Two Labrador retrievers shot dead in Maryland, one while running away from uniformed intruders who stormed unannounced into the house. A 26-year-old mother killed in Lima, Ohio, while kneeling on the floor and holding her one-year-old son. An 88-year-old man mistakenly shot dead in Atlanta in a botched raid. An optometrist in Fairfax accidentally shot and killed while being investigated for betting on football games with a group of friends.
These are some of the many horror stories of armed raids by special-weapons-and-tactics (SWAT) teams. The first one generated nationwide headlines last July because it involved the high-profile, utterly mistaken invasion of the home of Mayor Cheye Calvo of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. Calvo’s front door was bashed in, his beloved black labs killed, and his mother-in-law pushed face down on the kitchen floor with a gun to her head. All this, even though police never got a “no-knock” search warrant.
In reaction to the Calvo case and to reports that paramilitary-style raids nationwide have increased a mind-boggling 1,500 percent in 25 years, two Maryland state legislators are proposing a bill to require police departments to monitor their SWAT-team use. Maryland lawmakers would be well advised to pass the bill quickly after its first hearing on March 3. Gov. Martin O’Malley ought to sign it, thus making Maryland the first state in the nation with such legislation. This bill is a remarkably restrained, first-step response to Calvo’s dreadful experience – restraint that is appropriate until emotions about the case can ease.
All the bill does is require each local police department to submit a monthly report of any SWAT activities, with details of time, place, evidence seized, arrests, and any injuries. “This bill is an important first step that doesn’t restrict [SWAT] use,” Calvo said. “It merely brings transparency.” Transparency should be the least the public demands with regard to the use of potentially deadly force. As was reported last month by Reason Magazine’s Radley Balko, who has studied this issue for years, “a surprisingly high percentage of [SWAT] raids produce neither drugs nor weapons…. [For example], of the 146 no-knock warrants served in Denver in 1999…only two resulted in prison time.” And as Balko wrote in another column, “SWAT teams, forced entry and paramilitary tactics should be reserved for extreme, emergency situations.” The mild reporting requirements in the Maryland bill would allow the state to determine if that’s how they are indeed used.
