrick Henry College Library, and the Duke University J. Michael Goodson Law Library.
Jose Guerena was a U.S. Marine veteran who served in the Iraq War and who was killed in his Tucson, Arizona, home on May 5, 2011, by the Pima County Sheriff's Department SWAT team. Deputies were executing a warrant to search Guerena's home while investigating a case involving marijuana being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.
The militarization of police is the use of military equipment and tactics by law enforcement officers. This includes the use of armored personnel carriers (APCs), assault rifles, submachine guns, flashbang grenades, sniper rifles, and SWAT teams. The militarization of law enforcement is also associated with intelligence agency–style information gathering aimed at the public and political activists and with a more aggressive style of law enforcement. Criminal justice professor Peter Kraska has defined militarization of police as "the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model".
On January 28, 2019, in the Pecan Park area in the East End district of Houston, Houston Police Department (HPD) officers initiated a no-knock raid on a house, killing the two homeowners, a husband and wife: Dennis Wayne Tuttle and Rhogena Ann Nicholas. They were aged 59 and 58, respectively. Five HPD officers sustained injuries.
