Blog - SWAT - July 2007

From SWAT's earliest days, Hollywood has shown SWAT teams rappelling from great heights, crashing through windows, doing dive rolls worthy of Olympic gymnasts, coming up with long gun in hand, to save the day—lone and unhurt. At least that's how they did it in the 1970s hit TV show "SWAT."

Every day, police throughout America respond to dangerous situations that often turn into armed, deadly confrontations. When circumstances and time allow, police hold things down until SWAT arrives and takes over. At least that's the plan, but we all know about plans.

Bad cops, represent a particularly deadly threat to officers who respond to, or investigate, their crimes. I can’t think of many nightmare scenarios worse than confronting an armed, trained good guy gone bad, who knows our tactics.

Basic search and raid principles remain essentially unchanged since Sun Tzu wrote “The Art of War” more than 2,000 years ago. Sir Robert Peel’s London Bobbies conducted searches and raids for criminals in the 1800s about the same way we do them now. And today, basic “hammer and anvil” (entry and containment) principles are universal.
There have been some refinements, however. SWAT has created its own unique strategies and tactics, which vary among teams.

On the surface, it would seem that pro football teams and SWAT teams are totally unrelated. After all, NFL football is only a game, and its players are among the highest paid people in America. Whereas pay is definitely not the primary reason that any of us chose law enforcement as our profession, and our life and death operations in SWAT are by no means a game.
However, underneath the surface and beyond these differences, pro football and SWAT share very similar traits. What follows is a