SWAT Team Research Articles

Right and Subjectivity: From Freedom and Agency to Pathology and Madness—Introduction

Earlier versions of the articles collected here were initially presented at the ‘Right and Subjectivity’ conference held at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University in April 2013, with the exception of the paper by Peter Goodrich. Goodrich was unable to attend due to the extraordinary circumstances under which the conference took place, namely, the lockdown of the entire city of Boston in the course of the police hunt of the Boston marathon bombings suspects. The streets were empty, government facilities and private businesses shuttered, Boston airspace closed, all public transportation suspended, and residents were directed to ‘shelter in place’ as SWAT teams went door-to-door, holding people at gun-point as they searched their homes. The spectacle of terrorism was matched by the spectacle of a police state and residents willingly and often enthusiastically complied with the voluntary ‘shelter in place’ directive. This scenery provided an uncannily fitting background for a conversation about the relationship between right and subjectivity. The claim that there is a significant relationship between right and subjectivity rests on the assumption that the law is a dominant form of social integration. Assuming this to be true, it is then plausible that different legal regimes contribute to the formation of different forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Using Michel Foucault’s notion of ‘subjectivation’, we can view this formative process as simultaneously subjugating and empowering. On the one hand, we use our rights to formulate our claims towards others and towards the community; on the other hand,

Applying Resilience Promotion Training Among Special Forces Police Officers.

Police Special Forces (a.k.a. special weapons and tactics [SWAT]) officers are tasked with responding to the most critical situations, including incidents that require specialized skills and equipment beyond typical policing activities. In this study, we tested the feasibility of applying Arnetz and colleagues' resilience promotion training that was developed for patrol officers to SWAT team officers (n = 18). The resilience promotion training program included psychoeducation focused on police stress and resilience, and the practice of resilience promotion techniques (controlled breathing and imagery) while listening to audio-recorded critical incident scenarios. The aims of this study were to (a) examine if a resilience training program was relevant and accepted by SWAT team officers and (b) assess participants' physiological stress responses (heart rate, respiration) during the resilience training sessions to note if there were improvements in stress responding over time. Our findings revealed that participants were able to significantly reduce their average heart rate and improve their ability to engage in controlled respiration (i.e., breathing) during simulated critical incidents over the course of the 5-day training. Improvements in stress responding were observed even when the critical incident scenarios became more graphic. Results suggest that an intervention to reduce stress responses of SWAT officers to critical incident scenarios works in a simulated training setting. Translation of these findings to real-world occupational hazards is a recommended next step.

War on Drugs Policing and Police Brutality

Background: War on Drugs policing has failed to reduce domestic street-level drug activity: the cost of drugs remains low and drugs remain widely available. Objectives: In light of growing attention to police brutality in the United States, this paper explores interconnections between specific War on Drugs policing strategies and police-related violence against Black adolescents and adults in the United States. Methods: This paper reviews literature about (1) historical connections between race/ethnicity and policing in the United States; (2) the ways that the War on Drugs eroded specific legal protections originally designed to curtail police powers; and (3) the implications of these erosions for police brutality targeting Black communities. Results: Policing and racism have been mutually constitutive in the United States. Erosions to the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and to the Posse Comitatus Act set the foundations for two War on Drugs policing strategies: stop and frisk and Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams. These strategies have created specific conditions conducive to police brutality targeting Black communities. Conclusions/Importance: War on Drugs policing strategies appear to increase police brutality targeting Black communities, even as they make little progress in reducing street-level drug activity. Several jurisdictions are retreating from the War on Drugs; this retreat should include restoring rights originally protected by the 4th Amendment and Posse Comitatus. While these legal changes occur, police chiefs should discontinue the use of SWAT teams to deal with low-level nonviolent drug offenses and should direct officers to cease engaging in stop and frisk.

The rise and fall of the nation's doctor Surgeon General's Warning: How Politics Crippled the Nation's Doctor Mike Stobbe University of California Press, 2014. 393 pp.

The rise and fall of the nation's doctor <b>Surgeon General's Warning: How Politics Crippled the Nation's Doctor</b> <i>Mike Stobbe</i> University of California Press, 2014. 393 pp.

Tactical medicine: a joint forces field algorithm.

INTRODUCTION Tactical emergency medical support (TEMS) is a specialized area of emergency medical services (EMS). Its primary goal is to provide medical care under tactical environments to help save lives and accomplish the team’s mission. It may reduce the likelihood of death, injury, permanent disability, and illness among tactical operators, civilians, and suspects; reduce lost work time; decrease liability for the law enforcement agency; and enhance team morale. In addition, TEMS providers can train officers to treat themselves and others, a valuable capability if medical personnel are not immediately available. Much of the medical care administered by TEMS providers is based on local or regional EMS protocols and on a number of tactical medical curricula, including Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC), the STORM (Specialized Tactics for Operational Rescue and Medicine) family of courses, and CONTOMS (Counter Narcotics and Terrorism Operational Medical Support). The primary objectives of these curricula are to treat the casualty, prevent further casualties, and complete the mission. The TCCC curriculum addresses rapid hemorrhage control, including early tourniquet application; airway management; fluid resuscitation; field analgesia, antibiotic administration; and hypothermia prevention. Efforts are ongoing to expand the role of, and standardize the care administered by, TEMS providers. How to incorporate a military-based TEMS component into civilian Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams and how tactical commanders can use this potentially valuable asset receive less attention. Medical personnel can be an important addition to a SWAT team, but they can also be a liability. Tactical leaders tasked with integrating a medical component in their team must learn to utilize providers in a safe and effective fashion. They should have an appreciation for the potential benefits and limitations of on-scene medical care, how to manage victim evacuation and the timing for that evacuation, and how to balance the needs of the patient with the success of the mission. Although law enforcement and medical providers focus on different aspects of a mission, either addressing the threat or caring for the injured, the joint mission in scenarios such as an active shooter is to save lives. The medical and tactical efforts should be complementary and by this synergistic to the mission. Based on our experience in the Israeli Special Forces and in civilian EMS, TEMS, and SWAT teams in the United States, we propose a joint forces field algorithm that addresses the medical and tactical considerations of patient care in a hostile environment. It can be followed by medical providers and tactical operators to better coordinate their efforts. It may assist civilian SWAT leaders working with TEMS personnel to incorporate medical providers into their teams and medical considerations into their tactics. The aim is to narrow the gap that may exist between law enforcement and medical priorities in the field and provide higher-quality patient care so SWAT teams can better accomplish their mission.

The Green to Blue Pipeline: Defense Contractors and the Police Industrial Complex

Images of police in tactical gear, pointing automatic weapons at unarmed demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, represented a flashpoint in public awareness that American police are rapidly militarizing. Federal grants have been quietly arming police with tanks, drones, and uniforms more suited to waging war than patrolling the streets. As police have acquired more military gear, SWAT teams and deployments have proliferated. Even small towns receive surplus military materiel to fight the “wars” on drugs and terrorism. In addition, police training uses a military approach that threatens to transform the traditional police mandate of protecting and serving into one of engaging and defeating. This Article is the first in legal scholarship to analyze the causes of police militarization and the obstacles to curbing it.This Article analyzes the factors that drive police militarization, from a historical, legal and financial perspective. It examines the multiple federal grant programs that provide the funding for, and incentivize, militarization, like the Department of Defense Program that distributes military materiel with little oversight regarding its use, and the Department of Homeland Security grant program that dispenses billions in funds to buy weapons and equipment. It exposes defense industry efforts to ensure Congress keeps the gear flowing; as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wind down, the industry turns to the domestic market to fill the gap in sales. The Article analyzes the failure of the judicial system to address excessive force claims in the context of ever-increasing SWAT raids, and proposes more effective routes to reform.

A Nursing SWAT Team: Using the EMR to Improve Patient Throughput

ADVANCEMENTS IN THE nursing profession have historically come about through innovative practices. Advances in technology often disrupt the old ways of doing things and alters the delivery of care. When the care environment is altered, nurses may find that they need to find solutions to unexpected challenges. Compounding advances in technology is increased patient acuity and the need for rapid turnaround thus placing a demand on nursing workflow (Needleman, 2013). The Joint Commission (2013) standard to decrease the onboarding times to four hours in the emergency department (ED) is a perennial goal for all institutions and one that is impacted by advances in technology.

Perfecting Tyranny: Foreign Intervention as Experimentation in State Control

This paper analyzes how foreign interventions can result in a broadening of government powers and a concurrent reduction of citizens’ liberties and freedoms domestically. We develop an analytical framework to examine the effects of coercive foreign interventions on the scope of domestic government activities. Facing limited or altogether absent constraints abroad, coercive foreign interventions serve as a testing ground for domestically-constrained governments to experiment with new technologies and methods of social control over foreign populations. We identify several mechanisms through which these innovations in state-produced social control can boomerang back to the intervening country. We apply the logic of the “boomerang effect” to two episodes in the U.S.: (1) the origins of domestic surveillance, and (2) the rise of SWAT teams and the militarization of domestic police.

Table of Contents

Abstract Faculty Development Provide guidance to faculty members when they need it Collaboration Adopt a SWAT team approach to achieve campus goals Find out why students leave to address problems Use waitlists effectively to help students, faculty News/Resources Students steal, sell test Database lists green funds Scholarship supports transfer students Students don't prepare for math placement Majors don't define career paths Executive Management Take small steps to achieve leadership success Write a note to a prospective student Research Review data on completions for students who started in 2007 Consider impact of transferring on completion rates What Would You Do? How would you address a staff member's office romance? Lawsuits &amp; Rulings LIABILITY Penn State not automatically liable for Gerald Sandusky's actions FACULTY Injured professor sues for retaliation after filing suit against college STUDENT AFFAIRS A graduate student's scholarship doesn't make him an employee Disability court cases &amp; rulings Focus on Leadership Create sustainable programs, easy‐to‐use services with input from stakeholders

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It) performed at Chekhov International Theatre Festival/Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory/School of Dramatic Art Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It)performed at Chekhov International Theatre Festival/Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory/School of Dramatic Art Theatre Kevin Ewert A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It)Presented by the Chekhov International Theatre Festival/Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory/School of Dramatic Art Theatre for the World Shakespeare Festival, performed at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon 08 10-18, 2012. Directed by Dmitry Krymov. Set and costumes by Vera Martynova. Music by Kuzma Bodrov. Technical direction and lighting by Ivan Vinogradov. Puppets by Victor Platonov. Sound design by Andrey Zachesov. Props by Maria Masalskaya. Produced by Valery Shadrin. With Liya Akhedzhakova, Pavel Balbukh, Ivan Baraki, Vadim Dubrovin, Ivan Eryshev, Valery Garkalin, Natalia Gorchakova, Maria Gulik, Valery Guriyanov, Alexey Kokhanov, Andrey Loshkin, Maxim Maminov, Sergey Melkonyan, Sergey Nazarov, Boris Opletaev, Anatoliy Shustov, Vladimir Shustov, Anna Sinyakina, Anton Telkov, and Mikhail Umanets. So there’s this company, based in Colorado, with a website that everyone who works in the theater should have a look at. Their name—the Crisis Company—is one of those small, infrequent examples of truth in advertising. What this company makes to order is, in fact, a crisis. They “stage adrenalin-triggering role-play training in a simulated environment for crisis intervention professionals (including police officers, cadets, SWAT teams, corrections officers, dispatchers, hostage negotiators, and hospital staff) to practice verbal de-escalation techniques in a safe environment” (“Crisis Company” Homepage, web). The promotional video on their website contains testimonials from trainees who, over and over, speak of the level of “realism” of the experience. This is perhaps not surprising, as the Crisis Company’s intent, and the desire of the organizations that utilize its services, is to move beyond theory and textbook examples and classroom exercises with colleagues who can’t act into something more real. But real how? The actors imitate the gestures and adopt the vocal patterns and portray the behaviors of individuals with mental health issues in a particular crisis situation. The scenarios are staged in “real world” settings rather than an office or meeting room. But the most important mark of realism for the trainees, the audience/participants of the Crisis Company’s experiential offerings, seems to be the unmistakable reality of their own emotional engagement—the scenarios feelreal and, as one officer put it, “you don’t realize how involved you get until after it’s over and the adrenaline is flowing out” (“Crisis Company,” web). When the Crisis Company talks about “Real life. Real emotions. Real training” in their promotional material, the emotions in question aren’t so much what the professional actors are performing, but rather what the trainees [End Page 746]themselves are experiencing as they make their way through a simulation they have paid for in advance and traveled somewhere to attend. When we talk about emotional realist theater, does its realist quality reside more in the production’s intention and the way it is made, or in how we respond to it? The question of an audience’s emotional life has been kicking around for a while now, ever since the arousal of terror and pity seemed a decent goal for drama, and catharsis was its original de-escalation technique in a safe environment. But with the rise of Stanislavsky’s system and its variation/bastardization in “Method acting,” emotional realism has become perhaps most associated with character psychology and acting technique—with actors’ vivid portrayals of the emotional lives of their characters and our subsequent, vicarious identification with the “reality” of what they are doing. They imagine it and perform it, we believe it and feel it. But identification is a problematic concept. The origins of realism lay in a desire for more objectively lifelike theater as an aesthetic laboratory for the study of human interactions and behaviors; in his treatise on “Naturalism in the Theater” in 1878, Emile Zola declared, “We are an age of method, of experimental science; our primary need is for precise analysis.” Practitioners from Brecht to Barker have since railed against the manner in which that clinical impulse precisely to examine “real life” has become instead a sloppy, unexamined, even...

Physician Roles in Tactical Emergency Medical Support: The First 20 Years

BackgroundThe benefits of Tactical Emergency Medical Support (TEMS) elements are providing injury prevention, immediate care of injuries, and medical augmentation of the success of dangerous law enforcement operations. TEMS is recognized by civilian Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) and various other law enforcement agencies around the country as a vital addition to such SWAT teams. The integration of specially trained TEMS personnel has become a key component of law enforcement special operations. ObjectiveOur aim was to review the published literature to identify if there is a role for physicians within TEMS elements with regard to its establishment and progression, and to characterize the level of physician-specific support provided in the tactical environment for civilian tactical law enforcement teams. DiscussionPhysician presence as part of TEMS elements is increasing in number and popularity as the realization of the benefits provided by such physicians has become more apparent. The inclusion of physicians as active and participating members of TEMS elements is a critical measure to be taken for tactical law enforcement units. Physicians provide an added level of medical expertise to TEMS elements in rural and urban settings compared with law enforcement personnel with medic training. ConclusionsPhysician involvement is an essential element of a successful TEMS program. There is a need for more physicians to become involved as TEMS personnel for specialized tactical teams to spread the time commitment and increase their availability to tactical units on a daily basis.

The Incomplete Illusion

Research Article| September 01 2013 The Incomplete Illusion: Photographing the Training Ground Ruth Dusseault Ruth Dusseault 1Atlanta Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2013) 72 (3): 292–300. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2013.72.3.292 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Ruth Dusseault; The Incomplete Illusion: Photographing the Training Ground. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2013; 72 (3): 292–300. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2013.72.3.292 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search Consider this scene: Terrorists have planted a bomb in an American suburb. A SWAT team propels down from a helicopter and clears the neighborhood (Figure 1). The bomb squad pulls up in a Humvee and deploys a robot. In another scene, set in a remote Iraqi village, civilians are caught in the cross fire between religious factions. People scream and run for shelter in empty buildings that, from the outside, look like adobe shops and houses. It all has the feel of a movie studio, but more reductionist. The scenography only loosely references reality. A cinder block building, sparsely furnished with a few bare mattresses, a bookshelf with no books, a stove, and a table, becomes a home, a hostage entrapment, or a Taliban hideout. Often sited in the remote regions of the desert Southwest, this is the modern training ground.1 In response to the wars of... You do not currently have access to this content.

Reality Pawns: The New Money TV

One of the vilest reality shows in the history of American television, Repo Games, premiered on Spike in 2011 with no fanfare and a simple premise, delivered in a voiceover intro: "Nobody wants to meet the repo man. But when this repo man comes, you'll get the chance to ditch those late notices for good." A little more than a minute later, we see a man built like a professional wrestler pull up in front a woman's house, along with a camera crew that rushes into her driveway like a SWAT team. The owner's "REPO REPORT" then flashes across the screen: "Name: Wallace. Age: 44. Vehicle: '96 Dodge Caravan. Intel: Her weave alone will whoop your ass." Heavy metal plays in the background. A tow truck backs in under the van, which Wallace does not appreciate, and then the wrestler, co-host Tom DeTone, proceeds to describe the situation in which Wallace now finds herself.

The Long Road to Recovery: Environmental Health Impacts of Hurricane Sandy

Building contractor John Pierciey stands in the gutted interior of a 1950s-era home in Manasquan, New Jersey. Wallboard, two layers of wood flooring, a layer of felt—all of it had to be ripped out to rid the house of mold caused by Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge. “This is the sixth house I’ve gutted in a week,” Pierciey says. “Every one is different. You don’t know what you’re going to find until you take them apart.” Residents and volunteers keep warm by a fire barrel in the New Dorp Beach neighborhood of Staten Island, 5 November 2012. Power outages persisted through a cold snap that put temperatures in the single digits. So it is with the environmental health impacts of Hurricane Sandy. Every layer of society, every type of building, has felt the impact of the storm, which struck the U.S. East Coast on 29 October 2012. Incidences of death and illness, though small in number compared with some storms, have come in many forms, the effects still unfolding as time goes by.

Viva la Raza! A Park, a Riot and Neighbourhood Change in North Denver

People reside in homes; however, they live in neighbourhoods comprised of parks, sidewalks, restaurants, shops and other everyday places. Whether current or potential neighbourhood residents feel at home in these places remains an undertheorised aspect of neighbourhood change. Rather than housing policy or real estate development, this essay explores public space as a mechanism of neighbourhood change. Drawing from ethnographic research in the Latino barrios of North Denver, It deconstructs the history of one small yet vital public space—la Raza Park. During the 1970s, this park, its pool and the many events it grounded, built community cohesion and fostered cultural identity. In 1981, city authorities went so far as to deploy a SWAT team to la Raza Park to enforce a permit violation. The following summer, they demolished its pool. North Denver is now gentrifying rapidly. This essay stitches these disparate-seeming events into a story of neighbourhood change.

Operator Training and TEMS Support: A Survey of Unit Leaders in Northern and Central California

Members of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams routinely work in high-risk tactical situations. Awareness of the benefit of Tactical Emergency Medical Support (TEMS) is increasing but not uniformly emphasized.To characterize the current regional state of tactical medicine and identify potential barriers to more widespread implementation.A multiple-choice survey was administered to SWAT team leaders of 22 regional agencies in northern and central California. Questions focused on individual officer self-aid and buddy care training, the use and content of individual first aid kits (IFAKs), and the operational inclusion of a dedicated TEMS provider.Respondents included city police (54%), local county sheriff (36%), state law enforcement (5%), and federal law enforcement (5%). RESULTS showed that 100% of respondents thought it was ?Very Important? for SWAT officers to understand the basics of self-aid and buddy care and to carry an IFAK, while only 71% of respondents indicated that team members actually carried an IFAK. In addition, 67% indicated that tourniquets were part of the IFAK, and 91% of surveyed team leaders thought it was ?Very Important? for teams to have a trained medic available onsite at callouts or high-risk warrant searches. Also, 59% of teams used an organic TEMS element.The majority of SWAT team leaders recognize the benefit of basic Operator medical training and the importance of a TEMS program. Despite near 100% endorsement by unit-level leadership, a significant proportion of teams are lacking one of the key components including Operator IFAKs and/or tourniquets. Tactical team leaders, administrators, and providers should continue to promote adequate Operator training and equipment as well as formal TEMS support.

Fitness Characteristics of a Suburban Special Weapons and Tactics Team

Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) operators are specialized law enforcement officers who traditionally perform their duties with higher anticipated workloads because of additional body armor, weapons, and equipment used for enhanced operations and protection. This elevated workload increases the need for SWAT operators to improve or maintain their physical fitness to consistently perform routine operations. Typical tasks require trunk rotation, overhead upper extremity use, upper and lower body strength use, and long waiting periods followed by explosive movements while wearing additional equipment. Eleven male SWAT operators from 1 SWAT team performed flexibility, strength, power, and aerobic capacity tests and a variety of job-related tasks. Data were compared with age- and gender-based normative data. Fitness testing revealed that officers ranked high on tests of muscular strength (leg strength, 90th percentile; bench press, 85th percentile); however, body composition (55th percentile), core body strength, and flexibility ranked lower. Furthermore, aerobic capacity and muscular power had a wide range of scores and were also not ideal to support maximal performance during routine operations. These data can assist exercise specialists choose fitness programs specifically for job-related tasks of SWAT operators when creating fitness programs. Fitness programming for law enforcement should focus on improving aerobic fitness, flexibility, core strength, and muscular power while maintaining muscular strength to meet the needs of these specialized officers.

Dino Egger by Éric Chevillard

used for the first novel, of alternating between rugby and police work still holds here. As already noted about Match aller, Capron demonstrates an admirable fluency in street language, rugby terminology, police-speak, and the idiosyncratic speech of the chief investigator, Ferdinand Garamande, which is a strange blend of pedantry and slang. The term feuilleton suggests that readers should be familiar with a cast of characters and will have the pleasure of seeing them respond to new events. But Capron chooses to drill down on the same events in order to present new characters or develop the ones already at hand. The rugby story intensifies as the club replaces virtually all of its players with farm team rookies. This gives the author the opportunity to paint, with considerable sensitivity, a diverse landscape of young athletes. There is, for example, the rabbinical student who must balance his religious practices with the exigencies of athletic performance. Even more carefully rendered is the immigrant whose family has sought asylum from dictatorship and human rights abuse. Linguistically challenged but ample of soul, only his modesty and uprightness are recognized by his teammates. Cameo portraits like these make the reading particularly satisfying. The story of the police investigation also shifts focus without losing sight of the original story line. Mercifully, readers are not presented with a second spate of cadavers, having waded in the first volume through a dozen murder victims dispatched with uncommon sadistic flair. Instead, narrative tension is maintained in thriller mode: readers know the designated victims before they are struck down. Indeed, one of the potential targets is herself aware of her status. To add to the anxiety, the investigators are deprived of this same knowledge, making it difficult for them to track down the perpetrators. The long dry spell in the investigation allows for the development of the main character, Garamande, as an intellectual out of place in a world of forensic technology and SWAT team ambushes. In fact, at times his archaic methods become risible, as when he strikes up Socratic dialogues with his colleagues in an attempt to understand the minds behind the crimes. On the other hand, Garamande also comes to terms with his own ineptness even as he clarifies his personal values, making his character much more dynamic than a stock feuilleton character. If I were to register one complaint about this page-turner, it would have to be about the extravagant finale. For most of its many pages, the Match novels hold to an ironic realism, a style that tacks between that of Frank Deford and Dashiell Hammett, with whole passages of John Irving thrown in. The ending, however, draws out the suspense only to give us the most predictable of endings. To that, Capron adds a dénouement laced with purple prose and in which rugby is the One True Sport, justice is practiced everywhere in the land, and love (tempered by the most dismal human failings) can still conquer. I would like to think the writer is being tongue-incheek , but I will leave that judgment call to other readers. Lawrence University (WI) Eilene Hoft-March CHEVILLARD, ÉRIC. Dino Egger. Paris: Minuit, 2011. ISBN 978-2-7073-2143-5. Pp. 154. 14 a. Most of us would agree that great figures like Plato, Leonardo, Shakespeare, Mozart, Baudelaire, and Freud actually existed, and that their work left material 214 FRENCH REVIEW 86.1 traces in human history and culture. But what if they had not existed? In what ways would the world be different? Might we somehow appreciate those differences , and thereby infer an existence that ought to have been? Such is the question that launches Éric Chevillard’s latest novel. “Dino Egger” is the figure he invokes: he has never lived, yet the world misses him, and certain lacunas in the world’s fabric testify eloquently—and indeed unavoidably—to that fact. Had he existed, his influence would have rivaled that of any great thinker or artist one might care to name; like them, he would have stamped our past, present, and future in indelible manners. In short, he is cruelly lacking. It falls to one “Albert Moindre” to repair that lack, and to...

Expecting the Unexpected? How SWAT Officers and Film Crews Handle Surprises

Organizations increasingly face surprises with regularity, yet little is known about how they develop the responses to unexpected events that enable their work to continue. We compare ethnographic data from two types of organizations that regularly deal with surprises, a police SWAT team and film production crews. We find that individuals engage in organizational bricolage, restructuring their activities by role shifting, reorganizing routines, and reassembling the work. Organizational bricolage depends on the sociocognitive resources that group members develop by drafting agreement on the work, reinforcing and elaborating task activities, and building cross-member expertise.

Maintaining Separate Spheres in Policing: Women on SWAT Teams

The Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team may represent the last vestige of male dominance in law enforcement as an assignment that remains grounded in traditional masculine notions of policing. Although SWAT units have become a prominent feature of modern American policing, there are few female team members. In an attempt to develop some insight into why women rarely serve on SWAT teams, the present research examines the viewpoints of a sample of 30 male and 31 female police officers on the gendered aspects of SWAT assignment. This exploratory study represents the first qualitative attempt to uncover police officers’ perspectives and thoughts on the “fit” of women on SWAT teams. The results show that the majority of officers, whether implicitly or explicitly, and regardless of gender, agree that the presence of women on SWAT teams presents a variety of challenges.