Articles - SWAT

You probably know what you like, but you probably also see something new each time you browse your local uniform store, looking to replace your boots. Companies continue to come up with newer and better technologies every year.

Then you see them, casualties. Many of them, grotesquely motionless, obscured by the low hanging mist.

"The threat of suicide bombers in the U.S. is not an 'if' but a 'when,'" read a recent alert to law enforcement that was sent by the California Department of Justice.

As the sear releases the striker and the primer ignites, it's now the rifle's job to deliver that bullet exactly where it must go.

If you are shot while wearing body armor, you will still feel the energy of the bullet's impact. But if the armor works, the force will be spread out over your entire torso rather than in just a specific area.

The reality of the contemporary police special ops team is very different than the image of LAPD SWAT that was burned into America's collective consciousness by the hit show.

Welcome to the new battleground. Called "fifth-dimensional battlespace," it takes the old three-dimensional battlefield (the spatial dimensions of length, width, height or depth of an area), and the temporal dimension of time, and adds the fifth dimension of cyberspace.

The lesson of the Baltimore exercise is quite clear: police agencies can't just arbitrarily decide that their jurisdictions end at the water's edge and assume that anything on the water will be handled by the Coast Guard, the Navy, or somebody else.

Today's law enforcement personnel have many choices beyond leather, and much more to carry than just a pistol.

Every officer on the New Orleans Police Department knows instinctively when Carnival season begins. No one needs to check the calendar. It's in the air like the smell of alcohol and the laughter of excited crowds gathering on the streets of the Vieux Carre (the French Quarter).