Radley Balko. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces

Abstract

In the mid-1990s, two separate surveys of the United States’ Police Paramilitary Units (PPU), also referred to as Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units, were undertaken. These surveys were used to substantiate that police were becoming militarized. The assertion was based on the findings of two surveys of police forces in cities with populations of between 25,000 and 50,000, and in cities with populations of more than 50,000. The surveys revealed that the number of PPU/SWAT units had increased markedly between 1980 and 1995, and claimed that an increase in the number of units or an increase in the number of their deployments was not a result of an increase in criminal offending nor was it because policing had entered a new era. In 2006, a report was published called Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police raids in America. Newspaper articles that described the actions of PPU/SWAT units were used...