Brian Wood might not be the most tender of husbands or the most law-abiding of men; after all, the Farmington firefighter, in a Sept 2008 episode, assaulted his wife, threatened suicide and got into a long standoff with the police while touting a handgun. But his deadly shooting 12 hours later by dozens of SWAT officers, including a sniper who fired the final shot as he laid on the ground unconscious, seemed more fitting for a Kafka novel than the local section of the Deseret News. In an even more tragic twist, the man who had to endure the loss of a son-in-law at the hands of the police and endure family disintegration following the episode — William “Dub” Lawrence — was the very person who founded the lethal police unit.
Lawrence has since become an untiring advocate against the militarization of American police departments and helped give birth to one of the nation’s first laws restricting SWAT operations in Utah. A documentary inspired by his journey, “Peace Officer,” which was screened in Salt Lake last Friday, could not come at a more opportune time as the state begins to register the effects of its renewed SWAT law, approved by the legislature in late August. Unfortunately, despite all the activist effort, the new law still doesn’t go far enough in its oversight of the state’s police. More fundamentally, the law falls short of any kind of cultural reform within the police community. As such, it’s unlikely it will reduce SWAT deployments in any meaningful way.
Utah’s current law builds on an earlier version which required all police departments to report basic statistics about SWAT team deployments, and team members to wear clearly marked uniforms in addition to body cameras. All of these stipulations were voluntary, however, with the naive assumption that the police were somehow immune to corruption and incompetence. This resulted in 25 percent of departments failing to provide any data to the state, while the rest kept their old practices, as reflected in the statistics. It is difficult to imagine how the new law seeking more data collection and placing more voluntary restrictions (on forced entry and reasons for deployment), with little state enforcement, will produce a different outcome than its predecessor.
Nevertheless, thanks to the data collection mandated by the earlier law, some of the public suspicion about SWAT misuse can now be confirmed. For instance, 83 percent of the time SWATs were deployed to serve drug-related warrants. Further, 65 percent of the SWAT incidents involved forced entry, without giving occupants the chance to peacefully interact with the police. A plurality of these operations (38.1 percent) were conducted after midnight.
Given the seemingly dangerous nature of these operations, one might be tempted to justify the use of disproportionate force. As Sheriff Jim Winder of the Unified Police Force put it, “There are hundreds, if not thousands, of 50-caliber rifles in the possession of civilians.” Yet in the four years since Utah began its data collection (from 2010 to 2014), only three (0.5 percent) raids turned up any firearms. Among them, just one suspect opened fire. On the other hand, three civilians were killed and another three injured during aggressive SWAT ambushes.
The data suggests that in nearly all of the incidents reported, SWAT was unnecessary, if not counter-productive. There might be a time when they appeared reasonable: in the 1980s when armed drug cartels in inner-cities became an increasingly serious problem, legislation allowing the military to collaborate with police forces seemed politically sensible. But as the War on Drugs topped Americans’ list of unpopular military campaigns, the police’s insistence on the use of SWAT suggests a greater cultural issue, an anachronism of sorts. The use of military equipment, tactics and terminology has enabled officers to treat their neighborhoods as war zones, suspects as enemies and officers themselves as warriors. They stockpile weapons, train and constantly deploy officers in a way similar to the military. Consequently, police departments have placed an overblown emphasis on officer safety, at the cost of civilian lives, community harmony and millions of taxpayer dollars, just as the military would when engaged in foreign warfare.
In light of the rampant abuse of SWAT, society must now re-examine the police-warrior narrative and reconsider the wide scope given to the police. The first step would be for forces across the nation to answer difficult questions, such as when is the use of surprise tactics, once reserved for the most dangerous criminals, justified in a civilian situation; under what circumstances is the violation of constitutional rights of freedom and property, or the senseless taking of civilian lives, ever allowed; and what is the ultimate source of police authority?
These questions were hardly at the center of the legislative debate or the new Utah law. It is not surprising, then, that until the police somehow awaken to their obligation to the society, that they will continue to feel justified to roll up in military-grade MRAP vehicles, and arm themselves with long arms, tasers and flash grenades. Lawrence’s plea for de-militarization will remain an afterthought in police departments.