A Reason reader sent the story of the horrible shootings in Chicago last Friday and asked if it might be an example of the effective use of a SWAT team.

It absolutely is. Here we had a man who presented an immediate threat to the people inside that building. The SWAT team acted quickly, decisively, and killed the guy with minimal risk to bystanders. It’s exactly the kind of thing SWAT teams were intended to, and it’s what they excel at.

I’m not anti-SWAT. But confrontational, volatile, dangerous tactics ought to be reserved for confrontational, volatile, dangerous people. Nonviolent offenders don’t meet that standard. Rampaging, hostage-taking, murdering gunmen do.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 10th, 2006 at 9:48 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.