WAR COMES HOME
The Excessive Militarization of American Policing

June 2014

War Comes Home
At America’s Expense:
The
Excessive Militarization of American Policing
The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly
© 2014 ACLU Foundation

June 2012

American Civil Liberties Union
125 Broad Street
New York, NY 10004
www.aclu.org
Cover image credit: Tim Gruber

Cover photo: Shutterstock/Luis Santos

CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
METHODOLOGY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
INTRODUCTION.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
SPECIAL REPORT: SWAT Raid Ends with Toddler in Medically-Induced Coma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
BACKGROUND.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
DISCUSSION AND FINDINGS.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
	

Policing and Militarism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Use of Military Equipment by SWAT Teams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Military Training.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Legality of Forced Entry Into People’s Homes.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Federal Incentives to Militarize Policing.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Mission Creep. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

	

Lack of Transparency and Oversight.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Limitations of Data Collection on SWAT Use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Lack of State and Local Oversight.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Lack of Federal Oversight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

	

The Purpose of SWAT.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Use of SWAT to Search for Drugs.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Lack of Standards.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Accuracy of Assessing Threats.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Some Appropriate Uses of SWAT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

	

Race and SWAT.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Race, SWAT, and Drugs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Racial Differences in Use of SWAT for Search Warrants.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

	

Use of Violent Tactics and Equipment.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Use of Violent Tactics to Force Entry.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Use of Armored Personnel Carriers During SWAT Raids.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Consequences of Using Violent Tactics.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Use of Violent Tactics With Children Present. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

RECOMMENDATIONS.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
CONCLUSION.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
APPENDICES.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
ENDNOTES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A

cross the country, heavily armed Special Weapons
and Tactics (SWAT) teams are forcing their way into
people’s homes in the middle of the night, often deploying
explosive devices such as flashbang grenades to temporarily
blind and deafen residents, simply to serve a search warrant
on the suspicion that someone may be in possession of
a small amount of drugs. Neighborhoods are not war
zones, and our police officers should not be treating us
like wartime enemies. However, the ACLU encountered
this type of story over and over when studying the
militarization of state and local law enforcement agencies.
This investigation gave us data to corroborate a trend we
have been noticing nationwide: American policing has
become unnecessarily and dangerously militarized, in
large part through federal programs that have armed state
and local law enforcement agencies with the weapons
and tactics of war, with almost no public discussion or
oversight.1 Using these federal funds, state and local law
enforcement agencies have amassed military arsenals
purportedly to wage the failed War on Drugs, the
battlegrounds of which have disproportionately been in
communities of color. But these arsenals are by no means
free of cost for communities. Instead, the use of hyperaggressive tools and tactics results in tragedy for civilians
and police officers, escalates the risk of needless violence,
destroys property, and undermines individual liberties.
This report provides a snapshot of the realities of
paramilitary policing, building on a body of existing work
demonstrating that police militarization is a pervasive
problem. Analyzing both existing secondary source
materials and primary source data uncovered through the
ACLU’s public records investigation, this report examines
the use of SWAT teams by state and local law enforcement
agencies and other aspects of militaristic policing.2 As
explained in the Methodology section, our statistical
analysis included more than 800 SWAT deployments
conducted by 20 law enforcement agencies during the years
2011-2012.3

2

American Civil Liberties Union

SWAT was created to deal with emergency situations such
as hostage, barricade and active shooter scenarios. Over
time, however, law enforcement agencies have moved away
from this original purpose and are increasingly using these
paramilitary squads to search people’s homes for drugs.
Aggressive enforcement of the War on Drugs has lost
its public mandate, as 67 percent of Americans think
the government should focus more on treatment than
on policing and prosecuting drug users.4 This waning
public support is warranted, as evidence continues to
document how the War on Drugs has destroyed millions
of lives, unfairly DRUG
impacted
communities of color, made
SEARCHES
drugs cheaper and more potent, caused countless deaths
of innocent people caught up in drug war-related armed
conflict, and failed to eliminate drug dependence and
addiction. The routine use of heavily armed SWAT teams
OTHER
to search people’s
homes for drugs, therefore, means that
law enforcement agencies across the country are using this
9%
UNKNOWN
hyper-aggressive form of domestic policing to fight a war
that has waning public support and has harmed, much
more than helped, communities.

62%
28%

Majority of SWAT Deployments
for Drug Searches (2011-2012)
DRUG SEARCHES • 62%

OTHER • 28%
UNKNOWN • 9%
Source: Data provided by local law enforcement agencies for ACLU
investigation.

SWAT raids are undoubtedly violent events: numerous
(often 20 or more) officers armed with assault rifles
and grenades approach a home, break down doors and
windows (often causing property damage), and scream for
the people inside to get on the floor (often pointing their
guns at them). During the course of this investigation,
the ACLU determined that SWAT deployments often
and unnecessarily entailed the use of violent tactics and
equipment, including Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs),
and that the use of these tactics and equipment often
increased the risk of property damage and bodily harm.
Unnecessarily aggressive SWAT raids can have disastrous
consequences, including injury and death. The ACLU also
uncovered numerous instances in which SWAT teams
deployed when there were children present (and some in
which the SWAT team knew in advance that children would
be present).
To scale back the militarization of police, it is important to
document how law enforcement agencies have stockpiled
their arsenals. Law enforcement agencies have become
equipped to carry out these SWAT missions in part by
federal programs such as the Department of Defense’s 1033
Program, the Department of Homeland Security’s grants
to local law enforcement agencies, and the Department of
Justice’s Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant
(JAG) Program, each of which is examined in this report.
De-escalating militarized policing will also require
analysis of how the presence of these weapons and tactics
has impacted policing culture. Our analysis shows that
the militarization of American policing is evident in the
training that police officers receive, which encourages them
to adopt a “warrior” mentality and think of the people
they are supposed to serve as enemies, as well as in the
equipment they use, such as battering rams, flashbang
grenades, and APCs. This shift in culture has been buoyed
by the U.S. Supreme Court’s weakening of the Fourth
Amendment (which protects the right to privacy in one’s
home) through a series of decisions that have given the
police increased authority to force their way into people’s
homes, often in drug cases.
Additionally, solving the problem of police militarization
requires discussion of how SWAT teams should be

Photo: Keep Columbia Free via FIO/Sunshine request.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng6mfpZ2kR4

In the ACLU’s study, SWAT teams forced entry into
a person’s home using a battering ram or other
breaching device in 65% of drug searches.

Militarization of policing
encourages officers to
adopt a “warrior” mentality
and think of the people they
are supposed to serve as
enemies.
appropriately used and when their deployment is
counterproductive and dangerous. Even though
paramilitary policing in the form of SWAT teams was
created to deal with emergency scenarios such as hostage
or barricade situations, the use of SWAT to execute search
warrants in drug investigations has become commonplace
and made up the overwhelming majority of incidents
the ACLU reviewed—79 percent of the incidents the
ACLU studied involved the use of a SWAT team to search
a person’s home, and more than 60 percent of the cases
involved searches for drugs. The use of a SWAT team to
execute a search warrant essentially amounts to the use
of paramilitary tactics to conduct domestic criminal
investigations in searches of people’s homes.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing

3

OTHER
UNKNOWN

Majority of SWAT Deployments for
Search Warrants (2011-2012)
WARRANT
SEARCH WARRANT • 79%

OTHER • 17%
UNKNOWN • 4%
Source: Data provided by local law enforcement agencies for ACLU
investigation.

The use of SWAT teams to serve search warrants could
perhaps be justified if there were reason to believe that
these situations truly presented a genuine threat to officer
safety, but that did not appear to be the case from the
documents that the ACLU examined; of the incidents
in which officers believed a weapon would be present,
a weapon (typically a firearm such as a handgun but
rarely an assault rifle) was actually found at the scene
in only 35 percent of cases. Even when officers believed
a weapon was likely to be present, that belief was often
unsubstantiated. Unfortunately, reasonable standards for
deploying SWAT teams appear to be virtually nonexistent.
Further, given that almost half of American households

An estimated 500 law
enforcement agencies have
received Mine Resistant
Ambush Protected (MRAP)
vehicles built to withstand
armor-piercing roadside
bombs.
4

American Civil Liberties Union

have guns, use of a SWAT team could almost always be
justified if the “presence of a firearm” was the sole factor
determining whether to deploy.5 However, because the use
of SWAT increases the likelihood that the occupants will
use weapons to defend themselves, which increases the
risk of violence, presence of a weapon alone should not
automatically result in a SWAT deployment.
These problems have been allowed to occur in the absence
of public oversight. Data collection has been sparse and
inadequate: among the law enforcement agencies studied,
the ACLU found that data collecting and reporting in the
context of SWAT was at best sporadic and at worst virtually
nonexistent.
In addition, there is typically no single entity at the local,
state, or federal level responsible for ensuring that SWAT is
appropriately restrained and that policing does not become
excessively militarized. Maryland passed a law in 2010
requiring local law enforcement agencies to submit regular
reports on their use of SWAT, but that law will sunset
this year. Utah passed a similar law this year, which looks
promising, but much more oversight is needed.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., has announced broad
criminal justice reforms, including guidelines to curtail
the use of mandatory minimum sentencing laws by federal
prosecutors in certain drug cases and a $4.75 million
project funded by the federal government and designed
to ease mistrust between local police departments and
minority communities by collecting and studying data on
searches, arrests, and case outcomes in order to help assess
the impact of possible bias. These developments have real
potential to reduce America’s excessive reliance on overly
aggressive approaches to policing and punishing drug
crimes, but there is a danger that these federally-funded
efforts could be undermined by the federal government’s
role in subsidizing the use of paramilitary weapons and
tactics in localities, particularly in many communities
of color. Without rethinking its role in militarizing local
police departments, the federal government may end up
sabotaging the very same reforms it is championing.
From our review of both primary and secondary source
materials, we are able to present two sets of findings: one
set of general findings based on our review of the existing

research, which our data supports, and one set of timebound specific findings from our statistical analysis of the
raw data we collected in connection with our investigation.
Our general findings, based on our review of existing
research and supported by our data, are the following:
1.	 Policing—particularly through the use of paramilitary
teams—in the United States today has become
excessively militarized, mainly through federal
programs that create incentives for state and local
police to use unnecessarily aggressive weapons and
tactics designed for the battlefield. For example, the
ACLU documented a total of 15,054 items of battle
uniforms or personal protective equipment received
by 63 responding agencies during the relevant time
period, and it is estimated that 500 law enforcement
agencies have received Mine Resistant Ambush
Protected (MRAP) vehicles built to withstand armorpiercing roadside bombs through the Department of
Defense’s 1033 Program.6
2.	 The militarization of policing in the United States has
occurred with almost no public oversight. Not a single
law enforcement agency in this investigation provided
records containing all of the information that the
ACLU believes is necessary to undertake a thorough
examination of police militarization. Some agencies
provided records that were nearly totally lacking in
important information. Agencies that monitor and
provide oversight over the militarization of policing
are virtually nonexistent.
Our more specific findings from the statistical analysis we
conducted of time-bound raw data received in connection
with this investigation are the following:
3.	 SWAT teams were often deployed—unnecessarily and
aggressively—to execute search warrants in low-level
drug investigations; deployments for hostage or
barricade scenarios occurred in only a small number
of incidents. The majority (79 percent) of SWAT
deployments the ACLU studied were for the purpose
of executing a search warrant, most commonly in drug
investigations. Only a small handful of deployments (7
percent) were for hostage, barricade, or active shooter
scenarios.

CASUALTY REPORT
LIMA, OHIO
JANUARY, 2008

SWAT Officers Kill 26Year-Old Mother Holding
Infant Son

T

arika Wilson wasn’t
the suspect. She died
when SWAT officers broke
down her front door and
opened fire into her home.
Ms. Wilson was holding her
14-month-old son when
she was shot. The baby was
injured, but survived. The
SWAT team had been looking for Ms. Wilson’s
boyfriend on suspicion of drug dealing when
they raided Ms. Wilson’s rented house on the
Southside of Lima, the only city with a significant
African-American population in a region of
farmland.

4.	 The use of paramilitary weapons and tactics primarily
impacted people of color; when paramilitary tactics
were used in drug searches, the primary targets were
people of color, whereas when paramilitary tactics
were used in hostage or barricade scenarios, the
primary targets were white. Overall, 42 percent of
people impacted by a SWAT deployment to execute
a search warrant were Black and 12 percent were
Latino. This means that of the people impacted by
deployments for warrants, at least 54 percent were
minorities. Of the deployments in which all the people
impacted were minorities, 68 percent were in drug
cases, and 61 percent of all the people impacted by
SWAT raids in drug cases were minorities. In addition,
the incidents we studied revealed stark, often extreme,
racial disparities in the use of SWAT locally, especially
in cases involving search warrants.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing

5

INCIDENT REPORT
HUNTINGTON, WEST VIRGINIA
OCTOBER 14, 2011

SWAT Team Throws
Flashbang into Home
of Pregnant Woman

K

nowing there would likely be a pregnant
woman inside, a SWAT team still opted to
break down the door of a home and throw a
flashbang grenade inside in order to execute
a search warrant in a drug case. Once inside
the home, SWAT officers found one man,
one pregnant woman, and a four-year-old
child. While this particular report contained
no information about the race of the people
impacted by the deployment, the majority of
the Huntington SWAT deployments the ACLU
studied were conducted in connection with drug
investigations, and the majority of the people
impacted were Black.

5.	 SWAT deployments often and unnecessarily entailed
the use of violent tactics and equipment, including
armored personnel carriers; use of violent tactics and
equipment was shown to increase the risk of bodily
harm and property damage. Of the incidents studied
in which SWAT was deployed to search for drugs in
a person’s home, the SWAT teams either forced or
probably forced entry into a person’s home using a
battering ram or other breaching device 65 percent
of the time. For drug investigations, the SWAT teams
studied were almost twice as likely to force entry into
a person’s home than not, and they were more than
twice as likely to use forced entry in drug investigations
than in other cases. In some instances, the use of
violent tactics and equipment caused property damage,
injury, and/or death.

6

American Civil Liberties Union

Reform must be systemic; the
problems of overly aggressive
policing are cultural and
cannot be solved by merely
identifying a few “bad apples”
or dismissing the problem as
a few isolated incidents.
Reform must be systemic; the problems of overly aggressive
policing are cultural and cannot be solved by merely
identifying a few “bad apples” or dismissing the problem as
a few isolated incidents.
To begin to solve the problem of overly militarized
policing, reform must happen at all levels of government
that have contributed to this trend.
The federal government should take the lead by reining
in the programs that create incentives for local police
to engage in excessively militarized tactics, especially
in drug cases. The federal government holds the purse
strings, and easing the flow of federal funds and militarygrade equipment into states and localities would have
a significant impact on the overuse of hyper-aggressive
tactics and military-grade tools in local communities.
Additionally, state legislatures and municipalities should
impose meaningful restraints on the use of SWAT.
SWAT deployments should be limited to the kinds of
scenarios for which these aggressive measures were
originally intended: barricade, hostage, and active shooter
situations. Rather than allow a SWAT deployment in
any case that is deemed (for whatever reason the officers
determine) to be “high risk,” the better practice would
be for law enforcement agencies to have in place clear
standards limiting SWAT deployments to scenarios that are
truly “high risk.”

SWAT teams should never be deployed based solely on
probable cause to believe drugs are present, even if they
have a warrant to search a home. In addition, SWAT teams
should not equate the suspected presence of drugs with a
threat of violence. SWAT deployment for warrant service
is appropriate only if the police can demonstrate, before
deployment, that ordinary law enforcement officers cannot
safely execute a warrant without facing an imminent threat
of serious bodily harm. In making these determinations, it
is important to take into consideration the fact that use of
a SWAT team can escalate rather than ameliorate potential
violence; law enforcement should take appropriate
precautions to avoid the use of SWAT whenever possible.
In addition, all SWAT deployments, regardless of the
underlying purpose, should be proportional—not all
situations call for a SWAT deployment consisting of 20
heavily armed officers in an APC, and partial deployments
should be encouraged when appropriate.
Local police departments should develop their own
internal policies calling for appropriate restraints on the
use of SWAT and should avoid all training programs that
encourage a “warrior” mindset.
Finally, the public has a right to know how law enforcement
agencies are policing its communities and spending its
tax dollars. The militarization of American policing has
occurred with almost no oversight, and it is time to shine
a bright light on the policies, practices, and weaponry that
have turned too many of our neighborhoods into war
zones.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing

7

METHODOLOGY
T

his report is intended to provide a snapshot of
the militarization of policing, a little-understood
phenomenon that has not been adequately studied.
It includes analysis of both existing secondary source
materials and primary source data uncovered through the
ACLU’s public records investigation, which is described
below.

On March 6, 2013, the ACLU sent public records requests
to more than 260 law enforcement agencies in 25 states
(we later added the District of Columbia and a number
of cities in a 26th state).7 We asked the law enforcement
agencies to produce all incident reports (or other records)
documenting each time a SWAT team was deployed
between 2011 and 20128—with such incident reports
breaking down SWAT deployments by suspected crime,
requesting agency, and purpose for the deployment—as
well as any post-deployment documents relating to the
use of no-knock warrants in conjunction with the SWAT
deployment or the use of force during the deployment,
including documentation relating to any injuries/deaths
at the scene of the SWAT operation. As of September 30,
2013, we had received 3,844 records in response to these
requests.9
In order to analyze the information contained in these
records, we first identified the type of document (e.g.,
SWAT incident report, training document, grant request,
1033 record, etc.). For each document type, we identified
several individual data points to collect.
For each SWAT deployment, we considered the following:

8

■■

The number, race, ethnicity, and sex of people
impacted

■■

The number of children present, if any

■■

The number of mentally ill civilians impacted,
if any

■■

The number of officer deaths/injuries, if any

American Civil Liberties Union

■■

Whether forcible entry was made

■■

Whether a flashbang grenade or other distraction
device was used

■■

The purpose of the SWAT deployment (e.g., to
execute a search warrant, in response to a barricade,
hostage, or active shooter scenario, etc.)

■■

In search warrant cases, whether the warrant was a
no-knock warrant

■■

Whether the deployment was in connection with a
drug offense

■■

Whether weapons were believed to be present

■■

Whether weapons were found

■■

Whether drugs and/or other contraband were
found

■■

Whether the deployment resulted in property
damage

For weapons transfers and federal grants, we considered the
following:
■■

The amount and type of equipment received

■■

The type of grant program being applied for

■■

The amount of funding requested/received

■■

Whether the justification provided for the grant was
related to drugs or terrorism

Some SWAT incident reports specifically include some
form of check box or tick box allowing for a simple yesor-no answer to one or more of the above questions (e.g.,
the incident report indicated whether a distraction device
was employed by expressly requiring law enforcement
personnel to check a box indicating “Yes” or “No”).
When reports include such boxes, it is straightforward
to transform the information contained in the incident

reports received into a coherent categorical variable
representing the various responses of law enforcement
personnel to the above questions.
The vast majority of the incident reports considered,
however, did not consistently and systematically document
information in such an easily transcribable manner, instead
communicating or expressing answers—if any at all—to
the above questions in a textual narrative (often located at
the end of the incident report). It is, of course, relatively
more difficult to generate a categorical variable from purely
narrative text, and, in particular, one must decide how
to deal with narratives that are silent or ambiguous with
respect to one or more of the questions posed above.
For these types of incident reports, the following coding
procedure was employed: If the narrative affirmatively
answers one of the preceding questions, then the relevant
categorical variable is coded as “Yes” (e.g., if the narrative
explicitly indicates that a flashbang grenade was used
during the SWAT operation, then the “Was a Distraction
Device Used” variable is coded as “Yes”). Likewise, if the
narrative explicitly answers one of the above questions in
the negative, then the relevant variable is coded as “No.”
Further, if the narrative strongly suggests a positive answer
to one of the preceding questions (e.g., with respect to the
question of whether forcible entry was made, the incident
report refers to extensive damage to the front door),
then the variable is coded as “Likely Yes.” Importantly,
if the narrative is silent or ambiguous with respect to
one of the above questions, then the relevant variable
is coded as “Likely No,” based on the theory that police
officers are unlikely to affirmatively state in an incident
report that a particular action was not undertaken. With
respect to the use of a distraction device, for instance,
police officers are unlikely, arguably, to expressly write
down or indicate in the incident report that a distraction
device was not used (when a distraction device was, in
fact, not used at any point during the SWAT operation).
It is simply too time-consuming or otherwise costly for
police officers, in creating a post-deployment narrative,
to mention all of the possible actions not undertaken
during the SWAT operation; i.e., the narrative will contain
mainly a description of what was done as opposed to
what was not done. Finally, if the narrative is simply left
blank—occurring with surprisingly high frequency in the

CASUALTY REPORT
FRAMINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS
JANUARY, 2011

SWAT Officer Shoots
Grandfather of Twelve

E

urie Stamp was in his
pajamas, watching a
baseball game, when SWAT
officers forced a battering
ram through his front door
and threw a flashbang
grenade inside. Stamp, a
68-year-old grandfather
of twelve, followed the
officers’ shouted orders to
lie facedown on the floor with his arms above
his head. He died in this position, when one of
the officers’ guns discharged. Stamp wasn’t
the suspect; the officers were looking for his
girlfriend’s son on suspicion of selling drugs. The
suspect was arrested outside the home minutes
before the raid. Even though the actual suspect
didn’t live in Stamp’s home and was already in
custody, the SWAT team still decided to carry out
the raid. Framingham has since disbanded its
SWAT team.

incident reports considered, then the relevant categorical
variable is coded as “Unknown.” No inferences are drawn
in this instance. In the discussion that follows, data that was
captured as “Likely Yes” or “Likely No” is described as being
“probably” or “probably not” true.
To ensure that certain results are not merely a function
of a small number of observations, the analysis considers
only those law enforcement agencies that produced more
than 15 incident reports in response to the original public
records requests, with the exception of the Bay County
Sheriff ’s Office, which was included in the analysis for the
purpose of greater geographic diversity. It is important
to note that the data analysis in the report does not seek
to make statistical estimates about the larger universe

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing

9

of SWAT deployments nationwide. Rather, the analysis
is descriptive in nature, providing a general picture
of SWAT deployments for this small cross section of
otherwise randomly chosen law enforcement agencies—the
information contained in the documents received is not
used to make more general, broader statements about the
use and impact of SWAT nationwide.
Narrowing the set of local law enforcement agencies that
we considered as described in the preceding paragraph,
the total number of SWAT incidents analyzed is 818, and
these SWAT incidents are distributed over 20 local law
enforcement agencies located in the following 11 states:
Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi,
North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Washington
and West Virginia. The agencies were diverse in terms of
type (including municipal police departments, county
sheriff ’s offices, a police department covering multiple
unincorporated areas, and a state patrol), size of population
covered (ranging from 35,000 to 778,000), region (covering
the Mid-Atlantic, Appalachian, Northeast, South, West,
and Northwest regions of the United States, with the South
most heavily represented), and racial composition (with
Black percentage population ranging from two percent
to 42 percent). The SWAT incidents considered span the
following time period: July 20, 2010, to October 6, 2013,
with the vast majority of incidents occurring in years 2011
and 2012.

Photo: Keep Columbia Free via FIO/Sunshine request.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng6mfpZ2kR4

In the ACLU’s study, SWAT teams were more
than twice as likely to force entry into a person’s
home when searching for drugs than for other
deployments.

10 American Civil Liberties Union

For the most part, the data analysis consists of one- and
two-way tabulations of the variables discussed above.
Notably, the analysis treats missing values like other
values, denoting missing or unknown values as “U.”
Rather than drop missing values from the calculations,
missing values are explicitly recorded in the tabulations
in order to highlight the substantial degree to which large
sections of the incident reports received from the local law
enforcement agencies are incomplete or simply left blank,
with no explanation or additional reason given for the
missing information.
Also, a significant component of the data analysis
investigates racial disparities in the use and impact of
SWAT deployments. To consider this issue, it is necessary
to classify the “race” of a SWAT deployment in terms of the
race of individuals impacted by SWAT operations (note
that the challenge posed in doing so is that there may be
multiple individuals of varying races impacted in a single
SWAT deployment). This classification is accomplished
in one of two distinct ways. Under the first approach, we
create a variable called “Minority.” Minority is defined
here as referring only to Black or Latino individuals; our
definition does not include other minority groups (e.g.,
Asian, Arab, and so forth). Any given SWAT incident is
then described as “All White,” meaning that all of those
impacted by a given SWAT deployment were white; “All
Minority,” meaning that all of the individuals impacted by
a given SWAT deployment were either Black or Latino; or
“Mixed,” meaning that the SWAT incident involved a mix
of minority and non-minority individuals.
Under the second approach, we count the total number of
individuals impacted by a given SWAT incident who were
either white, Black, or Latino. That is, three numbers are
calculated for each SWAT incident: (1) the total number
of whites impacted by the SWAT operation, (2) the total
number of Blacks impacted by the SWAT operation, and
(3) the total number of Latinos impacted by the SWAT
operation. Tabulations are then run, not with respect to
the total number of individual SWAT incidents as above,
but, rather, with respect to the total number of individuals
impacted by SWAT operations. So, for example, when
calculating the frequency of SWAT deployments by race
in a given jurisdiction, under this second approach, we
calculate the percentage of the total number of individuals

impacted by SWAT operations who are either white,
Black, or Latino. In other words, the total number of
Blacks impacted by SWAT operations in the jurisdiction is
compared to the total number of individuals (of all races)
impacted by SWAT operations.
Under the first approach, the relevant unit of measurement
is the total number of SWAT incidents; under the second
approach, the relevant unit is the total number of
individuals impacted by SWAT operations. Note that
these two measures may generate differing results insofar
as the average number of individuals impacted per SWAT
deployment varies by race. Suppose, for instance, that one
SWAT deployment can be classified as “All White” and
another as “All Minority.” Even though there is no racial
disparity with respect to SWAT incidents in this example,
there may still be a racial disparity with respect to the total
number of individuals impacted by SWAT operations if the
total number of individuals impacted in the “All Minority”
SWAT incident is larger than the corresponding number of
individuals impacted in the “All White” SWAT incident.
Racial disparities in SWAT impact rates (as opposed
to the total number of individuals impacted by SWAT
deployments) are also considered. By examining impact
rates, it is possible to control for racial disparities in the
underlying populations impacted by SWAT deployments.
Rates are expressed in terms of individuals impacted by
SWAT deployment per 100,000 individuals. In particular,
to calculate the white, Black, or Latino SWAT impact
rate in a given jurisdiction, the number of white, Black,
or Latino individuals impacted by SWAT deployments is
divided by the total white, Black, or Latino population in
that jurisdiction; the corresponding ratio is then multiplied
by 100,000 to obtain the impact rate per 100,000. In
this report, the measure of racial disparity in a given
jurisdiction in terms of SWAT deployments is calculated
as the ratio of either the Black or Latino impact rate to the
white impact rate. So, for example, a Black/white racial
disparity measure (or ratio) of three implies that the
rate at which Blacks are impacted by SWAT operations
is three times the rate at which whites are impacted by
SWAT operations. Likewise, a Latino/white racial disparity
measure of three implies that the rate at which Latinos are
impacted by SWAT operations is three times the rate at
which whites are impacted by SWAT operations.

We also examined information pertaining to transfers of
military equipment to 63 local law enforcement agencies
located in the following eight states: Arizona, Arkansas,
Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina,
and Pennsylvania. The report provides totals by agency
for different types of equipment, including bomb suits,
night-vision goggles, drones, shock-cuffs, rifles, cell phone
sniffers, facial recognition technology, forced-entry tools,
biometric devices, utility trucks, APCs, helicopters, GPS
devices, and personal protective armor. 
Finally, we considered information pertaining to the type
and amount of state and federal grant awards to 27 local
law enforcement agencies located in the following 13
states: Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi,
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North
Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah. Grants were
coded to indicate whether the justification for a particular
grant was drug-related (“Yes” or “No”) or terrorism-related
(“Yes” or “No”). Agencies in our dataset received funding
from the following grant programs, among others: Federal
Department of Homeland Security Grant Programs, the
Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG)
Program, the Department of Justice Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS) Grant Program, State Homeland
Security Grant Programs, and National Drug Control
Policy State and Local Initiatives.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 11

INTRODUCTION

Photo: Keep Columbia Free via FIO/Sunshine request.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng6mfpZ2kR4

I

magine that you are at home with your family, sleeping
soundly in the early morning hours. You awaken suddenly
to a loud explosion and the sound of glass shattering. A
bright light blinds you and there is a terrible ringing in your
ears. You cannot see anything, but through the ringing you
hear the harrowing sound of your front door being broken
down as your children begin to scream in the next room. As
you come to your senses, you look outside your window and
see what appears to be a tank in your driveway. Suddenly,
people—you have no idea how many—break through
your bedroom door. In the darkness, all you can see is that
they are wearing black and carrying assault rifles, and their
faces are masked. You hear people yelling at you and your
partner to get on the floor and put your hands behind your
back. Your children are still screaming in the next room and
your dog is barking loudly. The people lead you, wearing
whatever you wore to sleep that night, into the living room,
pointing assault rifles at you the entire time. You are ordered
to sit, and someone quickly handcuffs you to the chair.
More people then bring your partner and your children into
the living room at gunpoint. Your dog is still barking, and

12 American Civil Liberties Union

one of the people shoots it, killing it instantly, in front of
you and your children. They then proceed to ransack your
home, breaking down doors and shattering windows. You
can see that the explosion you heard earlier came from a
grenade that now lies near your feet, scorch marks covering
the floor from the blast. They hold you and your family at
gunpoint for the next several hours, refusing to answer any
questions about why they are there or what they are looking
for. Once they have finally left, you find your home in
shambles. Broken glass litters the floor, and doors are broken
from where the police kicked holes in them. Your dog lies
breathless in a pool of its own blood. Tables are overturned,
papers are strewn about, and electronic equipment has been
ripped from the walls and left on the floor. Your partner is
desperately trying to calm your hysterical children.
Unfortunately, this is not a scene from an action movie, and
it did not happen during the course of a protracted battle in
an overseas war. This is the militarization of our state and
local police, and events like this are happening every day in
homes throughout America.

Massive Military-Grade
Weapons Caches in Arizona

T

he police department in Maricopa County, Arizona
– led by the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio – has a .50
caliber machine gun that shoots bullets powerful enough
to blast through the buildings on multiple city blocks.
That’s not all: the department has stockpiled a combined
total of 120 assault rifles, five armored vehicles, and ten
helicopters. This arsenal was acquired mainly through the
Department of Defense’s 1033 program, which transfers
military-grade weaponry to state and local police
departments, free of charge.
Maricopa County is not unique. According to our
research, law enforcement agencies in Arizona have
acquired a staggering cache of military weaponry,
primarily through the 1033 program, including:
■■

32 bomb suits

■■

704 units of night vision equipment, e.g., nightvision goggles

■■

1034 guns, of which 712 are rifles

■■

42 forced entry tools, such as battering rams

■■

830 units of surveillance and reconnaissance
equipment

■■

13,409 personal protective equipment (PPE)
and/or uniforms

■■

120 utility trucks

■■

64 armored vehicles

■■

4 GPS devices

■■

17 helicopters

■■

21,211 other types of military equipment

All 1033 equipment coming into Arizona goes through
the Payson Police Department and makes its way to
state and local law enforcement agencies. A two-year
investigation by the Arizona Republic revealed that one
local agency, the Pinal County Sheriff ’s Office, doled
out millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment to
non-law enforcement agencies and planned to auction
off some of its arsenal to raise revenue for itself.
A great deal of military-grade equipment in Arizona is
ostensibly obtained for purposes of securing the U.S.
border with Mexico, but the track record of federal grant
programs suggests that this equipment may well be
diverted to other activities, such as the investigations and
warrants detailed elsewhere in this report. The bottom
line is that Arizona law enforcement agencies at and well
beyond the actual border have become unnecessarily
and dangerously militarized. The Pinal County Sheriff ’s
office, for example, obtained 94 rifles, two armored
vehicles, and three helicopters. The Coconino County
Sheriff ’s office obtained six armored vehicles, and the
Mojave County Sheriff ’s office has four helicopters.
Arizona law enforcement, designed to serve and protect
communities, is instead equipped to wage a war.
Arming border communities for battle gives the
ACLU serious cause for concern. For more on why the
militarization of the United States-Mexican border is
dangerous and counter-productive, see ACLU, “Border
Communities Under Siege: Border Patrol Agents Ride
Roughshod Over Civil Rights.”

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 13

SWAT Raid Ends with Toddler
in Medically-Induced Coma

A

fter the Phonesavanh family’s home in Wisconsin
burned down, they drove their minivan to stay with
relatives in a small town just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.
On the back windshield, the family pasted six stick figures:
a dad, a mom, three young girls, and one baby boy.
This van, containing several car seats, was parked in the
driveway of the home where they were staying when, just
before 3:00am on a night in May of 2014, a team of SWAT
officers armed with assault rifles burst into the room where
the family was sleeping. Some of the kids’ toys were in the
front yard, but the Habersham County and Cornelia police
officers claimed they had no way of knowing children might
be present. One of the officers threw a flashbang grenade
into the room. It landed in Baby Bou Bou’s crib.

“My three little girls are
terrified of the police now.
They don’t want to go to
sleep because they’re
afraid the cops will kill
them or their family.”
		

The crib where Baby Bou Bou was sleeping, damaged
by an exploding flashbang grenade.

“This is about race. You don’t
see SWAT teams going into
a white collar community,
throwing grenades into their
homes.”
				

—Alecia Phonesavanh

raid, it was still unclear whether Baby Bou Bou would live.
Bounkahm spent this Father’s Day in the hospital with his
son.

—Alecia Phonesavanh

It took several hours before Alecia and Bounkahm, the
baby’s parents, were able to see their son. The 19-month-old
had been taken to an intensive burn unit and placed into
a medically induced coma. When the flashbang grenade
exploded, it blew a hole in 19-month-old Bou Bou’s face
and chest. The chest wound was so deep it exposed his ribs.
The blast covered Bou Bou’s body in third degree burns. At
the time of this report’s publication, three weeks after the

14 American Civil Liberties Union

The SWAT team was executing a “no knock” warrant to
search for someone who did not live in the home that was
raided: Bounkahm’s nephew, who was suspected of making
a $50 drug sale. “After breaking down the door, throwing
my husband to the ground, and screaming at my children,
the officers–armed with M16s–filed through the house
like they were playing war,” said Alecia. The officers did not
find any guns or drugs in the house and no arrests were
made. Bounkahm’s nephew was eventually arrested without

Bounkham Phonesavanh, nicknamed “Baby Bou
Bou,” loves French fries, the theme song from
Frozen, and playing with his three older sisters.

incident at another location, holding a small amount of
drugs on him.
Bounkahm, the baby’s father, was born in Laos during
wartime. He remembers communist soldiers breaking down
the door of his childhood home. “It felt like that,” he said.
“This is America and you’re supposed to be safe here, but
you’re not even safe around the cops.”
The Phonesavanhs have three daughters who are now scared
to go to bed at night. One night after the raid, their 8-yearold woke up in the middle of the night screaming, “No, don’t
kill him! You’re hurting my brother! Don’t kill him.” Alecia
and Bounkahm used to tell their kids that if they were ever in
trouble, they should go to the police for help. “My three little
girls are terrified of the police now. They don’t want to go to
sleep because they’re afraid the cops will kill them or their
family,” Alecia said.
When asked about the prevalence of SWAT raids to fight
the War on Drugs, Alecia told us, “This is all about race and
class. You don’t see SWAT teams going into a white collar
community, throwing grenades into their homes.”

Bounkahm and Alecia spent the three weeks
following the raid at the hospital. At the time
the report was published, their son was still in a
medically-induced coma.

“After breaking down
the door, throwing my
husband to the ground,
and screaming at my
children, the officers–
armed with M16s–filed
through the house like
they were playing war.”
			

—Alecia Phonesavanh

Learn more at www.justiceforbabyboubou.com.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 15

BACKGROUND
A

merican policing has become unnecessarily and
dangerously militarized.10 For decades, the federal
government has equipped state and local law enforcement
agencies with military weapons and vehicles, as well as
military tactical training, for the (often explicit) purpose of
waging the War on Drugs. Not all communities are equally
impacted by this phenomenon; the disproportionate
impact of the War on Drugs in communities of color has
been well documented.11 Police militarization can result in
tragedy for both civilians and police officers, escalate the
risks of needless violence, cause the destruction of personal
property, and undermine civil liberties. Significantly, the
militarization of American policing has been allowed to
occur in the absence of public discourse or oversight.

“The detection and countering
of the production, trafficking,
and use of illegal drugs is a
high-priority national security
mission of the Department
of Defense.”
—Then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, 198917

The militarization of American policing has occurred as
a direct result of federal programs that use equipment
transfers and funding to encourage aggressive enforcement
of the War on Drugs by state and local police agencies. One
such program is the 1033 Program, launched in the 1990s
during the heyday of the War on Drugs, which authorizes
the U.S. Department of Defense to transfer military
equipment to local law enforcement agencies.12 This
program, originally enacted as part of the 1989 National
Defense Authorization Act, initially authorized the transfer
of equipment that was “suitable for use by such agencies
in counterdrug activities.”13 In 1996, Congress made the
program permanent and expanded the program’s scope to
require that preference be given to transfers made for the
purpose of “counterdrug and counterterrorism activities.”14
There are few limitations or requirements imposed
on agencies that participate in the 1033 Program.15 In
addition, equipment transferred under the 1033 Program is
free to receiving agencies, though they are required to pay
for transport and maintenance. The federal government
requires agencies that receive 1033 equipment to use it
within one year of receipt,16 so there can be no doubt that
participation in this program creates an incentive for law
enforcement agencies to use military equipment.

16 American Civil Liberties Union

It is inappropriate for the U.S. military to be actively
supporting the domestic War on Drugs, which has
destroyed millions of lives, unfairly impacted communities
of color, made drugs cheaper and more potent, caused
countless deaths of innocent people caught up in drug
war-related armed conflict, and failed to eliminate drug
dependence and addiction. Even if an argument could be
made that providing local law enforcement with military
equipment for counterdrug purposes ever made sense—
which is dubious—there is no way to justify such policies
today. Indeed, the U.S. Attorney General has suggested that
the drug war has gone too far. Beginning in August 2013,
Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., announced plans to
curtail the use of mandatory minimum sentencing laws
by federal prosecutors in certain drug cases, agreed not to
challenge state laws allowing the medicinal or recreational
use of marijuana, and supported a move by the U.S.
Sentencing Commission to reduce many drug sentences.
The DOJ plays an important role in the militarization of
the police through programs such as the Edward Byrne
Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program.
Established in 1988, the program, originally called the
Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement

Assistance Program, provides states and local units of
government with funding to improve the functioning of
their criminal justice system and to enforce drug laws. JAG
funding can be used for any of the following purposes:
■■

Law enforcement

■■

Courts (prosecution and indigent defense)

■■

Crime prevention and education

■■

Corrections and community corrections

■■

Drug treatment and enforcement

■■

Program planning, evaluation, and technology

■■

Crime victim and witness programs

However, JAG grantees spend much more of their funding
on law enforcement than on other program areas. Between
April 2012 and March 2013, JAG grantees spent 64 percent
of their JAG funding on law enforcement. In contrast,
grantees spent 9 percent on courts, including both
prosecution and indigent defense, and a mere 5 percent
on drug treatment and 6 percent on crime prevention
and education.18 Grantees use a portion of JAG funds
allocated to law enforcement to purchase numerous types
of weapons. In 2012-2013, state and local agencies used
JAG funds to purchase hundreds of lethal and less-lethal
weapons, tactical vests, and body armor.19
The militarization phenomenon has gained even greater
zeal since the events of September 11, 2001, the creation
of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the
declaration of the so-called “War on Terror.” Since the early
2000s, the infusion of DHS money and assistance to state
and local law enforcement anti-terrorism work has led to
even more police militarization and even greater militarylaw enforcement contact, and DHS grants have allowed
police departments to stockpile specialized equipment in
the name of anti-terror readiness.
The main source of DHS funding to state and local law
enforcement is the Homeland Security Grant Program
(HSGP) and its two main components, the State Homeland
Security Program (SHSP) and the Urban Areas Security
Initiative (UASI).20 Both grant programs require recipients
to dedicate at least 25 percent of grant funds to “terrorism

CASUALTY REPORT
TUCSON, ARIZONA
2011

SWAT Team Shoots Veteran
22 Times

J

ose Guerena, a 26-yearold Iraq war veteran,
returned home and crawled
into bed after working the
graveyard shift at the Asarco
Mission mine. Around
9:30am, his wife became
nervous when she heard
strange noises and saw the
outline of a man standing outside her window.
She woke Guerena, who asked his wife to hide
in a closet with their 4-year-old son. Guerena
picked up his rifle, with the safety on, and went
to investigate. A SWAT team fired 71 shots at
Guerena, 22 of which entered his body and
killed him. Guerena died on his kitchen floor,
without medical attention. The SWAT officers
raided multiple homes in the neighborhood,
and in another home they did find a small
bag of marijuana. No drugs were found in the
Guerenas’ home.

prevention-related law enforcement activities,” though
that phrase does not appear to be clearly defined.21 The
stated justification for DHS grants to state and local
law enforcement is to support efforts to protect against
terrorism, but even the DHS acknowledges that it has a
larger mission, which includes ordinary law enforcement
activities. In 2010, the DHS announced a new “anticrime
campaign,” which appears to have a minimal nexus to
terrorism prevention.22
By invoking the imagery of war, aggressively funding
the enforcement of U.S. drug laws, and creating an over-

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 17

hyped fear of siege from within our borders, the federal
government has justified and encouraged the militarization
of local law enforcement. The ACLU found throughout the
course of this investigation that the excessive militarism
in policing, particularly through the use of paramilitary
policing teams, escalates the risk of violence, threatens
individual liberties, and unfairly impacts people of color.
In addition, because use of unnecessarily aggressive
techniques has a documented impact on public confidence
in law enforcement, there is reason to be concerned that
excessive militarization undermines public trust and
community safety as well.
Interestingly, members of the law enforcement community
are far from unified on the topic of police militarization.

INCIDENT REPORT
GWINNETT COUNTY, GEORGIA
JUNE 23, 2012

Full SWAT Team Deployed,
Despite Presence of
Children and Elderly

I

n a search for marijuana, a SWAT team raided
a home at 6:00 in the morning. Despite the fact
that the department had previously decided that
a SWAT deployment was unnecessary in this
case, officers used the fact that one of the people
thought to be in the home had been convicted
of weapon possession in 2005 in another state
as the basis for concluding people inside the
residence might be armed. Therefore, the
department changed its mind and deemed a full
SWAT deployment necessary, despite knowing
that there were likely to be children and an
elderly woman present in the home when they
executed the warrant. There is no indication as
to whether any guns or weapons were found
after the home was raided. All but one of the
people thought to be involved were Black.

18 American Civil Liberties Union

Some fully embrace militarism in policing: “We trainers
have spent the past decade trying to ingrain in our students
the concept that the American police officer works a
battlefield every day he patrols his sector.”23 The most
common rationale put forth to support the notion that
the police in fact should be militarized is to protect life:
“A warrior cop’s mission is to protect every life possible
and to only use force when it’s necessary to accomplish
that mission.”24 Others suggest that policing has in fact not
become militarized at all: “Advocates from every corner
of the political compass have produced a mountain of
disinformation about the ‘militarization’ of American law
enforcement.”25 Still others express concern that American
policing has become too militarized; Salt Lake City police
chief Chris Burbank recently stated, “We’re not the military.
Nor should we look like an invading force coming in.”26
Diane Goldstein, a retired lieutenant, agrees. Speaking of
the drug war zeal of the 1980s, she stated that “[The] everincreasing federalization of what traditionally had been
a state and local law enforcement effort received massive
funding as politicians, presidents and the Drug Czar
increased the rhetoric of war.” Even the U.S. Department
of Justice has questioned the wisdom of militarizing local
police departments: “According to the U.S. Department
of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report on State and
Local Law Enforcement Training Academies (BJS Report),
the majority of police recruits receive their training in
academies with a stress-based military orientation. This
begs the question; is this military model—designed to
prepare young recruits for combat—the appropriate
mechanism for teaching our police trainees how to garner
community trust and partner with citizens to solve crime
and public order problems?”27
One of the more dramatic examples of police militarization
is the use of SWAT and other paramilitary teams to
conduct ordinary law enforcement activities.28 SWAT
teams were created in the late 1960s as “quasi-militaristic”
squads capable of addressing serious and violent situations
that presented imminent threats such as riots, barricade
and hostage scenarios, and active shooter or sniper
situations.29 The first SWAT team, at the Los Angeles Police
Department, was developed in the wake of a series of
emergency situations in which local police felt unable to
respond as swiftly or as effectively as was necessary.30 SWAT
teams have since expanded in number, and are used with

Salt Lake City police chief
Chris Burbank recently
stated, “We’re not the military.
Nor should we look like an
invading force coming in.”
greater frequency and, increasingly, for purposes for which
they were not originally intended—overwhelmingly to
serve search warrants in drug investigations.
Of course, aggressive policing tactics extend well beyond
the scope of this report, and examples of particularly
aggressive policing, in which police officers appear more
as an invading force than as protectors of a community,
abound. Take Paragould, Arkansas, where at a December
2012 town hall meeting, Chief of Police Todd Stovall
announced that police conducting routine patrols would
“be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck.”31
He also asserted that the police would be stopping anyone
they wanted to and that the fear of crime in Paragould
gave his officers probable cause to stop anyone at any
time, for any reason or no reason at all. Chief Stovall later
issued a statement reassuring the residents of Paragould

It is not unusual for family pets to be shot
unnecessarily.

that the police would not be violating their constitutional
rights, but the fact that the Chief of Police felt comfortable
announcing a plan for police officers on routine patrol
to stop and question residents without justification
while dressed in SWAT gear and carrying AR-15s is a
foreboding sign. While unquestionably of grave concern,
routine patrols using SWAT gear, stop-and-frisk,32 and
other aggressive policing tactics are beyond the scope of
this report. Another important area is the use of military
surveillance equipment and other forms of intelligence
gathering, which also falls outside the scope of this report.33
Finally, the militarization of the U.S. border is a critically
important issue; we touch on this in our discussion of the
enormous caches of weapons Arizona law enforcement
agencies have received through the 1033 Program, but the
broader issue of border militarization is also outside the
scope of this report.34
This report builds on a body of existing work establishing
that police militarization is indeed a problem. For example,
Dr. Peter Kraska, Professor of Justice Studies at Eastern
Kentucky University, has surveyed police departments
across the country on their use of SWAT teams and
estimates that the number of SWAT teams in small towns
grew from 20 percent in the 1980s to 80 percent in the
mid-2000s, and that as of the late 1990s, almost 90 percent
of larger cities had them. He also estimates that the number
of SWAT raids per year grew from 3,000 in the 1980s to
45,000 in the mid-2000s.35 David Klinger and Jeff Rojek,
both at the University of Missouri-St. Louis’s Department
of Criminology and Criminal Justice, conducted a study
using SWAT data from 1986 to 1998 and found that the
overwhelming number of SWAT deployments studied were
for the purpose of executing a warrant (34,271 for warrant
service, in contrast to 7,384 for a barricaded suspect and
1,180 for hostage-taking cases).36
Some scholars have proposed additional analytic
frameworks for examining the militarization of policing.
For example, Abigail R. Hall and Christopher J. Coyne,
both in the Department of Economics of George Mason
University, have developed a “political economy” of the
militarization of policing.37 In addition, Stephen M. Hill
and Randall R. Beger, both professors in the Political
Science Department at the University of Wisconsin-Eau
Claire, place the issue within an international context,

Photo: Keep Columbia Free via FIO/Sunshine request
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng6mfpZ2kR4

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 19

arguing that the militarization of domestic policing is part
of a broader “paramilitary policing juggernaut.”38 Journalist
Radley Balko discusses the issue of police militarization at
length in his recent book “Rise of the Warrior Cop” and
the topic has received considerable, if episodic, attention
in the mainstream media.39 Our analysis adds to this body
of work by incorporating an analysis of raw data—actual
SWAT incident reports collected from numerous law
enforcement agencies across the country.
From our review of both primary and secondary source
materials, we are able to present two types of findings: one
set of general findings based on our review of the existing
research, which our data supports, and one set of timebound specific findings from our statistical analysis of the
raw data we collected in connection with our investigation.
As explained in more detail below, our more general
findings are that policing in the Unites States has become
excessively militarized and that this militarization has
occurred with almost no transparency, accountability, or
oversight. We also found, based on our analysis of the raw
data we collected, that of the SWAT deployments studied,
(1) the overwhelming majority were for the purpose of
searching people’s homes for drugs, (2) troubling racial
disparities existed, and (3) the use of violent tactics and
equipment often resulted in property damage and/or
bodily harm.

American law enforcement can
reverse the militarization trend
in a way that promotes safe and
effective policing strategies
without undermining public
confidence in law enforcement.

20 American Civil Liberties Union

This report should not be read as an indictment of the
police generally or of any individual police officers. It is also
not an argument against the use of SWAT in appropriate
circumstances—some scenarios undoubtedly merit an
emergency response, and SWAT teams are often the best
equipped to handle those scenarios. Finally, the report
should not be understood to suggest that the incidents
uncovered during the course of the ACLU’s investigation
did not necessarily merit some form of law enforcement
response—many did. Instead, we argue that American law
enforcement can reverse the militarization trend in a way
that promotes safe and effective policing strategies without
undermining public confidence in law enforcement.

DISCUSSION AND FINDINGS
Policing and Militarism
FINDING #1
Policing—particularly through the use
of paramilitary teams—in the United
States today has become excessively
militarized, mainly through federal
programs that create incentives
for state and local police to use
unnecessarily aggressive weapons and
tactics designed for the battlefield.

Use of Military Equipment by SWAT Teams
It is clear from this investigation and other research40 that
American policing has become excessively militarized.
We can see this in the use of military-style equipment—
weapons and tactics designed for the battlefield—to
conduct ordinary law enforcement activities. Police officers
use these weapons routinely, across the United States, to
force their way into the people’s homes, disrupting lives
and destroying communities.

distract the occupants of a building while a SWAT team
is attempting to secure the scene.42 Flashbang grenades
produce an extremely bright flash of light that temporarily
overstimulates the retina and causes temporary blindness
(lasting 5 to 10 seconds). They also make a deafening
noise that makes people feel disoriented and can cause a
lingering ringing. Although they are generally considered to
be nonlethal, they have been known to set homes on fire43
and induce heart attacks,44 both sometimes resulting in
death. In 2010, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed
when, just after midnight, a SWAT team threw a flashbang
grenade through the window into the living room where
she was asleep. The flashbang burned her blanket and a
member of the SWAT team burst into the house, firing a
single shot, which killed her.45
Both battering rams and flashbang grenades can cause
extensive property damage—half of the incidents the
ACLU reviewed involved property damage such as damage
to doors and/or windows (in another 30 percent of cases,
it was impossible to know whether there was property
damage in connection with a SWAT deployment, so the

One such weapon is the battering ram—“a large and heavy
piece of wood or other material that is used to hit and
break through walls and doors”41—which is nearly always
carried on deployments, and the primary tool used to
breach doors and windows (though explosive breaching—
the use of explosives to cut through doors—seems to be
gaining popularity).
Another device often used by SWAT teams is the
flashbang grenade (sometimes referred to generically as a
“distraction device”), an explosive device that is used to

Aiyana Stanley-Jones
Photo: Family of Aiyana Stanley-Jones

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 21

total may be higher). SWAT incident reports almost never
included an estimate of the amount of damage, and none
of the incident reports reviewed suggested that the owners
or residents of a home damaged by use of a battering ram
or flashbang grenade would be reimbursed for repairs.
When SWAT teams deploy, they typically wear combat
helmets and “battle dress uniforms” (BDUs), fatigues
designed for use by the U.S. Army throughout the 1980s
and 1990s. The ACLU documented a total of 15,054 battle
uniforms or other personal protective equipment received
by 63 responding agencies during the relevant time period.
The use of BDUs is another trend in the militarization
of policing; as retired police officer Bill Donelly stated in
a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, “One tends
to throw caution to the wind when wearing ‘commandochic’ regalia, a bulletproof vest with the word ‘POLICE’
emblazoned on both sides, and when one is armed
with high tech weaponry…Police agencies face tactical
challenges that do require a specialized and technically
proficient team approach, but fortunately these incidents
are relatively infrequent even in the largest cities. It would
appear that U.S. law enforcement, even in the smallest
and safest communities, is suffering from a collective
‘inferiority complex’ that can be relieved only by militarystyle clothing and arsenals of formidable firepower.”46

In 2013, the Department of Defense started giving away
MRAPs through the 1033 Program. According to the
Department of Defense, MRAPs are designed to protect
occupants against armor-piercing roadside bombs.47 In
2007, the United States spent $50 billion to produce 27,000
MRAPs and deploy them to Iraq and Afghanistan.48 No
longer needed overseas, MRAPs have made their way
into local communities. Because the ACLU launched this
investigation in early 2013 and requested records only
from 2011-2012, we did not ask the jurisdictions studied
to send documentation of MRAP requests, so it is not
possible to know from this investigation how many towns
have acquired such vehicles through the 1033 Program.
Media accounts put the number at around 500.49 Dallas,
Texas, has one.50 So does Salinas, California,51 as well as the
Utah Highway Patrol.52 And, perhaps most bizarrely, the
Ohio State University Police has one—in order to provide
“presence” on football game days.53

Police in South Carolina pose with their Bearcat
Another piece of equipment that seems to be gaining
popularity among SWAT teams is the armored personnel
carrier (APC). APCs were created to transport infantry and
provide protection from shrapnel and small arms fire on
the battlefield. One version popular with law enforcement
agencies is the Ballistic Engineered Armored Response
Counter Attack (BearCat) APC, but more modern APCs
include the MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected)
vehicle, which provides additional protection from
improvised explosive devices (IEDs). In the battlefield,
APCs are typically armed with machine guns mounted
on top of the vehicle in a turret; when used domestically,
the guns are removed and the vehicle is used primarily
for protection by law enforcement responding to SWAT
call-outs and emergencies. Thus, APCs are not typically
armed when in use by domestic law enforcement; however,
they appear threatening and observers do not necessarily
have reason to know whether an APC is armed.

22 American Civil Liberties Union

Photo: Supplied by Lt. Chris Cowan

Military Training
The militarization of policing culture is also apparent
in the training that tactical teams receive—SWAT team
members are trained to think like soldiers. The ACLU
asked hundreds of law enforcement agencies to submit
copies of SWAT training materials. One response from the
Farmington, Missouri, Special Response Team consisted
of a piece written by Senior PoliceOne Contributor
Chuck Remsberg for Killology Research Group. The piece
summarizes a presentation given at a conference of the
International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms
Instructors and warns that “preparations for attacks on
American schools that will bring rivers of blood and
staggering body counts are well underway in Islamic

terrorist camps.” It further states that “police agencies aren’t
used to this…We deal with acts of a criminal nature. This
is an act of war, but because of our laws we can’t depend
on the military to help us…[T]he U.S. in [sic] the one
nation in the world where the military is not the first line
of defense against domestic terrorist attack. By law, you
the police officer are our Delta Force.” It provides “‘4 Ds’
for Thwarting Terrorists’ Plans to Massacre Our School
Children” and concludes with an admonition to “Build the
right mind-set in your troops.”54
Even if there were merit to the argument that training
SWAT teams to think like soldiers in the context of a school
shooting would provide them with the skills that they need
to respond effectively, it appears that training in how to
develop a “warrior” mentality is pervasive and extends well
beyond hostage situations and school shootings, seeping
into officers’ everyday interactions with their communities.
For example, the Cary, North Carolina, SWAT team
provides a training session explicitly titled “Warrior
Mindset/Chemical Munitions” for all Emergency Response
Team personnel. A PowerPoint training presentation sent
by the National Tactical Officers Association urges trainees
to “Steel Your Battlemind” and defines “battlemind” as “a
warrior’s inner strength to face fear and adversity during
combat with courage. It is the will to persevere and win. It
is resilience.” Neither of these training documents suggests
that SWAT teams should constrain their soldier-like tactics
to terrorism situations. Additionally, in the documents
reviewed for this report, the majority of SWAT raids took
place in the context of serving search warrants at people’s
homes—not in response to school shootings or bombings.
Training programs like these impact how some SWAT
officers view the people in their communities. For example,
in one of the cases examined for this report, a SWAT team
drove a BearCat APC into a neighborhood for the sole
purpose of executing a warrant to search for drugs. Once
the SWAT officers arrived at the home, they drove the APC
to the residence, broke down the front and back doors,
destroyed a glass table, deployed a distraction device,
and pried a lock off a shed, all to find the house empty.
One of the officers noted in his report that the house was
“empty of suspects and civilians.” The distinction between
“suspects” and “civilians” is telling. If police see suspects

INCIDENT REPORT
BURLINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA
NOVEMBER 13, 2012

SWAT Officers Shoots Dog
During No-Knock Raid

A

t 6:00 in the morning, a SWAT officer shot a
dog during a no-knock raid and search of a
home. The suspect was a single Black male who
was suspected of selling marijuana at his home.
Solely on the basis of information provided
by a confidential informant (which is often
unreliable), the SWAT team believed that the
man possessed firearms. No information was
provided about what kind or how many firearms
the man was believed to possess. The team
deployed a distraction device and broke down the
door, causing damage and surprise. They found
two unarmed men inside, along with a dog that
bit one of the officers. The officer was carrying
a shotgun, against the team’s own policy. Using
this shotgun, the officer shot the dog. Seventy
percent of the people impacted by the Burlington
SWAT deployments the ACLU studied were
Black.

less as civilians and more as enemies, what effect does that
have on police-suspect interactions?

Legality of Forced Entry Into People’s
Homes
Generally speaking, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution prohibits the police from entering a person’s
home without a warrant. Historically, if the police had a
warrant to search a person’s home, they were required by
law to knock on the door, announce their presence, and
wait for someone to answer.55 When a person answered

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 23

the door, the police were required to show the warrant and
were then entitled to demand entry to conduct a search.
Although the “knock-and-announce” rule still exists,
today police executing a search warrant need not follow
the rule if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the
circumstances present a threat of physical violence or that
evidence would be destroyed if advance notice were given.56
Further, if they believe in advance of executing the search
warrant that either of these circumstances will exist, they
can obtain a “no-knock warrant,” which allows them to
enter a person’s home without knocking. In either case,
the police are permitted to force their way into a person’s
home. As a consequence, even though the police are not
allowed to barge their way into a person’s home simply
because they believe drugs are present,57 given that any
time they have reasonable suspicion that knocking and
announcing their presence would “inhibit the investigation
of the crime by … allowing the destruction of evidence,”58
the reality is that drug cases often provide police with
vast discretion to use forced entry into a person’s home
to execute a search warrant. Even when a court finds that
the police have violated the knock-and-announce rule,
the Supreme Court has held that the prosecution can still
use the evidence seized as a result of a subsequent search
at trial, significantly diluting the knock-and-announce
requirement’s value as a deterrent to police overreach.59
While search warrants authorize the police to search a
given place for a particular item or items, they rarely
delineate the tactics the police may use in executing
the warrant (other than no-knock warrants, which, as
explained above, authorize the police to enter without
knocking or announcing their presence, and sometimes
specifically authorize use of a night-time search). And
though the Supreme Court has held as a general matter
that the method of police entry into a home is a factor
to be considered in assessing the reasonableness (and,
hence, constitutionality) of the search,60 there is no per se
prohibition on the use of any particular method. Therefore,
the fact that the police obtained a warrant in a given case
does little to constrain their broad discretion to decide
whether to deploy a SWAT team, break down a door with a
battering ram, deploy a distraction device, etc.
In sum, while courts can at times provide recourse to
violations of Fourth Amendment rights, by and large they

24 American Civil Liberties Union

do not offer robust protection from police use of aggressive
equipment and tactics to execute search warrants in
people’s homes.

Federal Incentives to Militarize Policing
The Department of Defense operates the 1033 Program
through the Defense Logistics Agency’s (DLA) Law
Enforcement Support Office (LESO), whose motto is
“from warfighter to crimefighter.” According to LESO,
the program has transferred $4.3 billion worth of
property through the 1033 Program.61 Today, the 1033
Program includes more than 17,000 federal and state law
enforcement agencies from all U.S. states and territories.
The amount of military equipment being used by local and
state police agencies has increased dramatically—the value
of property transferred though the program went from $1
million in 1990 to $324 million in 1995 and to nearly $450
million in 2013.62
The 1033 statute authorizes the Department of Defense
to transfer property that is “excess to the needs of the
Department,”63 which can include new equipment; in
fact, 36 percent of the property transferred pursuant the
program is brand new.64 Thus, it appears that DLA can
simply purchase property from an equipment or weapons
manufacturer and transfer it to a local law enforcement
agency free of charge. Given that more than a third of
property transferred under the program is in fact new, it
appears that this practice happens with some regularity.
A statistical analysis of the transfer of equipment under
the 1033 Program is beyond the scope of this report, but
we uncovered numerous examples of transfers that give
cause for concern. For example, during the years covered
by the investigation, the North Little Rock, Arkansas, police
obtained at least 34 automatic and semi-automatic rifles,
two MARCbots (robots designed for use in Afghanistan
that are capable of being armed), several ground troop
helmets, and a Mamba tactical vehicle.65 The Arkansas
state coordinator found that the LESO application for
participation and the state memorandum of agreement
were outdated, in addition to many weapons being
unaccounted for in the inventory. Despite this, the
coordinator signed off on a form that said all the inventory

increased the likelihood that local police departments, not
just in Gwinnett County but across the country, will deploy
military weapons and tactics in drug investigations when
possible.

Mission Creep
forms were accurate. Bay County, Florida, received several
military-style rifles, a forklift, and several utility trucks.
The same county also has on inventory numerous M-16s,
M-14s, sniper rifles, submachine guns, and ballistic shields,
though it is not clear from the records whether Bay County
obtained those items through the 1033 Program, from
another federal source, or otherwise. Gwinnett County,
Georgia, received nearly 60 military-style rifles, as well as
numerous combat vests and Kevlar helmets.
In addition, agencies are permitted to transfer equipment
obtained through the 1033 Program between each other.
The ACLU uncovered numerous examples of state and
local law enforcement agencies transferring equipment that
they had obtained through the 1033 Program. There do not
appear to be any limitations on or oversight of this practice.
As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail.66 Likewise, if the federal government gives
the police a huge cache of military-style weaponry, they
are highly likely to use it, even if they do not really need
to. Gwinnett County, Georgia, for example, received at
least 57 semi-automatic rifles, mostly M-16s and M-14s,
through the 1033 Program during the relevant time period.
A third of Gwinnett County’s SWAT deployments were for
drug investigations; in half of them, the SWAT team broke
down the door to get inside, and there was no record in
any of the reports that weapons were found. In several of
these cases, damage resulted to people’s homes; in one case,
the SWAT team deployed tear gas into a home in order to
serve an arrest warrant, knowing there were people inside
who were not subjects of the warrant. It is not possible to
prove definitively that the weapons procured through the
1033 Program incentivized these deployments in Gwinnett.
However, it is reasonable to infer that the program—the
very purpose of which is to equip local police officers
to use military equipment in drug investigations—has

It is clear that local law enforcement agencies use DHS
funds ostensibly obtained for the purpose of fighting
terrorism to conduct ordinary law enforcement
activities. In New Hampshire, for example, three police
departments—in Concord, Keene, and Manchester (cities
that are separated from each other by approximately 30
miles)—each used DHS grants to fund the purchase of an
armored BearCat (the amount of grants received by these
agencies ranged from $215,000 to $286,000). Justifications
offered for these grants included prevention, protection,
response, and recovery activities pertaining to weapons of
mass destruction and the threat of terrorism. The Keene,
New Hampshire, police department, for example, stated
in its application for DHS grant funding to purchase an
APC that “[t]he terrorism threat is far reaching and often
unforeseen. Terrorist’s [sic] goals, regardless of affiliation,

“Our application talked about
the danger of domestic
terrorism, but that’s just
something you put in the grant
application to get the money.
What red-blooded American
cop isn’t going to be excited
about getting a toy like this?
That’s what it comes down to.”
		

—Keene, N.H. Citty Councilmember

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 25

usually encompass the creation of fear among the public,
convincing the public that their Government is powerless
to stop the terrorists, and get immediate publicity for their
cause.” The application goes on to cite Keene’s annual
pumpkin festival as a potential terrorism target in need of
protection with an APC.67
Not even Keene city officials believed that the city actually
needed the BearCat to thwart terrorism. To explain why the
police included the word “terrorism” on their application
for federal funding for this purchase, a city councilmember
said, “Our application talked about the danger of domestic
terrorism, but that’s just something you put in the grant
application to get the money. What red-blooded American
cop isn’t going to be excited about getting a toy like this?
That’s what it comes down to.”68
The police chief in San Diego, California, expressed the
same sentiment when asked about his agency’s decision
to purchase an armored personnel carrier: “‘If we had to
take on a terrorist group, we could do that,’ said William
Lansdowne, the police chief in San Diego and a member of
the board of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Though
his force used federal grants to buy one of those fancy
armored vehicles—complete with automatic-gun portals—
he said the apparatus was more useful for traditional
crime-busting than counter-terrorism.”69
It is equally clear that the DOJ’s Byrne JAG funding is being
used to conduct unnecessarily aggressive activities in drug
cases. Approximately 21 percent of all law enforcement
JAG funds go to task forces, the majority of which are drug
task forces, which routinely employ paramilitary tactics in
drug investigations.70 Byrne JAG drug task forces have been
widely criticized for incentivizing unnecessarily aggressive,
often militarized, tactics—particularly in communities
of color.71 As of 2011, 585 multi-jurisdictional task forces
were funded through the JAG program.72 JAG funds often
support drug task forces by paying for the salaries or
overtime hours of task force officers as well as for vehicles
and equipment; in 2012-2013, more than 680,000 law
enforcement overtime hours were paid for using JAG
funds.73
According to documents uncovered by the ACLU, local law
enforcement agencies often received substantial funding

26 American Civil Liberties Union

from the DHS and DOJ during the time period studied.
The city of Austin, Texas, for example, received $2.2 million
in federal grant funding from August 2010 through January
2012. Fort Worth, Texas, received $1.2 million in 2011 and
2012 combined. Similarly, since August 2013, the Salt Lake
City Police Department has received almost $2 million in
federal grant awards. However, awards are not limited to
large cities. In Montana, the Helena Police Department
received $733,000 in DHS grants, and the Montana
Department of Justice received more than $1 million
in DHS grants. Likewise, Gastonia, North Carolina, has
received more than $180,000 in federal funding since 2009,
while the Bay County, Florida, Sheriff ’s Department has
received approximately $360,000 in federal funding since
late 2011. In 2011, the Raleigh Police Department received
$120,000 as part of the 2011 State Homeland Security
Program.
A 2004 classified memo all but confirms the blurring of
the lines between the drug war and the U.S. military by
calling the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) The “Other”
Warfighter and stating that the War on Drugs “has all the
risks, excitement, and dangers of conventional warfare.74
Simply put, American policing has become excessively
militarized.

Lack of Transparency
and Oversight
FINDING #2

The militarization of policing in the
United States has occurred with
almost no public oversight.

Limitations of Data Collection on SWAT Use
Data concerning the prevalence of SWAT is difficult to
collect.75 The ACLU filed public records requests with
more than 255 law enforcement agencies during the course
of this investigation. One hundred and fourteen of the
agencies denied the ACLU’s request, either in full or in part.
Even if the ACLU had received and examined responsive
documents from all 255 law enforcement agencies that
received public records requests, this would represent only
a sliver of the more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies
that exist throughout the United States, and thus would
shine only a dim light on the extent of police militarization
throughout the country.
The agencies that refused to comply with our requests
offered various justifications for the refusals, including the
following:
■■

The requested documents contained trade secrets.

■■

Concerns about jeopardizing law enforcement
effectiveness.

■■

The requested documents did not constitute “public
records.”

■■

The request was “overbroad and voluminous.”

■■

The costs associated with producing the documents
were simply prohibitive.

It strains credibility to believe that the information
contained in SWAT incident reports contains “trade
secrets.” A trade secret is a commercially valuable plan,
formula, process, or device. It is “a secret, commercially
valuable plan, formula, process, or device that is used
for the making, preparing, compounding, or processing
of trade commodities and that can be said to be the end
product of either innovation or substantial effort.”76
A police report is not a “commercially valuable plan.”
Furthermore, most law enforcement agencies contacted
did in fact provide some records, belying the notion that
the records requested did not constitute “public records,”
that there were legitimate concerns about law enforcement
effectiveness, or that the request was “overbroad and
voluminous.” These are simply excuses to avoid complying
with the ACLU’s request. In fact, the public should not
even have to resort to public records requests to obtain
information about policing practices—this information
should be readily available.
The records that were produced revealed an extremely
troubling trend: that data collecting and reporting in
the context of SWAT was at best sporadic and at worst
virtually nonexistent. Not a single law enforcement agency
in this investigation provided records containing all of
the information that the ACLU believes is necessary to
undertake a thorough examination of police militarization.
Some agencies (e.g., Tupelo, Mississippi) provided
records that were nearly totally lacking in important
information. Others (e.g., Salt Lake City, Utah) provided
records that were quite lengthy, though still incomplete
and extremely difficult to analyze because of their lack of
organization. Others (e.g., Fort Worth, Texas) provide fairly
comprehensive information, though often in narrative
form, making statistical analysis difficult. This variation
has two immediate results: (1) any analysis of the data
will necessarily have to contend with a large number of

Data collecting and reporting in
the context of SWAT was at best
sporadic and at worst virtually
nonexistent.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 27

unknowns (as demonstrated above) and (2) it makes
systematic, thorough, and uniform collection of SWAT
data, at any level of government, impossible.

Lack of State and Local Oversight
There is almost no oversight of SWAT at the state or local
level. Maryland is the exception—in 2009, Maryland
enacted a law requiring law enforcement agencies that
maintain a SWAT team to report, semi-annually, specific
activation and deployment information.77 The law required
the Police Training Commission, in consultation with the
Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, to
develop a standardized format for each agency to use in
reporting data.78 It also provided that if a law enforcement

INCIDENT REPORT
BAY COUNTY, FLORIDA
JANUARY 6, 2011

SWAT Team Shatters
Windows for to Search
for Marijuana

O

fficers had no reason to believe that the man
they suspected of selling marijuana out of
his home was armed. Yet, they still classified
their investigation as “high risk” to justify
deploying a SWAT team. Instead of knocking
and demanding to search the premises, the
SWAT team burst into the man’s home, igniting
a flashbang grenade, shattering a window,
and breaking down the man’s front door. The
suspect was not inside the home at the time
of the raid, but a different man, a woman, and
an infant were, none of whom were suspects in
the investigation. The suspect was found in the
backyard. No guns or weapons were found.

28 American Civil Liberties Union

agency failed to comply with the reporting provisions, the
fact of noncompliance by that particular agency would be
reported to the state legislature.79 Utah enacted a similar
bill this year.80
The Maryland law did not come out of nowhere. The year
before, the Prince George’s County Sheriff ’s SWAT team
had raided the home of Cheye Calvo, the mayor of a small
Prince George’s County municipality. The county police
department then held Calvo and his family at gunpoint for
hours and killed his two dogs, on the basis of a misguided
investigation in which Calvo and his wife were wrongly
suspected of being involved in a marijuana transaction.81
Calvo responded by drafting legislation, securing bill
sponsors, attracting media, organizing grass-roots support,
coordinating with other SWAT victims, knocking on doors,
and personally appealing to the governor to sign the new
law (over the objection of law enforcement), all a testament
to the concerted efforts that must be taken to bring about
SWAT reform. Although in the end the law did not contain
everything he wanted, Calvo hoped that the law would
bring change. He testified before the state legislature: “This
bill is an important first step that doesn’t restrict [police]
use [of SWAT teams]. It merely brings transparency.
Hopefully, it will ensure that the people who fund and
authorize these SWAT teams have the information they
need to set good public policy.”82
The Maryland law resulted in some fairly robust reporting
on SWAT use by local law enforcement. The Governor’s
Office of Crime Control and Prevention was able to
collect, aggregate, analyze, and report on this data annually
for the years 2010-2012, and more reports should be
forthcoming.83 Highlighting the importance of thorough
documentation and transparency, these reports, which are
available to the public, demonstrated that in Maryland,
SWAT deployments are used principally for search
warrants, focus on nonviolent felonies and misdemeanors,
and typically result in forced entries, regardless of whether
the warrant is standard or no-knock. Unfortunately, the
story seems to end there, at least in Maryland. The state
legislature has not used the information contained in the
reports to enact any meaningful policy reform, as Calvo
had hoped, and the law is scheduled to sunset this year,
with no indication that it will be extended (though both
the Prince George’s police and the Prince George’s Sheriff ’s

office will continue to provide the data required by the law
as a condition of a lawsuit Calvo brought after the raid).
Calvo has expressed disappointment that elected officials
have not used the data to mandate reforms. Putting aside
the limitations of Maryland’s law, it should not take an
incident like the raid on the Calvos’ home to get this kind
of oversight.
At the local level, among the agencies that submitted
documents pertaining to their policies and procedures to
the ACLU, most had some form of after-action reporting
or internal review procedures in place that varied in terms
of the amount of oversight provided. For example, in Cary,
North Carolina, all specialty assignments, including the
SWAT team, are required to conduct an annual review
containing a statement of purpose for the specialty
assignment, evaluation of the initial conditions that
required implementation of the specialized assignment,
and justification for the continuation of the specialized
assignment. In Huntington, West Virginia, the Office of
Professional Standards is required to present findings
regarding all incidents to the chief of police in an annual
report. Many other SWAT teams are subject to similar
internal oversight.
However, as discussed above, the after-action reports we
received were, for the most part, woefully incomplete,
raising serious questions about their utility for internal
review of SWAT deployment practices. Furthermore, the
records indicated that internal reviews mostly pertain to
proper weapons use and training and not to evaluating
important civil rights implications of SWAT use. In
addition, purely internal oversight is insufficient to guard
against excessive, aggressive, and disproportionate use of
SWAT. Greater oversight is needed.

Lack of Federal Oversight
In addition to insufficient state oversight, there is no federal
agency mandated to collect information related to local law
enforcement use of SWAT. The Bureau of Justice Statistics
(BJS), housed within the Department of Justice’s Office
of Justice Programs, collects and publishes information
pertaining to state prison systems, court administration,

crime, victimization, justice employment information
(e.g., the number of people employed by various criminal
justice agencies), and information pertaining to justice
systems on tribal lands.84 It collects and publishes some
information pertaining to law enforcement administration,
but mostly in the areas of training, coroner activities, crime
laboratories, and a slew of other categories that do not
pertain directly to the militarization of policing. While BJS
does collect information on some policing activity, such as
hate crimes, it does not collect information pertaining to
incidents of SWAT deployment, uses of military weapons
or tactics in connection with such deployments, or the
underlying purposes of such deployments.85 Taking
responsibility for collecting, maintaining, and analyzing
information pertaining to the use of SWAT teams
throughout the country would present certain challenges
for BJS, but if local agencies improved their own record
keeping on the use of SWAT—potentially aided by BJS
through development of a data collection tool—BJS would
enhance its ability to compile, aggregate, and analyze data
collected and provided by local agencies.
Oversight of the federal programs that incentivize
militarized policing is also needed.
Oversight of the 1033 Program exists, but there are gaps.86
The only significant responsibilities placed on participating
law enforcement agencies are that they not sell equipment
obtained through the program and that they maintain
accurate inventories of transferred equipment.
The state coordinator is required to approve or disapprove
applications for participation, but there appear to be only
two criteria that must be satisfied in order for a request
to be approved: (1) that the agency intends to use the
equipment for a “law enforcement purpose” (counterdrug
and counterterrorism efforts are emphasized by law); and
(2) that the transfer would result in a “fair and equitable
distribution” of property based on current inventory. The
Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) also provides that
as a general matter, “no more than one of any item per
officer will be allocated.”87 Most of the state coordinator’s
other responsibilities are administrative in nature (e.g.,
ensuring that LESO has current and accurate points of
contact, that only authorized agency requests are submitted

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 29

to LESO, that participating agencies update their account
information annually, etc.).
There is a biannual Program Compliance Review using
a checklist.88 The compliance review is not rigorous,
however, and simply requires the state coordinator to
certify that appointed personnel are proficient with DLA
websites, that participating agencies are in fact eligible
(the sole eligibility requirement is that the agency is a law
enforcement agency), that the agency has in place proper
records management and retention processes and inventory
control, that there is a compliance review process in place,
that there are steps in place to ensure that 1033 property
is not sold, whether an agency has sold 1033 property or
received property for the sole purpose of selling it, and that
property transferred complies with the MOA.
The state coordinator is also required to state what steps
are taken to ensure that participating agencies do not
requisition unnecessary or excessive amounts of property.
However, the ACLU did not uncover any records pursuant
to its investigation to suggest that any of the agencies
studied had a single request for equipment denied by the
state coordinator during the two years studied.
States or agencies can be suspended for failure to conduct
a required inventory, but there are no consequences for
overly aggressive use of equipment.
LESO conducts an annual briefing for law enforcement
personnel in each state.89 This briefing includes information
on technical support and training available to agencies via
the LESO program. One person from each state is required
to attend. The briefing does not appear to address the
importance of exercising restraint in the acquisition and use
of military equipment by local law enforcement agencies.
There appears to be no requirement that the Department
of Defense make any certification to Congress regarding
the performance or impact of the program.
There is virtually no oversight over DHS support to state
and local law enforcement through the Homeland Security
Grant Program.90 In 2013, DHS distributed nearly a
billion dollars to state and local law enforcement agencies
through the HSGP to “enhance the ability of states,
territories, and Federally recognized tribes to prevent,

30 American Civil Liberties Union

protect against, respond to, and recover from potential
terrorist acts and other hazards,”91 but as discussed above,
this money was often spent on ordinary law enforcement
activities. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn conducted
an investigation into DHS funding to state and local law
enforcement agencies in 2012. Senator Coburn concluded,
on the basis of information contained in DHS reports,
briefings with the DHS Office of the Inspector General,
and project data and spending plans from 29 urban areas,
that “taxpayer money spent on homeland security grant
programs has not always been spent in ways obviously
linked to terrorism or preparedness” and that “[DHS] has
done very little oversight of the program, allowing cities to
spend the money on almost anything they want, as long as
it has broad ties to terror prevention.”92
There is also minimal oversight over expenditures of DOJ
funds. The Bureau of Justice Assistance conducts some
oversight over JAG funds, and has been strengthening
its oversight in recent months, particularly with regard
to potential use of JAG funds to subsidize racially biased
marijuana possession arrests. However, there is virtually no
oversight over weapons expenditures or use of paramilitary
tactics in drug investigations.
There does not appear to be much, if any, local oversight
of law enforcement agency receipt of equipment transfers
under the 1033 Program or grants from the DHS or DOJ.
None of the documents the ACLU reviewed relating to
policies and procedures contained any provisions regarding
internal oversight of such transfers and grants. The ACLU
is also not aware of any formal procedures that have been
imposed at the local level requiring public oversight of
requests for equipment transfers or grants, though some
municipalities have held ad hoc hearings when their local
law enforcement agencies have proposed a transfer or grant
that may be controversial.93 The public has a right to know
what weapons and tactics are being used to police it and
how its tax dollars are being spent.

The Purpose of SWAT

FIGURE�1
Majority�of�SWAT�Deployments�for�Drug�Searches�(2011-2012)

28%

FINDING #3
SWAT teams were often deployed—
unnecessarily and aggressively—to
execute search warrants in low-level
drug investigations; deployments
for hostage or barricade scenarios
occurred in only a small number of
incidents.

Other
Unknown
Drug�Searches

62%

9%

Source:�Data�provided�by�local�law�enforcement�agencies�for�ACLU�investigation.

FIGURE�2
Majority�of�SWAT�Deployments�for�Search�Warrant�(2011-2012)

17%

Use of SWAT to Search for Drugs
Even though paramilitary policing in the form of SWAT
teams was created to deal with emergency scenarios such
as hostage or barricade situations, the use of SWAT to
execute search warrants in drug investigations has become
commonplace and made up the majority of incidents
the ACLU reviewed. When the police are executing a
search warrant, there has been no formal accusation of
a crime; rather, the police are simply acting on the basis
of probable cause to believe that drugs will be present.
There is no criminal case, no formal suspects, and often
little if any proof that a crime has been committed; it is
simply an investigation. Thus, the use of a SWAT team
to execute a search warrant essentially amounts to the
use of paramilitary tactics to conduct domestic drug
investigations in people’s homes.
The majority (79 percent) of SWAT deployments the
ACLU studied were for the purpose of executing a
search warrant, most commonly in drug investigations.
Only a small handful of deployments (7 percent) were
for hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios. The
remaining deployments were for other purposes such as
protecting visiting dignitaries, capturing fleeing suspects,
and responding to emergencies. Our investigation found
that in the majority of deployments the police did not face
genuine threats to their safety and security.

4%

Other
Unknown
Search�Warrant

79%

Source:�Data�provided�by�local�law�enforcement�agencies�for�ACLU�investigation.

Further, often the quantity of drugs found did not seem to
justify a SWAT deployment. For example, the Allentown
SWAT team was deployed to search someone’s house for
drugs. They executed the warrant at 6:00 a.m., knowing
children were likely to be present. When gathering
intelligence the day before, the team did not see any
weapons. Nonetheless, the team deployed a distraction
device, broke the door down with a battering ram, and
entered the residence to find three adults and three children
asleep in the home. The team found no weapons and what
the report described as a “small amount of marijuana.”
This finding supports Kraska’s earlier research. Kraska
found, based on his survey data, that 80 percent of
deployments during the time period he studied were for
the purpose of executing a search warrant, not to deal with
situations for which SWAT teams were created, such as
hostage, sniper, or terrorist situations.94 He concluded on
the basis of his research that “[SWAT teams have] changed

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 31

from being a periphery and strictly reactive component of
police departments to a proactive force actively engaged in
fighting the drug war.”95 Based on our statistical analysis,
we agree with this conclusion.

Lack of Standards
Most police departments have in place standards that allow
for SWAT deployment in cases involving hostage, barricade,
active shooter, or other emergency scenarios, or in “highrisk” warrant scenarios. But what constitutes a “high-risk”
scenario depends largely on the subjective beliefs of the
officers involved. This lack of clear and legitimate standards
for deploying SWAT may result in the excessive and
unnecessary use of SWAT deployments in drug cases.
One reason for thinking that serving a warrant may be
“high risk” would be the presence of a person who is
armed and dangerous. More often than not, we found that
SWAT records contained no information to explain why
the officers believed a particular scenario was “high risk.”
Even in incidents in which the police believe an armed
person would be present, very often there was insufficient
information to know what formed the officer’s belief;
often, the SWAT team was called out based on an officer’s
subjective belief that a person involved was “known to
carry weapons” or “had been found to carry weapons in the
past.” SWAT officers seemed to make no effort whatsoever

More often than not, we found
that SWAT records contained
no information to explain
why the officers believed a
particular scenario was
“high risk.”
32 American Civil Liberties Union

to distinguish between weapons that were lawfully owned
versus those that a suspect was thought to possess illegally.
In nearly every deployment involving a barricade, hostage,
or active shooter, the SWAT report provided specific facts
that gave the SWAT team reason to believe there was an
armed and often dangerous suspect. For example, the
Concord, North Carolina, SWAT team was called out to a
barricade situation involving a man who had barricaded
himself in his home, was making explosives, and was
considered mentally unstable. All of this information was
provided to police by a member of the man’s family. The
man had previously been arrested for making bombs and
was known by family members to possess a large number
of firearms. The team safely took the man into custody and
seized at least four firearms, large amounts of ammunition,
several axes and hatches, and bomb-making materials that
had to be detonated by the bomb squad.
In contrast, incident reports for search warrant executions,
especially in drug investigations, often contained no
information about why the SWAT team was being sent in,
other than to note that the warrant was “high risk,” or else
provided otherwise unsubstantiated information such as
“suspect is believed to be armed.” In case after case that
the ACLU examined, when a SWAT team was deployed to
search a person’s home for drugs, officers determined that
a person was “likely to be armed” on the basis of suspected
but unfounded gang affiliations, past weapons convictions,
or some other factor that did not truly indicate a basis
for believing that the person in question was likely to be
armed at the moment of the SWAT deployment. Of course,
a reasonable belief that weapons are present should not
by itself justify a SWAT deployment. Given that almost
half of American households have guns, use of a SWAT
team could almost always be justified if this were the sole
factor.96 However, because the use of SWAT increases the
likelihood that the occupants will use weapons to defend
themselves, which increases the risk of violence and thus of
harm to both law enforcement and civilians, presence of a
weapon alone should not automatically result in a SWAT
deployment.
Some agencies have checklists or matrices that they employ
to determine whether a situation is “high risk.” In using
these lists, officers check off various risk factors that

they believe to be present and, presumably on the basis
of the risk factors present, calculate a risk score. SWAT
deployment is considered (and sometimes mandated) on
the basis of whether the risk level meets a predetermined
threshold. Unfortunately, though, having such mechanisms
in place does not obviate the problem of unnecessarily
aggressive SWAT deployments because using an internal
checklist or matrix does not eliminate subjectivity. In
one case, the officer completing the threat matrix, and
perhaps knowing that the woman who was the subject
of the warrant had no serious criminal history, included
the histories of other people (not even confined to other
people at the residence) in calculating the threat score. This
elevated the score to the level needed to justify a SWAT
deployment. In addition, whether a person is likely to be
armed is often considered a risk factor, but as discussed
above, making that determination is highly subjective.
Some of the threat matrices examined in connection
with this investigation contained factors and counting
procedures that were themselves problematic. For example,
the Concord, North Carolina, threat matrix considers
“religious extremist” to be a risk factor. In addition to
possibly violating the First Amendment,97 predicting risk
on the basis of religious ideology is ineffective for two
reasons: (1) there is no simple link between the adoption
of an ideology and violent action; and (2) it is exceedingly
difficult to craft a coherent model of the kinds of ideologies
or beliefs that could be expected to lead to violence.98
Other jurisdictions that use a matrix often consider the
fact that the deployment is part of a drug investigation
as having a high point value, but simply having drugs in
one’s home should not be considered a high-risk factor
justifying a paramilitary search. Without consistency,
clarity, meaningful metrics, and the use of appropriate risk
factors, these matrices seem to cause more problems than
they resolve.
In addition, the ACLU did not uncover any policies or
practices encouraging partial responses. It appeared
that deployments almost always involved a complete
deployment, including numerous officers armed with
assault rifles, battering rams, and distraction devices.
Many deployments—to the extent they were justified at
all—would seem to have warranted a much less aggressive

response, including perhaps fewer officers and less military
weaponry.

Accuracy of Assessing Threats
One way to evaluate the reliability of a SWAT officer’s
unsubstantiated beliefs concerning the threat danger and
likely presence of weapons is to measure the likelihood that
an officer’s subjective belief in the presence of weapons
resulted in the SWAT team actually finding weapons at the
scene. We found in the course of our investigation that the
SWAT team found weapons (the overwhelming majority of
which were firearms such as handguns, but rarely assault
rifles) in just over one-third of the incidents in which they
predicted finding them, which suggests the police are not
particularly good at accurately forecasting the presence of
weapons. Furthermore, if SWAT were being used for the
limited purposes for which it was created, we would expect
them to find weapons in nearly all of the incidents studied.
TABLE 1

Weapons Predicted v Weapons Found
Weapons Located
Weapons Believed
To Be Present

Yes

No

Unknown

Yes

35%

32%

33%

No

13%

43%

44%

No-knock warrants were used (or probably used) in about
60 percent of the incidents in which SWAT teams were
searching for drugs, even though many resulted in the
SWAT team finding no drugs or small quantities of drugs.
For example, the Burlington County, North Carolina,
SWAT team was deployed to search for drugs in a person’s
home. Upon executing the warrant, all that was found
was drug paraphernalia (such as a pipe) and a residue
amount of cocaine (presumably the residue found in the
pipe). Given that the ostensible purpose of forcing entry
into a home is to prevent the destruction of “evidence”
(i.e., the presumed purpose of the no-knock being issued
in this case), this result is troubling. One would expect to

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 33

see a much higher rate of SWAT deployments resulting in
the seizure of large amounts of drugs. Of course, as with
the presence of weapons, the mere fact that there might
be drug evidence that residents could, in theory, attempt
to destroy upon the police knocking and announcing
themselves, should not justify the use of militaristic SWAT
teams forcing themselves into homes as if they are sweeping
enemy territory in a war zone.
TABLE 2

Drugs Predicted v Drugs Found
Contraband Located
SWAT Deployed for
a Drug Offense

Yes

Yes

35%

36% 29%

No

11%

27% 62%

No

Unknown

Of the cases we studied, in 36 percent of SWAT
deployments for drug searches, and possibly in as many
as 65 percent of such deployments, no contraband of
any sort was found. When also considering that the mere
presence of contraband should not be enough, by itself, to
justify SWAT, this seems to suggest strongly that SWAT is
overused.

Some Appropriate Uses of SWAT
The ACLU came across some incidents during the course
of the investigation that appeared on the face of the
records to demonstrate appropriate use of, and restraint
in deploying, SWAT. In one such incident, an officer was
asked by a neighboring agency to deploy a SWAT team.
The officer went to the scene to investigate, and what he
saw concerned him. In his report, he noted that officers
from other agencies were involved in breaking down
all the doors and windows of a person’s residence. He
asked if there was a warrant and was told there was none.
When requested to deploy tear gas, he responded that his
team does not simply deploy gas but rather conducts a
careful evaluation to ensure that if gas is deployed, proper
procedures are followed. The officer declined to assist

34 American Civil Liberties Union

the neighboring agency without a warrant being issued,
and said that if a warrant were produced, he would then
consider the request. The officer called his superior and
apprised him of the situation, and the superior concurred
with the decision to hold off. The chief of police eventually
got involved, and he also concurred with the decision to
hold off. Eventually a warrant was secured. On the basis of
the warrant, and with the knowledge that a woman was in
the residence, possibly being held against her will, the team
decided to deploy. This demonstrates a hesitation to engage
in activity that was possibly unconstitutional, restraint in
the use of SWAT, insistence on following proper procedure,
and professionalism in keeping superiors apprised of the
situation.
Another example demonstrating restraint in the use of
SWAT occurred in Hialeah, Florida, in July 2013. A man
had set his apartment on fire, killed six building residents,
and taken another two residents hostage. The chief of
police tried to negotiate with the man for several hours
before eventually calling in the SWAT team. He later told
reporters that “[i]t was a very difficult decision because
I not only have [sic] the lives of the two hostages that we
want to rescue, but I have in my hands the lives of the six
police officers that I’m sending in to confront this man.”99
The hostages survived, though the man did not. Exercising
restraint in deploying a SWAT team honors individual
liberties and maximizes public safety. If restraint was
warranted in this case, it is difficult to justify the routine
deployment of SWAT teams to serve search warrants in
drug investigations in which no clear threat is presented.
If paramilitary tactics were limited to scenarios like these,
there would be much less cause for concern. Unfortunately,
these instances are the exception, not the norm.

Where race was known, deployments that impacted
people of color (the majority being Black) constituted 28
percent of the total, whereas deployments that impacted
white people constituted 31 percent of the total. A small
percentage (6 percent) impacted a mix of white people and
people of color.

Race and SWAT
FINDING #4
The use of paramilitary weapons and
tactics primarily impacted people of
color; when paramilitary tactics were
used in drug searches, the primary
targets were people of color, whereas
when paramilitary tactics were used
in hostage or barricade scenarios, the
primary targets were white.

Race, SWAT, and Drugs
It is widely known that policing tactics across the country
often unfairly target communities of color—the recent
controversies surrounding stop-and-frisk programs
in numerous cities across the country document the
ineffective and unfair racial disparities associated with the
practice.100 According to the incident reports studied in the
course of this investigation, the use of paramilitary tactics
appears to be no different.

Breaking this down further into actual numbers of people
impacted by SWAT deployments shows that of all the
incidents studied where the number and race of the people
impacted were known, 39 percent were Black, 11 percent
were Latino, 20 were white, and race was unknown for the
rest of the people impacted. This means that even though
there were more deployments that impacted only white
people or a mix of white people and minorities, many
more people of color were impacted. This may relate to the
fact that white people were more likely to be impacted by
deployments involving hostage, barricade, or active shooter
scenarios, which most often involve domestic disputes
impacting small numbers of people, whereas people of
color were more likely to be impacted by deployments
involving drug investigations, which often impact large
groups of people and families.
FIGURE�3
SWAT�Deployments�by�Race�of�Individuals�Impacted�(2011-2012)

30%
39%

Unfortunately, many of the SWAT teams we looked
at either do not record race information or record it
unsystematically (in more than one-third of the incidents
studied, the race of the people impacted was not clear
from the incident report).101 According to the records that
did contain race information, SWAT team deployment
primarily impacted people of color.
In looking at race data, we examined two variables: the race
of the people impacted by each deployment and the race of
the overall number of people impacted by SWAT raids in
a given area during the studied time period. So the unit of
measurement in the data presented in this section is either
“number of deployments impacting people of a certain
race” or “race of individual people impacted.”

20%

Black
Latino
White
Unknown

11%

Source:�Data�provided�by�local�law�enforcement�agencies�for�ACLU�investigation.

Of the deployments in which race was known, there was
a significant racial difference in whether the deployment
was conducted in a drug case.102 Of the deployments that
impacted minorities (Black and Latino), 68 percent were
for drug searches, whereas of deployments that impacted
white people, only 38 percent were for drug searches. Of
the deployments that impacted a mix of white people and
minorities, 73 percent were for drug investigations.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 35

people impacted were a mix of white people and minorities,
the deployment was for the purpose of executing a search
warrant in 84 percent of cases. In contrast, when all of the
people impacted were white, the purpose was to execute a
search warrant in 65 percent of cases.

FIGURE�4
Racial�Disparity�in�SWAT�Deployments�for�Drug�Searches�(2011-2012)
80%

60%

40%

20%

0%

All�White
Deployed�for�Drug�Search
NOT�Deployed�for�Drug�Search

Mixed

All�Minority
Unknown

Source:�Data�provided�by�local�law�enforcement�agencies�for�ACLU�investigation.

Sixty-one percent of all the people impacted by SWAT raids
in drug cases were minorities.

Racial Differences in Use of SWAT for
Search Warrants
The numbers become even more troubling when
examining the racial breakdowns for search warrants. Of
the deployments in which all of the people impacted were
minorities, the deployment was for the purpose of executing
a search warrant in 80 percent of cases, and where the

When the number of people impacted by a deployment
was known, 42 percent of people impacted by a SWAT
deployment to execute a search warrant were Black
and 12 percent were Latino. So overall, of the people
impacted by deployments for warrants, 54 percent were
minorities. In contrast, nearly half of the people impacted
by deployments involving hostage, barricade, or active
shooter scenarios were white, whereas only 22 percent were
minorities (the rest were people who were known to have
been impacted by hostage, barricade, or active shooter
scenarios but whose race was not known, so the difference
could be even greater).
In addition, when the data was examined by agency (and
with local population taken into consideration), racial
disparities in SWAT deployments were extreme. As shown
in the table and graph below, in every agency, Blacks were
disproportionately more likely to be impacted by a SWAT
raid than whites, sometimes substantially so. For example,

TABLE 3

SWAT Impact Rates by Agency (2011–2012)
SWAT Impact Rates per 100,000
Law Enforcement Agency

White

Latino

Black

Times More Likely
Latinos Impacted

Times More Likely
Blacks Impacted

Allentown, PA, Police
Bay County, FL, Sheriff
Burlington, NC, Police
Caldwell County, NC, Sheriff
Chatham County, NC, Sheriff
Concord, NC, Police
Fort Worth, TX, Police
Gwinnett County, CA, Sheriff
Huntington, WV, Police
Little Rock, AR, Police
North Little Rock, AR, Police
Ogden, UT, Police
Salt Lake City, UT, Police
Spokane County, WA, Sheriff
Unified, UT, Police
Wilson County, NC, Sheriff

12
6
9
54
74
44
12
1
11
3
6
8
5
57
3
16

348
0
0
0
0
92
11
1
0
26
0
85
25
14
13
0

281
39
414
215
1,146
485
154
7
415
40
200
300
36
588
26
98

29.09
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
2.09
0.90
0.53
0.00
9.29
0.00
11.16
4.93
0.25
5.18
0.00

23.51
6.56
47.05
4.01
15.51
11.06
12.86
5.49
37.12
14.13
34.54
39.55
7.33
10.35
10.26
6.02

Source: Data provided by local law enforcement agencies for ACLU investigation.
NOTE: Agencies that do not record data on race/ethnicity are excluded.

36 American Civil Liberties Union

in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Blacks were nearly 24 times
more likely to be impacted by a SWAT raid than whites
were, and in Huntington, West Virginia, Blacks were 37
times more likely. Further, in Ogden, Utah, Blacks were
40 times more likely to be impacted by a SWAT raid than
whites were.

FINDING #5

FIGURE�5

Number�of�Individuals�Impacted

Racial�Disparity�in�SWAT�Deployment�by�Type�(2011-2012)
400

300

200

100

0

Hostage/Barricade/Shooter
White
Latino

Use of Violent Tactics
and Equipment

Search�Warrant�Executed

Black

SWAT deployments often and
unnecessarily entailed the use
of violent tactics and equipment,
including APCs; use of violent tactics
and equipment was shown to increase
the risk of bodily harm and property
damage.

Source:�Data�provided�by�local�law�enforcement�agencies�for�ACLU�investigation.

Use of Violent Tactics to Force Entry

FIGURE�6
Racial�Disparities�in�SWAT�Impact�Rates�(2011-2012)
Allentown,�PA,�Police

Of the incidents studied in which SWAT was deployed to
search for drugs in a person’s home, the SWAT teams either
forced (or probably forced) entry into a person’s home
using a battering ram or other breaching device 65 percent
of the time. This means that for drug investigations,
the SWAT teams studied were almost twice as likely to
force entry into a person’s home than not, and they were
more than twice as likely to use forced entry in drug
investigations than in other cases.

Bay�County,�FL,�Sheriff
Burlington,�NC,�Police
Caldwell�County,�NC,�Sheriff
Chatham�County,�NC,�Sheriff
Concord,�NC,�Police
Fort�Worth,�TX,�Police
Gwinnett�County,�CA,�Sheriff
Huntington,�WV,�Police
Little�Rock,�AR,�Police
North�Little�Rock,�AR,�Police
Ogden,�UT,�Police
Salt�Lake�City,�UT,�Police
Spokane�County,�WA,�Sheriff
Unified,�unincorporated�UT,�Police
Wilson�County,�NC,�Sheriff
0

250

500

White�Impact�Rate

750

1,000

Latino�Impact�Rate

Black�Impact�Rate
NOTE:�Agencies�that�do�not�record�data�on�race/ethnicity�are�excluded.

Source:�Data�provided�by�local�law�enforcement�agencies�for�ACLU�investigation.

It is well established that the War on Drugs has been waged
primarily and unfairly on people of color—from being
disproportionately targeted for low-level drug arrests to
serving longer prison sentences for the same drug crimes.
Our findings add the unfair and disproportionate use of
paramilitary home raids to this shameful list of racially
biased drug enforcement.

Forcing entry into a person’s home did not necessarily
result in the discovery of weapons, drugs, or other
contraband. Drugs or other contraband were either found
or probably found in only a quarter of the deployments
in which the SWAT team forced entry. In 54 percent of
deployments in which the SWAT team forced entry into
a person’s home using a battering ram or other breaching
device, the SWAT team either did not or probably did
not find any weapons. For example, the New Haven,
Connecticut, SWAT team deployed at 11:00 p.m. to execute
a search warrant. The team broke down the front door,
deployed a distraction device, and detained two people
inside the home, but it did not find any weapons or
contraband. Given the relatively small amount of drugs and

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 37

weapons found during the course of these deployments, it
is difficult to justify the forcible entry into private homes.
The SWAT teams studied were much more likely to force
entry in drug search cases than in other scenarios. When
SWAT was deployed to search a home for drugs, the squad
forced entry in more than 60 percent of incidents. In
contrast, when SWAT was deployed for a reason other than
searching a home for drugs, the squad forced entry in fewer
than 40 percent of cases.
FIGURE�7
Disparity�in�Use�of�Force�When�SWAT�Deployed�for�Drug�Searches�(2011-2012)
80%

routinely but do not record that fact). Still others (e.g., Bay
County, Florida) seem to make selective use of APCs. In
addition, some agencies used APCs that go by other names,
and it is not always possible to know whether an APC is
being referenced in an incident report.
From our review of the incident reports and discussions
with members of law enforcement, we conclude that the
use of BearCats or other APCs was rarely necessary for the
types of deployments in which they were used based on two
observations: (1) the numerous incidents in which an APC
was deployed but not used for any obvious purpose; and (2)
the numerous incidents in which the SWAT team was able to
accomplish its objective without the use of an APC.

60%

40%

20%

0%

SWAT�Deployed�for�Drug�Search
No�Forcible�Entry�Made
Forcible�Entry�Made

SWAT�NOT�Deployed�for�Drug�Search
Unknown

Source:�Data�provided�by�local�law�enforcement�agencies�for�ACLU�investigation.

Very little information was discernable regarding the use of
flashbang grenades, but in the cases in which information
was available, we discovered that of the incidents in which
SWAT teams were searching people’s homes for drugs,
they were 14 times more likely to use a flashbang grenade,
and they were three times more likely to use a flashbang
grenade in drug investigations than in other cases.

Use of Armored Personnel Carriers During
SWAT Raids
It was nearly impossible to track the use of BearCats and
other APCs by SWAT teams. On the face of the documents
examined, some law enforcement agencies (e.g., New
Haven, Connecticut; Allentown, Pennsylvania; Unified
Police Department, Utah) appear to deploy a BearCat
almost routinely. Others (e.g., Gwinnett County, Georgia)
do not appear to use an APC at all, though it is not clear
whether that is because they do not have one or because
they have one but do not use it (or even whether they use it

38 American Civil Liberties Union

There were numerous incidents in which a BearCat was
deployed but not put to any obvious use during the
course of the deployment. For example, SWAT officers
in Allentown, Pennsylvania, were deployed to search
someone’s home for drugs. They deployed at 6:45 a.m.,
with both a BearCat and an emergency van, knowing that
a toddler was likely to be present. They broke down the
door, entered the home, and handcuffed one man, while
a woman tried to comfort her child, who was presumably
upset by the commotion. There is no indication that
the officers made any use of the BearCat, other than for
transport. The ACLU uncovered numerous incidents such
as this, when there was some attendant danger, perhaps,
but this does not justify using an armored military vehicle
directly in front of someone’s home in the middle of a
residential neighborhood.
There were several incidents in which a SWAT team
was able to accomplish its objective without use of an
APC.103 For example, in the Concord, North Carolina,
case described above involving a man who had barricaded
himself, suffered from mental illness, and was suspected
of making bombs, the SWAT team was able to convince
the man to surrender, and there was no indication on the
face of the document that a BearCat was used. In another
incident, the Allentown SWAT team was called out to
deal with an armed robbery investigation. No BearCat
was deployed, and the suspects surrendered without
incident. SWAT teams consist of heavily armed, highly
professional tactical officers trained to handle extremely
high-risk scenarios. Such officers have proven themselves

to be effective when they are deployed to handle high-risk
situations without the use of an APC.
While officer safety is sometimes a concern during the
execution of a search warrant in which SWAT is deployed,
it is not a concern in all such deployments. Importantly,
there are effective alternatives to use of APCs, such as
making ordinary police vehicles built for domestic law
enforcement (as opposed to combat), bullet-proof.
Use of an APC can also endanger, not protect, both
officers and civilians, and can increase the risk of property
damage. In one case we examined, the SWAT team was
deployed to handle a dangerous barricade scenario in
which officers knew that a man was armed with a firearm.
The team deployed with a BearCat. At one point, the man
disappeared from view and exited the home through the
garage; he started walking toward officers who were not
aware of his presence because they were watching the front
door. The officers should have been able to provide cover,
but the BearCat literally obstructed their view of the garage.
Eventually the man surrendered, but the situation could
have had tragic results.
Use of a BearCat or other APC can also increase the risk of
property damage. In one case, a SWAT team used a BearCat
to break down a front gate. In another, a SWAT team used
a BearCat to break through the front door of a man known

It is not unusual for people to mistake a SWAT
deployment in the middle of the night for an armed
burglary, and both civilians and police have been
killed in resulting shootouts.

to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, after already forcing
entry through multiple other sites and shattering a sliding
glass door.

Consequences of Using Violent Tactics
Using aggressive tactics in drug raids can have disastrous
consequences. In the deployments the ACLU examined,
seven civilian deaths occurred in connection with
deployment, two of which appeared to be the result of
suicide (in at least one of these cases, the suspect stated
that he was willing to come outside but then shot himself
upon learning that the SWAT team was waiting for him). In
the incidents we examined, 46 civilians were injured in the
course of a deployment, often as the result of a use of force
by a member of the SWAT team.104
Examples of the tragic results of SWAT officer-involved
shootings are widely available. For example, earlier this
year, the Albuquerque Police Department sent a heavily
armed unit to confront James Boyd, a homeless man
who was “camping illegally” in the Sandia Foothills. The
encounter ended with officers shooting and killing him.
Though it did not involve the search of a home, this
example fits the militarization pattern for a number of
reasons. First, the police approached Boyd in full SWAT
gear simply because he was illegally camping in an Open
Space area in the foothills outside of Albuquerque. Second,
the officers purposefully escalated the conflict to the point
where the use of lethal force was inevitable. The action that
set it all off was the deployment of a flashbang grenade.
Finally, the weapon that killed Boyd appears to have been
an assault rifle or some other high-powered weapon
(ironically, the SWAT officers fired live ammunition
alongside beanbag rounds). Again, this demonstrates the
alarming tendency of paramilitary policing to escalate,
rather than ameliorate, the risk of violence.105
Although no SWAT officers were killed in any of the
deployments that the ACLU examined, deaths to officers
have indeed resulted from the use of paramilitary policing
tactics. Take the case of Henry McGee, who was asleep
with his pregnant girlfriend when the police forced their
way into his home at dawn to look for a marijuana grow

Photo: Keep Columbia Free via FIO/Sunshine request
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng6mfpZ2kR4

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 39

operation. Believing his home was being burglarized,
McGee drew a firearm and shot and killed an officer. He
was initially charged with capital murder, but the grand
jury refused to indict him. Investigators found a few
marijuana plants in the home.106 Thus, although some
police officers often argue that excessively militarized
weapons and tactics are needed to prevent violence, these
wartime tools and tactics often have the opposite effect of
escalating the risk of violence.

Use of Violent Tactics With Children Present
During the course of this investigation, we noted another
troubling trend: the deployment of SWAT when children
were present or without sufficient intelligence to know
whether children would be present. As documented
above, a SWAT deployment can involve significant levels
of violence, including breaking down doors, shattering
windows, and the detonation of explosive devices. In
addition, SWAT officers also typically deploy wearing
“BDUs” (battle dress uniforms), carry large semi-automatic
rifles, which they sometimes point at people during
deployment, and often use force, throwing people onto the
floor and handcuffing them. Experiencing violent events
can have serious and long-term impacts, particularly on
children.107
Determining the number of SWAT deployments in which
children were present was challenging because many
reports did not indicate whether children were present.
While some agencies specifically documented the presence
and number of children through use of a check box or
other data collection mechanism, others mentioned the
presence of children only in passing, in the narrative
portion of the report. In reviewing the documents, we
noted when the presence (and, where possible, the number)
of children was documented. We also drew inferences
about incidents in which children were almost certainly
not present (for example, reports involving hostage-taking
related to domestic violence were almost always careful
to note the presence of children, such that we inferred
the absence of children when a report of a domestic
hostage-taking did not mention them). In the rest of the
cases, we made what inferences we could to determine

40 American Civil Liberties Union

when children were probably not present and counted the
remaining incidents as unknown. Using this methodology,
we determined that of the 818 deployments studied, 14
percent involved the presence of children and 13 percent
did not. Thirty-eight percent probably did not involve the
presence of children and 35 percent were unknown. This
evaluation is necessarily unscientific because the reports
provided simply did not provide enough information
to draw a conclusion about the presence of children. In
addition, SWAT teams should be more deliberate and
precise in documenting the presence of children in order to
avoid subjecting children to SWAT deployments whenever
possible.

RECOMMENDATIONS
T

he militarization of policing is one example of
how contemporary policing in America is failing
to deliver on its primary objective of protecting and
serving communities. The culture of policing in America
needs to evolve beyond the failed War on Drugs, and the
police should stop perceiving the people who live in the
communities they patrol—including those the police
suspect of criminal activity—as enemies.
This type of reform must be achieved systemically and
include a transformation in police culture; the problems of
overly aggressive policing cannot be solved by disciplining
a few officers or dismissing the problem as a few isolated
incidents. These recommendations are aimed at ensuring
that law enforcement responses minimize harm to civilians
and property and maximize as oppose to jeopardize the
safety of everyone involved.
The federal government should take the lead by reining
in programs that incentivize local police to engage in
excessively militarized tactics, especially in drug cases. The
federal government holds the purse strings, and restricting
the flow of federal funds and military-grade equipment
into states and localities, and/or conditioning funds on
the appropriate use and training with regards to such
equipment, would significantly reduce the overuse of
hyper-aggressive tactics and military-grade tools in local
communities.
Additionally, state legislatures and municipalities should
impose meaningful restraints on the use of SWAT. SWAT
deployments should be limited to the kinds of scenarios for
which these aggressive measures were originally intended
– barricade, hostage, and active shooter situations. Rather
than allowing for a SWAT deployment in any case that
is deemed (for whatever reason the officers determine)
to be “high risk,” the better practice would be for law
enforcement agencies to have in place clear standards
limiting SWAT deployments to scenarios that are truly
“high risk.”

SWAT teams should never be deployed based solely on
probable cause to believe drugs are present, even if they
have a warrant to search a home. In addition, SWAT teams
should not equate the suspected presence of drugs with a
threat of violence. SWAT deployment for warrant service
is appropriate only if the police can demonstrate, before
deployment, that ordinary law enforcement officers cannot
safely execute a warrant without facing an imminent threat
of serious bodily harm. In making these determinations it
is important to take into consideration the fact that use of
a SWAT team can escalate rather than ameliorate potential
violence; law enforcement should take appropriate
precautions to avoid the use of SWAT whenever possible.
In addition, all SWAT deployments, regardless of the
underlying purpose, should be proportional—not all
situations call for a SWAT deployment consisting of 20
heavily armed officers in an APC, and partial deployments
should be encouraged when appropriate.
Local police departments should develop their own internal
policies calling for restraint and should avoid all training
programs that encourage a “warrior” mindset.
Finally, the public has a right to know how the police are
spending its tax dollars. The militarization of American
policing has occurred with almost no oversight, and greater
documentation, transparency, and accountability are
urgently needed.
A requirement that SWAT officers wear body cameras would
create a public record of SWAT deployments and serve as
a check against unnecessarily aggressive tactics. The ACLU
generally takes a dim view of the proliferation of surveillance
cameras in American life, but body cameras are different
because of their potential to serve as a check on police
overreach. Any policy requiring SWAT officers to wear body
cameras should have in place rigorous safeguards regarding
data retention, use, access, and disclosure.108
To further advance these principles, the ACLU makes the
following specific recommendations.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 41

To State Governments
1.	 States should enact laws encouraging the restrained
and appropriate use of SWAT teams and similar
tactical teams. Tactical deployments should be limited
to scenarios in which there is a likelihood that the
situation for which the SWAT team is being deployed
presents an imminent threat to the lives of civilians
and/or police personnel. When SWAT is deployed
for warrant service, the basis for believing such a
likelihood exists should have to be established explicitly
and approved by a supervisor or other high-ranking
official before the deployment.
2.	 States should remedy the problem created by the
Supreme Court’s decision in Hudson v. Michigan by
enacting laws requiring that evidence obtained in
violation of the traditional rule that requires that the
police knock and announce their presence should be
excluded from any subsequent legal proceedings.
3.	 States should enact laws requiring transparency and
oversight of state and local law enforcement use of
SWAT teams.
■■

■■

States should require local law enforcement
agencies that maintain a SWAT team to use a
standardized form to record specific data related to
SWAT deployments. These forms should be used to
generate quarterly reports.
States should require every state or local law
enforcement agency that maintains a SWAT team
to submit a quarterly report to the legislature that
contains the number of times the SWAT team was
activated or deployed, as well as the following for
each activation/deployment: the address of the
location of activation/deployment; the reason for
each activation/deployment; the specific factors
establishing compliance with the applicable
deployment standard; whether forcible entry or
a breach was conducted and, if so, the equipment
used in forcing the entry or conducting the breach
and for what purpose; whether a distraction device
was used and, if so, what type and for what purpose;
whether an APC was used and, if so, for what
purpose; the race, sex, and age of each individual

42 American Civil Liberties Union

encountered during the deployment, whether as a
suspect or bystander; whether any civilians, officers,
or domestic animals sustained any injury or death;
and a list of any controlled substances, weapons,
contraband, or evidence of crime found on the
premises or any individuals.
■■

States should ensure that there is an agency
responsible for overseeing and monitoring SWAT
activity, and for implementing necessary reforms,
including developing a process for addressing
civilian complaints regarding SWAT tactics.

To City and County Governments and Law
Enforcement Agencies
4.	 As an immediate step, law enforcement agencies should
adopt internal deployment standards as a matter of
local policy. Tactical deployments should be limited
to scenarios in which there is a likelihood that the
situation for which the SWAT team is being deployed
presents an imminent threat to the lives of civilians
and/or police personnel. When SWAT is deployed
for warrant service, the basis for believing such a
likelihood exists should have to be established explicitly
and approved by a supervisor or other high-ranking
official before the deployment.
5.	 Law enforcement agencies should adopt local policies
requiring the implementation of the following best
practices in the use of SWAT teams:
■■

Each deployment should be pre-approved by a
supervisor or other high-ranking official.

■■

Each deployment should be preceded by a written
planning process that documents the specific need
for the deployment, describes how the operation
is to be conducted, and states whether children,
pregnant women, and/or elderly people are likely to
be present (except in emergency scenarios in which
engaging in such a process would endanger the lives
or well-being of civilians or police personnel).

■■

All SWAT deployments should include a trained
crisis negotiator.

■■

■■

■■

SWAT officers should wear “on-officer recording
systems” (so-called “body cameras”) during
deployments, and police departments should have
in place rigorous safeguards regarding the retention,
use, access, and disclosure of data captured by such
systems.
All deployments should be proportional to the
need; a full deployment consisting of numerous
heavily armed officers in an APC is often excessive.
Many scenarios do not necessitate the use of
a SWAT team at all, and partial deployments
involving the minimal amount of military
equipment necessary should be encouraged.

unusual circumstances or important data
elements not captured in the list above.
■■

6.	 Local and county governments should ensure that
there is an agency responsible for ensuring that its
police are not excessively militarized, which could
include civilian review boards. Such responsibilities
should include the following:
■■

Approving/disapproving all (a) requests for the
receipt of weapons and vehicles under the 1033
Program; (b) requests for grant funding from the
federal government that will be used to purchase
military-style weapons and vehicles; and (c)
proposals to purchase military-style weapons and
vehicles from vendors

■■

Developing a process for addressing civilian
complaints regarding SWAT tactics, including a
system for submitting complaints, conducting
hearings, and providing for individual remedies

■■

Making appropriate recommendations for agencywide reforms

■■

Considering, on an annual basis, whether continued
maintenance of a SWAT team is appropriate and,
if not, to recommending the dissolution of the
agency’s SWAT team.

For each SWAT deployment, a post-deployment
record should be made that documents the
following, in a manner that allows for the data to be
easily compiled and analyzed:
The purpose of the deployment
The specific reason for believing that the
situation for which the SWAT team was being
deployed presented an imminent threat to
the lives or safety of civilians and/or police
personnel.
Whether forcible entry or a breach was
conducted and, if so, the equipment used and
for what purpose
Whether a distraction device was used and, if so,
what type and for what purpose
Whether an APC was used and, if so, for what
purpose
The race, sex, and age of each individual
encountered during the deployment, whether as
a suspect or bystander
Whether any civilians, officers, or domestic
animals sustained any injury or death
A list of any controlled substances, weapons,
contraband, or evidence of crime that is found
on the premises or any individuals
A brief narrative statement describing any

Law enforcement agencies should provide training
programs for all SWAT teams that do not promote
an overly aggressive or “warrior” mentality.

To Congress
7.	 Congress should condition state and local law
enforcement agencies’ receipt of federal funds on
an agreement not to use the funds to purchase
automatic or semi-automatic rifles or APCs. This
condition should be applied to grants made through
the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland
Security Grant Program, the Department of Justice’s
Byrne JAG grant program, and all other funding
streams through which money is transferred from
the federal government to state and law enforcement
agencies.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 43

8.	 With respect to the 1033 Program, 10 U.S.C. 2576a(a)
(1), Congress should prohibit the transfer of
automatic and semi-automatic weapons and APCs;
remove the words “counter-drug” each time they
appear in the statute; and require the Secretary of
Defense to submit to Congress an annual written
certification that each agency that participates in
the 1033 Program has provided documentation
accounting for all equipment transferred to the agency
and prohibiting additional transfers to any agency for
which the Secretary cannot provide such certification.

To the Administration
9.	 The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics
(BJS) should work with representatives of local law
enforcement to develop a data collection tool to assess
the militarization of policing, by monitoring the use
of SWAT teams as well as the receipt and purchase
of military weapons and tactics. Once the tool is
developed, BJS should collect, compile, and analyze
the available data on the use of military weapons and
tactics, including SWAT deployments by state and
local law enforcement agencies annually.
10.	The Department of Defense should promulgate
regulations pursuant to 10 U.S.C. 2576a(a)(1)
clarifying that automatic and semi-automatic
weapons and APCs are not suitable for use by state
and local law enforcement agencies for the purpose of
equipment transfers under the 1033 Program.
11.	The Department of Defense should make the
following changes to the 1033 Program, either by
promulgating regulations or through the MOA that it
enters into with local law enforcement agencies:
■■

Require specific, individualized justification to
receive 1033 equipment

■■

Impose reasonable limitations on the number
of weapons and vehicles local law enforcement
agencies should be entitled to receive under the
program

44 American Civil Liberties Union

■■

End the requirement that 1033 equipment be used
within one year

■■

Require that new applications for equipment
under the 1033 Program take into account a law
enforcement agency’s existing inventory

■■

Require that agencies receiving 1033 equipment
through interagency transfer comply with the same
application and reporting requirements as agencies
that receive 1033 equipment directly from DLA

■■

Develop a clear compliance review process that
addresses both proper inventory management and
documentation of each use of 1033 equipment.

12.	The Department of Homeland Security should impose
meaningful conditions on the receipt of funds to local
law enforcement agencies. In order to receive funds,
local law enforcement agencies should have to agree to
the following:
■■

Not to use the funds to purchase automatic or
semi-automatic rifles or APCs

■■

To certify to DHS that agencies receiving funds
have not in fact used equipment purchased with
DHS money except in actual high-risk scenarios

■■

To require agencies receiving DHS funds to make
a record of each equipment purchase made using
DHS funds, which should be made available to the
public.

13.	The Department of Justice should improve oversight
of the Byrne JAG program by providing guidance to
grantees on the importance of exercising restraint
when using paramilitary weapons and tactics and
tracking the race, ethnicity, sex, and age of all people
impacted by the use of paramilitary weapons and
tactics purchased using Byrne JAG funds.

CONCLUSION
A

s public support for the War on Drugs reaches its
lowest ever, it is important that we start to not only
roll back battle plans but encourage law enforcement
agencies to stop overusing the wartime tools and tactics
that have fought these battles.
American policing has become excessively militarized
through the use of weapons and tactics designed for the
battlefield. Militarization unfairly impacts people of color
and undermines individual liberties, and it has been
allowed to happen in the absence of any meaningful public
discussion.

It is generally accepted that public perception of the
legitimacy of law enforcement turns on how the police
treat people when exercising their regulatory authority, and
people are more likely to obey the law when they perceive
law enforcement authorities as legitimate.109 There is some
evidence that people perceive police militarization as
threatening, which suggests that police militarization itself
could undermine public safety.110 More research should be
done on this topic.

excessive reliance on overly aggressive approaches to
policing and punishing drug crimes, but there is a danger
that these federally-funded efforts could be undermined
by the federal government’s role in subsidizing the use of
paramilitary weapons and tactics in localities, particularly
in many communities of color. Without rethinking its
role in militarizing local police departments, the federal
government may end up sabotaging the very same reforms
it is championing.
The use of paramilitary weapons and tactics to conduct
ordinary law enforcement—especially to wage the failed
War on Drugs and most aggressively in communities of
color—has no place in contemporary society. It is not too
late to change course—through greater transparency, more
oversight, policies that encourage restraint, and limitations
on federal incentives, we can foster a policing culture that
honors its mission to protect and serve, not to wage war.

There is also a “large and persistent racial gap” in
confidence in policing.111 Because police militarization
tends to be concentrated in communities of color,
it threatens to undermine public confidence more
dramatically in those communities, where such confidence
in law enforcement is already strained. More research
should be done in this area as well.
As previously mentioned, Attorney General Eric H. Holder,
Jr., has announced broad reforms, including guidelines
to curtail the use of mandatory minimum sentencing
laws by federal prosecutors in certain drug cases and a
$4.75 million project funded by the federal government
and designed to ease mistrust between local police
departments and minority communities by collecting
and studying data on searches, arrests, and case outcomes
in order to help assess the impact of possible bias. These
developments have real potential to reduce America’s

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 45

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T

his report has been a project of the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU). The primary author is Kara
Dansky, Senior Counsel at the ACLU’s Center for Justice.
Will Bunting, the ACLU’s Fiscal Policy Analyst, conducted
the statistical analysis and contributed to the drafting of
the report. Sarah Solon, ACLU Communications Strategist,
also contributed to the drafting of the report. Additional
contributors included Allie Bohm, ACLU Advocacy and
Policy Specialist; Emma Andersson, Staff Attorney at
the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project; and Jesselyn
McCurdy, Senior Lobbyist at the ACLU’s Washington
Legislative Office. A special thank you goes to Iman
Boukadoum, who provided project management assistance.
The authors would also like to thank ACLU Deputy Legal
Director Vanita Gupta and Criminal Law Reform Project
Director Ezekiel Edwards, who reviewed and edited the
report; ACLU Media Strategist Alexandra Ringe, who
provided media expertise; ACLU paralegal Alex Stamm,
who helped with the document review and statistical
analysis and ACLU intern Jason Clayton who helped with
research and editing. ACLU interns Ian Wahrenbrock,
Makeba Rutahindurwa, and Aron Milberg conducted hours
of document review.
This report would not have been possible without the
participation and contributions of the ACLU affiliates in
Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, the District
of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska,
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina,
Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont,
Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The ACLU would like to thank Tom Nolan, Associate
Professor and Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice
at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Plattsburgh
and a 27-year veteran of the Boston Police Department,
for serving as a consultant and for his expertise on policing
and criminal justice.

46 American Civil Liberties Union

APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
Public Records Request letter sent from the ACLU to law enforcement agencies

NAME
TITLE
AGENCY
OFFICE
ADDRESS 1
ADDRESS 2
DATE

Re:
Public Records Request / SWAT Teams and Cutting-Edge Weapons and
Technology
To Whom It May Concern:
This letter is a request under the
by the American Civil Liberties Union of
. This request seeks records regarding your Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams,
as well as your acquisition and use of cutting-edge technology.
Records Requested
A. Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Teams
Please provide copies of the following created, updated, or edited, records from
January 1, 2011, to the present:
1. All incident reports or other records documenting each time a SWAT team was
deployed. All reports showing breakdowns of SWAT team deployments by
crime, requesting agency, or purpose for the raid (i.e. to serve a warrant, arrest
someone, diffuse a hostage crisis, etc.) and all post-deployment documentation,
including:
a. All documents relating to the number of no-knock warrants applied for,
and the number of no-knock warrants granted, denied, or modified, in
conjunction with a SWAT team deployment;
b. All documents relating to uses of force by all SWAT teams and all
incident reports documenting all injuries incurred by anyone at the scene
of a SWAT team operation.
2. All procedures, regulations, or guidelines relating to SWAT teams, including the
protocols and legal standards that must be met before SWAT team deployment.
3. All documents relating to the structure or mission of SWAT teams, including
chain of command and the selection of team personnel, as well as the ranks,
salaries, and lengths of service of team personnel.

1

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  47

4. All documents or training materials used to instruct SWAT teams in any aspect
of their operation, including information about any training, including but not
limited to, with military units and other outside agencies and private contractors,
when and where training sessions took place, and who conducted them.
5. All records relating to the procurement, maintenance or deployment of SWAT
team weapons and other equipment, including guns, vehicles, personal protective
equipment and uniforms, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment, less than
lethal devices, apparatuses and systems for augmented detainee restraint (also
known as shock-cuffs), forced entry tools, facial recognition technology,
Cellebrite or other mobile forensics units, biometric technology, cell phone
sniffers, and deep packet sniffers, including how it is stored, and who has access
to it.
6. All written mutual aid agreements or memoranda of understanding with federal,
state and local agencies, including any branch of the military and private entities
concerning SWAT teams.
7. All records relating to funding sources and grants your SWAT team applied for,
and whether or not the application was successful; and
8. All internal or external audits of SWAT team performance or records of cost
effectiveness.
B. Cutting Edge Weapons and Technology
Please provide copies of the following created, updated, or edited, records from
January 1, 2011, to the present:
1. The number of Mobile Forensic Data Extraction devices, GPS tracking devices,
biometric technology, cell phone sniffers, deep packet sniffers, unmanned aerial
vehicles (sometimes called “drones”), apparatuses and systems for augmented
detainee restraint (also known as shock-cuffs), Cellebrite or other mobile
forensics units, and devices capable of facial or behavioral recognition currently
owned, leased, or borrowed or proposed for purchase or acquisition by your
agency and the unit or division of your agency given primary use of each device.
2. All practices, procedures, and trainings governing use of all such devices.
3. All policies relating to the maintenance and retention of information obtained
through such devices, including but not limited to, policies detailing how records
of such information are kept, databases in which they are placed, limitations on
who may access the records and for what purposes, circumstances under which
they are deleted, and circumstances under which they may be shared with other
government agencies or nongovernmental entities.

2

48 Appendix A

4. The legal standard or level of suspicion (e.g. probable cause, reasonable
suspicion, relevance) the agency requires or proffers prior to using such devices.
5. All applications submitted by your Department for equipment through the
Department of Defense’s “1033” program1 (either directly to the Department of
Defense or to your state’s administering agency), including whether the
application was granted, denied, or granted in part (and if so, how).
6. All “1033” program inventories created and maintained pursuant to the May 22,
2012, moratorium (see
https://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/rtd03/leso/index.shtml).
7. All applications submitted by your Department for funding through the
Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Grant Program or Urban
Area Security Initiative program (including applications submitted to your state’s
administering agency), including whether the application was granted, denied, or
granted in part (and if so, how).
Because this request is on a matter of public concern and because it is made on behalf of
a non-profit organization, we request a fee waiver. If, however, such a waiver is denied,
we will reimburse you for the reasonable cost of copying. Please inform us in advance if
the cost will be greater than
. Please send us documents in electronic form if at
all possible.
According to
, a custodian of public records shall comply with a request
within
days after receipt. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please
furnish all applicable records to
. If you have questions, please contact
me at (phone number/email address).
Sincerely,

1

Section 1033 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997, codified at 10 U.S.C. §
2576a, permits the Secretary of Defense to transfer excess Department of Defense supplies and equipment
to state and local law enforcement agencies.
has entered into an agreement with the Defense Logistics
Agency, which governs the transfer of military property to
for use in civilian policing.

3

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  49

Appendix B
Agreement Between the Defense Logistics Agency and the State of _____

50 Appendix B

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  51

52 Appendix B

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  53

54 Appendix B

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  55

56 Appendix B

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  57

58 Appendix B

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  59

60 Appendix B

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  61

Appendix C
Examples of SWAT incident reports and weapons transfers received in connection with the ACLU’s
investigation
Examples include:
■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

■■

A Concord, North Carolina, threat matrix, showing that a person’s religious views is a factor in
determining whether SWAT should be deployed in that city
A SWAT incident report from El Paso, Texas, describing a SWAT raid in which the squad used a Bearcat
APC to break through the door of a man known to suffer from mental illness, after already forcing entry
through multiple other sites and shattering a sliding glass door, then beat and tased the obviouslyconfused man
Documentation of receipt by the Keene, New Hampshire, Police Department of the purchase of a Lenco
Bearcat APC, using homeland security funds
A SWAT incident report from New Haven, Connecticut, describing a nighttime SWAT raid in which the
squad arrived at the home in a Bearcat APC, broke down the front door with a battering ram, deployed a
distraction device inside the home, and detained two people inside a home, but did not report finding any
weapons or evidence
Documentation of receipt by the North Little Rock, Arkansas, Police Department of two Marcbots (robots
capable of being armed) and a Mamba tactical vehicle
A training document from the National Tactical Officer’s Association showing that officers are being
trained to have a soldier mentality

62 Appendix C

- 031396 -

469

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  63

64 Appendix C

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  65

Police Department

c.�ty of Keene

400 Marlboro Street New Hampshire 0343 1

PRESS RELEASE
Keene Police Department Special Mission Rescue Vehicle Acquisition
November 20th, 2012
On Friday, November 16th, 2012, members of the Keene Police Department and the City's Fleet
Services took possession of the Department's Special Mission Rescue Vehicle from Lenco Industries.
Lenco provided training on the vehicle and its equipment prior to release of the vehicle.
On that date the vehicle was dropped off with a private contractor to have a police radio installed.
This is the only additional piece of equipment needed that the vehicle did not come built and equipped
with.
Upon completion of the radio installation on Tuesday, November 20th, 2012, the vehicle was driven to
the Keene Police Department and placed into service.
Training on the vehicle and its on-board equipment and capabilities will be ongoing. This vehicle was
purchased through Department of Homeland Security and the New Hampshire Department of Safety Grants management unit grant funding upon approval of the City Council.
Information concerning any incident may be provided anonymously via email on our website
at:
.ci .keene .nh.

045225

66 Appendix C

FY 2010 Homeland Security Grant Application

NH Department of Safety- Grants Management Unit

Ple�se address all points in sequence.
p reparedness, prevention,
Responders (see

The NH State Strategy is approved to support the

protection

and

recovery needs

of NH's

PRIMARY First

exe

Responses should include all jurisdictions participating in the appLcations.
standard Times New Roman font, 12 pt. with 1" margins.

).
Responses to each

Section should be labeled; however do not exceed page limits for each Section.

Please use the

SECTION 1: STRATEGY

(Maximum of3 pages- use the Jetter for information pertaining to each Key item)
Describe your problem and solution in three pages or less.

This narrative should include the

following:

A. The acquisition of a Specialized Mission CBRNE/WMD Rescue VehicJe will help to guard
against a terrorist or CBRNE/W1v1D incident as the vehicle is capable of deflecting blast

fragmentation behind a wall of shielding, thereby protecting support and/or rescue personnel. This
�bility allows specialized personnel to respond to or enter into an area and effectively diffuse or
render harmless any terrorist or CBRNE/WMD situation thus limiting a potential mass casualty
incident.
The vehicle will be equipped with the latest in Radiation Detection and Explosive Gas Detection
equipment to further enhance the safety and capabilities of the mission personnel. The vehicle will be

equipped with a radio system that will meet APCO (Association of Public Safety Communications

Officials) Project 25 specifications, assuring the interoperability between law enforcement and fl.re
agencies throughout the State of New Hampshire. The system capable of integrating with future
system designs.
B.

The terrorism threat is far reaching and often unforeseen. Terrorist's goals, regardless of

affiliation, usually encompass the creation of fear among the public, convincing the public that their
Government is powerless to stop the terrorists, and get immediate publicity for their cause. Keene
upwards of 70,000 patrons to the City, the Clarence DeMar Marathon which has been held for the

currently hosts several large public functions to include: an annual Pumpkin Festival, which draws
last 33 years and is an official qualifying race for the US Olympic Time trials as well as an official
qualifying race for the Boston Marathon. This race brings in runners and spectators from all over the

downtown area of the City of Keene and brings 6000 students to its environs daily. There are other

United States. Keene State College, part of the university system of New Hampshire, is located in the
city events that draw large crowds and all are susceptible to terrorist attacks. It is known that the use
of Radiological Dispersion Devices by terrorists is much more likely than the use of a nuclear device.
Cheshire County currently does not have a transport vehicle capable of protecting personnel in a
hour away and tlus does not include the time it takes to mobilize and prepare the personnel necessary
critical incident or measure such radiation. The closest Specialized Mission Vehicle is well over 1

to drive it to Cheshire County.
tru cking from Interstate

91 in Vermont to the Concord, Manchester, Nashua and the seacoast. Many

Highways passing through Keene, Routes 9 and 101, prO\·ide the major east/west corridor for

of these trucks carry hazardous materiah and arc subject to terrorism, natural disasters and motor

vehicle accident�.

045240

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  67

68 Appendix C

036787

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  69

<- 030613 ->

70 Appendix C

<- 030614 ->

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  71

<- 030622 ->

72 Appendix C

<- 030627 ->

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  73

<- 030628 ->

A
74 Appendix C

- 016049 -

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  75

- 016050 -

76 Appendix C

- 016051 -

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  77

- 016052 -

78 Appendix C

Appendix D
Fact Sheet: Responses on Excess Property Program

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  79

80 Appendix D

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  81

82 Appendix D

Appendix E
DLA Performance Review Checklist

Date: Click here to enter a date.
MEMORANDUM FOR THE STATE OF TENNESSEE
1033 PROGRAM STATE COORDINATOR
SUBJECT: Program Compliance Review (PCR) Checklist
I. LESO will Verify:
*1. Is the State Coordinator appointed, in writing, by the current
Governor of the State?
1a. Appointment letter effective date:
7/9/12
*2. Is the State Coordinator appointment letter on-file with the Law
Enforcement Support Office (LESO)?
*3. Has the current State Coordinator signed the current Defense
Logistics Agency (DLA) Memorandum of Agreement (MOA)?
3a. MOA date:
12/18/13
4. If applicable, are State Points of Contact (SPOCs) appointed, in
writing, by the current Governor appointed State Coordinator?
4a. Is SPOC appointment letter (s) on-file with the LESO?
5. Has the State Coordinator delegated his/her authority to anyone other
than a SPOC?
5a. Is delegation of authority letter (s) on-file with the LESO?
Comments:
Click here to enter text.

Choose an
item.
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II. Website Knowledge:
1. Appointed personnel performing the duties with the State 1033
Program, are proficient and knowledgeable when utilizing the following
DLA websites:
1a. AMPS Website: https://amps.dla.mil
1b. RTD Website: https://business.dla.mil/landing/index.jsp
1c. DLA Disposition Services Website:
https://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/index.shtml
1d. LESO Website:
https://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/rtd03/leso/
Comments:

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III. Eligibility Requirements:

Comments:

1. Are Applications for Participation submitted by Law Enforcement
Agencies (LEA) with arrest and apprehension authority signed by the
Chief Executive Official (CEO), then forwarded to the State
Coordinator?
2. Does the State Coordinator and/or SPOC (s) verify that the LEA is
authorized to participate in the 1033 Program?
3. Are State Coordinator-approved Applications for Participation
forwarded to the LESO for approval?
Click here to enter text.

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War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  83

IV. Records Management:
*1. Is there a current State Plan of Operation on file for the State?
1a. State Plan of Operation effective date:

Comments:

*2. Does the State Coordinator keep current copy of the State Plan of
Operation, signed by the LEA CEO in LEA file?
3. Does each LEA keep current copy of the State Plan of Operation,
signed by their CEO on file?
4. Does the State Plan of Operation address the following areas:
5a. Purpose
5b. Authority
5c. Terms and Conditions:
-LEA Eligibility Criteria
-How to enroll in the 1033 Program
-LEA Screener Criteria
-Identification/Acquisition of Property
-Transportation of Property
-Storage of Property
-Distribution of Property
-Security of Property
-Accountability of Property
-Establish an Inactive File
-Utilization of Property
-State internal compliance reviews
-Transfer of property
-Disposal of property
-Turn-in of property
5d. DEMIL Property requirements
5e. Training opportunities
5f. State responsibilities in the 1033 Program
5g. LEA responsibilities in the 1033 Program
5h. Suspension and/or Termination Criteria
5i. Signature requirements (ie. LEA CEO/State
Coordinator/SPOC)
*5. Transfers of high visibility property are approved by the DLA
LESO.
Click here to enter text.

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Click here to
enter a date.
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V. Records Retention:
1. Are the following documents on-file with the State Coordinators Office and/or LEA?
1a. DLA Form 103s (aka Manual Requisitions)
Choose an item.
1b. DD Form 1348-1A (for all 1033 Program property
Choose an item.
currently on the LEA inventory)
1c. DD Form 1348-1A (for all turn-ins)
Choose an item.
1d. DD Form 1348-1A (for all transfers)
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1e. Transfer documentation
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84 Appendix E

Comments:

1f. Turn-in documentation
1g. Inventory adjustment documentation for authorized
property
1h. ATFE Form 10
1i. ATFE Form 5
1j. FAA Certificate of Aircraft Registration (Form 8050-1)
1k. Exception to policy memorandums (if applicable)
1l. Other documentation as applicable [justification forms,
Memorandum for Record (s), etc]
Click here to enter text.

VI. Property and Inventory Control:
1. Is 1033 Program property properly stored in a controlled storage area
with limited access?
2. Have all reports of missing, lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed 1033
Program property been reported to the appropriate State Coordinators
Office?
3. Have all reports of missing, lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed 1033
Program property been reported to the appropriate Local/State/Federal
Officials and the LESO? Note: If the property is DEMIL Coded B, C,
D, E, F, G or Q3 you have (24) Hours for notification. If your property
is DEMIL Code A, or Q (with an Integrity Code of 6) you have within
(7) days to report.
4. In determining State Coordinator’s recommendation for approval of
LEA request, is consideration given to the needs and resources of its
LEAs (i.e. size of LEA, mission requirement and like property on
hand)? NOTE: LESO personnel must conduct a random search of
records.
5. Are annual reconciliations of property receipts being conducted?
6. Has the State submitted the previous Fiscal Year’s certified
inventory to the LESO?
6a. Date submitted:
Click here to enter
a date.
*7. Are photographs of Front, Side and Data Plates provided to the
LESO for Aircraft, Watercraft and Tactical Vehicles?
*8. Are photographs of Weapons Data Plates provided to the LESO?
Comments:
No issues to report.

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Choose an item.

VII. Transitional Distribution Point (TDP):
*1. Is there an authorization document from DLA, on hand, authorizing
your State to operate as a TDP?
2. Are TDP property requests earmarked for a specific LEA identifying
them as the end user?
3. Is 1033 property identified and stored separate from other categories
of property such as 1122 and State Agencies for Surplus Property
(SASP)?
4. Does the State Coordinator and/or SPOC understand that transfers

Choose an item.
Choose an item.
Choose an item.
Choose an item.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  85

Comments:

of 1033 Program property from the TDP to LEAs within his/her State
still need to be processed via the LESO prior to physical movement of
property?
Click here to enter text.

VIII. Compliance and Utilization Reviews:
*1. Is there a State-level 1033 Program Compliance Review process
in-place, that ensures that 5% of State LEAs are inspected within the 2year reporting period since the last PCR?

Choose an item.

(Current MOA-2009 states that “The State shall: Conduct an OER of
LEAs participating in the program in order to ensure accountability,
responsibility, and program compliance.” Therefore, until new MOA is
signed and effective, the “PASS/FAIL” criteria is based on proof that
the State Coordinator/SPOC has an internal review process in place that
ensures accountability, responsibility and program compliance of LEAs
within their State.)

Comments:

2. Does the State Coordinator follow through with LEAs to rectify
Choose an item.
cases on non-compliance found on State Level PCRs?
3. Does the State Coordinator provide documentation to the DLA
Choose an item.
LESO in cases of non-compliant LEAs?
4. What steps are taken to resolve cases of non-compliance to the terms and conditions of
the 1033 Program?
Click here to enter text.
Click here to enter text.

IX. Non-Utilized 1033 Program Property:

Comments:

1. Are current procedures in place for LEAs to identify and report
Choose an
serviceable property when no longer needed?
item.
2. What steps does the State Coordinator take to ensure LEAs do not requisition
unnecessary or excessive amounts of property?
Click here to enter text.
3. What steps does the State Coordinator take to ensure 1033 Program property is not
sold?
Click here to enter text.
4. Has there been an incident, since the last conducted PCR, where an
Choose an
LEA has sold property received under the 1033 Program or received
item.
1033 Program property for the sole purpose of selling it?
4a. If yes, provide detail and supporting documentation of the outcome (who,
what, when, where, how much).
N/A
Click here to enter text.

X. Compliance to LESO MOA:
1. Is all property transferred consistent with requirements of the DLA
MOA?

86 Appendix E

Choose an
item.

Comments:

2. Is the State Coordinator’s Office aware that they must ensure that the
LEA maintains adequate insurance to cover damages or injuries to
persons or property relating to the use of the property. (Self-insurance by
the State/LEA is acceptable)
3. Is the State Coordinators Office aware that property available under
the MOA is for the current use of authorized program participants; it will
not be requested nor issued for speculative use?
4. Is the State Coordinators Office aware that property will not be
obtained for the purpose of sale, lease, loan rent, exchange, barter, to
secure a loan, or to otherwise supplement normal Law Enforcement
Agency (LEA) or State/Local governmental entity budgets?
5. Is the State Coordinator Office aware that any transportation, repair,
maintenance, insurance, disposal or other expenses associated with the
excess Department of Defense (DOD) personal property is the sole
responsibility of the State/LEA?
6. Is the State Coordinators Office aware that all property obtained under
the MOA must be placed into use within one (1) year of receipt and
utilized for a minimum of one (1) year, unless the condition of the
property renders it unusable?
7. Is the State Coordinators Office aware approval of any variation to the
above standard for property no longer needed by an LEA must be
approved by the LESO through the State Coordinators Office?
8. Is the State Coordinator’s Office aware that the DOD has authorized
the transfer and use of excess DoD property to the State/LEA and as such
reserves the right to recall any and all property issued at the state or LEA
expense?
9. Is the State Coordinators Office aware that excess DEMIL A & Q
(with Integrity Code of 6) property will transfer title to the State/LEA
after receipt, placement into use and utilization for a minimum of one (1)
year?
10. Is the State Coordinators Office aware that to the extent permitted by
law, the State Coordinator/LEA shall indemnify and hold the U.S.
Government harmless from any and all actions, claims, debts, demands,
judgments, liabilities, cost, and attorney's fees arising out of, claimed on
account of, or in any manner predicated upon loss of or damage to
property and injuries, illness or disabilities to or death of any and all
persons whatsoever, including members of the general public, or to the
property of any legal or political entity including states, local and
interstate bodies, in any manner caused by or contributed to by the
State/LEA, its agents, servants, employees, or any person subject to its
control while in, upon or about the sale site and/or the site on which the
property is located, or while the property is in the possession of, used by
or subject to the control of the State/LEA, its agents, servants, or
employees after the property has been removed from U.S. Government
control. The U.S. Government assumes no liability for damages or
injuries to any person(s) or property arising from the use of the property.
Click here to enter text.

Choose an
item.
Choose an
item.
Choose an
item.
Choose an
item.
Choose an
item.
Choose an
item.
Choose an
item.
Choose an
item.
Choose an
item.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  87

XI. Conclusion:

XII. Areas of concern:

XIII. Areas of Recommendation:

Click here to enter text.
XIV. Areas of Praise:

XV. PCR Inventory Results:
STATE OF TENNESSEE 1033 PROGRAM PROPERTY
STATE TOTALS

*REQUIRED
SAMPLE SIZE

TOTAL REVIEWED DURING PCR
*ITEMS PHYSICALLY
INVENTORIED

*ITEMS REVIEWED VIA
APPROVED CUSTODY CARD

*ITEMS PHYSICALLY
INVENTORIED

*ITEMS REVIEWED VIA
APPROVED CUSTODY CARD

*ITEMS PHYSICALLY
INVENTORIED

*ITEMS REVIEWED VIA
APPROVED CUSTODY CARD

TACTICAL
VEHICLES

*ITEMS PHYSICALLY
INVENTORIED

*ITEMS REVIEWED VIA
APPROVED CUSTODY CARD

GENERAL
PROPERTY

*ITEMS PHYSICALLY
INVENTORIED

*ITEMS REVIEWED VIA
APPROVED CUSTODY CARD

WEAPONS
AIRCRAFT
WATERCRAFT

TOTAL
ON-HAND

% ACCURACY

TOTALS
**OVERALL STATE INVENTORY ACCURACY RATE (%):

 The DLA LESO PCR Team is required to physically inventory or obtain a copy of an acceptable
custody card for 100% of the 1033 Program Weapons, Aircraft, Watercraft and Tactical Vehicles, as
appearing on the accountable record, for each LEA that has been selected for review during the PCR. The
LEA must provide the DLA LESO PCR Team a copy of any custody card (s) used, at the time of the site
visit, and must maintain the custody card (s) on-file as part of substantiating records. An acceptable version
of a custody card must contain the following elements: 1) LEA name, 2) Name of individual responsible
for physical custody of item, 3) Item nomenclature (Name), 4) Serial number of item (if applicable), 5)
QTY of item (if more than one), 6) Printed name of individual responsible for physical custody of item 7)

88 Appendix E

Signature of individual responsible for physical custody of the item and 8) Date.
**Overall State Inventory Accuracy Rate (%) is determined by adding required Weapons (A), Aircraft (B),
Watercraft (C), Tactical Vehicles (D) and General Property (E) at LEAs selected for review during the
PCR, and dividing by the actual # of the property that was physically inventoried (X) or verified via an
approved custody card (Y) during the course of the PCR
= Overall State Inventory Accuracy Rate (%)

(X or Y)

XVI. PCR Training provided to the State:
PCR Training Date:
# of Agencies Trained

Click here to enter text.

# of Officers Trained

Click here to enter text.

# of State Coordinator/SPOC trained

Click here to enter text.

# of DLA Disposition Services
Field Representatives Trained

Click here to enter text.

Thank you for the hospitality and professionalism shown to us during our visit. As always, we at the
LESO stand ready to support and serve. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact
us at 1-800-532-9946 or via email at DRMSLESO@dla.mil.
XVII. Program Compliance Review Team:
X________________________________
Deborah Smith
X________________________________
Dan Arnold
Dates of Program Compliance Review:

Click here
to enter a
date.

to

Click here to enter a date.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing  89

Appendix F

90 Appendix F

ENDNOTES
1. 	 Police militarization has been defined as “the process whereby
civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves
around, the tenets of militarism and the military model.” Peter
Kraska, Militarization and Policing—Its Relevance to 21st Century
Police, Policing (2007) 1 (4) 1-13 (Jan. 1, 2007).
2. 	 Other manifestations of the militarization of policing, such as
routine patrols using SWAT gear, militarization of the U.S. border, and the use of military surveillance equipment and other
forms of intelligence gathering—while unquestionably of grave
concern—are beyond the scope of this report.
3. 	 Because the analysis examined SWAT deployments conducted
by a small subset of law enforcement agencies over a limited
number of years, the analysis itself does not allow us to make
more general conclusions about the use of SWAT nationally or
over time. However, as explained throughout the report, the specific findings we make regarding the SWAT deployments studied
support the existing research on the militarization of policing
generally.
4. 	 Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, “America’s New
Drug Policy Landscape: On Drug Policy, Gov’t Should Focus
More On…,” April 1, 2014, available at http://www.people-press.
org/2014/04/02/americas-new-drug-policy-landscape/4-2-14-1/
(last visited April 25, 2014).
5. 	 According to a recent Gallup poll, 47 percent of adult Americans
report that they have a gun in their house or elsewhere on their
property. Gallup Politics, “Self-Reported Gun Ownership in U.S.
Is Highest Since 1993,” Oct. 26, 2011, available at http://www.
gallup.com/poll/150353/self-reported-gun-ownership-highest-1993.aspx (last visited May 2, 2014).
6. 	 Nick Gillespie, “Police in Columbia, South Carolina and 499
Other Cities Get ‘Free’ Tanks,” Reason.com, November 18, 2013,
available at http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/18/police-in-columbia-south-carolina-and-49 (last visited March 21, 2014).
7. 	 Individual ACLU affiliates had the option to participate in the
investigation and selected the law enforcement agencies with
which to file records requests. A copy of the public records
request filed with the agencies is attached as Appendix A.
8. 	 Some agencies elected to provide SWAT incident reports for
2012 only.
9. 	 There is no way to know definitively whether responding law
enforcement agencies turned over all of the documents the
ACLU requested. In addition, although we continued to receive
documents throughout 2013 and into 2014, we did not review
any documents received after September 30, 2013. All of the
documents the ACLU received in connection with this investigation can be made available upon request.
10. 	 Kraska (2007), 1.
11. 	 See generally, American Civil Liberties Union, “The War on
Marijuana in Black and White” (June 2013), available at https://
www.aclu.org/files/assets/1114413-mj-report-rfs-rel1.pdf (last
visited April 3, 2014); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

12. 	
13. 	

14. 	
15. 	
16. 	

17. 	

18. 	

19. 	
20. 	

21. 	

22. 	

(New York: New Press 2010). Racial disparities exist at each
decision point in the criminal justice system. See The Sentencing Project, “Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice
System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers,” 2 (2008),
available at http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/
rd_reducingracialdisparity.pdf. Thirty-eight percent of prison
and jail inmates are Black, compared to their 13 percent share
of the overall population. Latinos constitute 19 percent of the
prison and jail population compared to their 15 percent share
of the population. A Black male born in 2001 has a 32 percent
chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life, a
Latino male has a 17 percent chance, and a white male has a six
percent chance. See id.
See 10 U.S.C. § 2576a.
See National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology
Center, Federal Property and Equipment Manual: Federal Sources
of Personal Property for Law Enforcement, 2 (Revised 2002),
available at http://info.publicintelligence.net/FederalPropertyManual.pdf (last visited March 17, 2014).
See supra, note 14 at 3.
One limitation, which the ACLU supports, is a prohibition on
the sale of equipment obtained through the 1033 Program.
Agreement Between the Defense Logistics Agency and the State
of ___ (MOA), 3. The MOA is standard across states and is
attached as Appendix B.
Joint Chiefs of Staff 1993: I 1, quoted in Christopher M.
Schnaubelt, “Can the Military’s Effectiveness in the Drug War Be
Measured?” Cato Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Fall 1994), available at
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1994/11/cj14n2-5.pdf (last visited April 24, 2014).
Bureau of Justice Assistance, “Grant Activity Report: Justice
Assistance Grant (JAG) Program, April 2012-March 2013,” p. 2,
available at https://www.bja.gov/Publications/JAG_LE_Grant_
Activity_03-13.pdf (last visited April 3, 2013).
Supra note 18 at 4.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights
and Civil Liberties, Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Impact Assessment: DHS Support to the National Network of Fusion Centers, 6
(March 1, 2013), available at https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/
files/publications/DHS%20Support%20to%20National%20Network_0.pdf (last visited March 17, 2014).
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FY 2013 Homeland
Security Grant Program (FY 2013 HSGP Fact Sheet), 1 (2013),
available at http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/8d0439562c89644a68954505a49cbc77/FY_2013_Homeland+Security+Grant+Program_Fact_Sheet_+Final.pdf (last visited March
17, 2014).
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Next Steps: Supporting Community-Based Efforts to Reduce Violent Crime,” U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, available at http://www.dhs.
gov/xlibrary/assets/fact_sheet_reduce_violent_crime_080310.

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 91

23. 	

24. 	

25. 	

26. 	

27. 	

28. 	

29. 	

30. 	

31. 	

pdf (last visited March 22, 2014). This problem is not theoretical; DHS provides numerous sources of support to state and
local law enforcement agencies for reasons that are entirely unrelated to terrorism prevention. Indeed, DHS operates a nationwide law enforcement network called the Homeland Security
Information Network, which was created to assist state and local
enforcement agencies conduct their ordinary work related to
investigating allegations of gun, drug, and gang offenses; the notion that DHS support to local law enforcement is purely for the
purpose of terrorism prevention is a myth. See, e.g., “Homeland
Security Information Network—Law Enforcement Mission,”
Homeland Security, available at http://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-information-network-law-enforcement-mission
(last visited April 24, 2014).
Sgt. Glenn French, “Police militarization and an argument in
favor of black helicopters,” PoliceOne, Aug. 12, 2013, available at
http://www.policeone.com/SWAT/articles/6385683-Police-militarization-An-argument-for-black-helicopters/ (last visited
March 19, 2014).
Jack E. Hoban and Bruce J. Gourlie, “The Ethical Warrior,” PoliceOne, Aug. 12, 2013, http://www.policeone.com/Officer-Safety/
articles/6383533-Police-militarization-and-the-Ethical-Warrior/
(last visited March 19, 2014).
Doug Deaton, “Police militarization and one cop’s humble
opinion,” PoliceOne, Aug. 15, 2013, http://www.policeone.
com/Officer-Safety/articles/6390637-Police-militarization-and-one-cops-humble-opinion/ (last visited March 19,
2014).
Jay Evensen, “‘Militarization’ of local police nationwide worries
Salt Lake Chief Chris Burbank,” Deseret News, July 10, 2013,
available at http://perspectivesonthenews.blogs.deseretnews.
com/2013/07/10/militarization-of-local-police-nationwide-worries-salt-lake-city-chief-chris-burbank/, (last visited March 19,
2014).
Karl Bickel, “Recruit Training: Are We Preparing Officers for a
Community Oriented Department?” E-newsletter of the COPS
Office, Vol. 6, Issue 6 (June 2013), archived version available at
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://
cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/06-2013/preparing_officers_
for_a_community_oriented_department.asp.
SWAT teams go by many names, including Search and Response
Team (SRT), Emergency Response Team (ERT), and Special
Emergency Response Team (SERT). There is no real difference
between these police units—they all use weapons that are not
available to regular patrol officers and are trained to use tactics
designed for extremely high-risk and emergency scenarios.
For purposes of consistency and clarity, we will use the term
“SWAT” throughout this report.
Daryl Gates, Chief: My Life in the LAPD (New York: Bantam,
1992), p. 131. For an excellent summary of the creation and evolution of SWAT, see Radley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop (New
York: PublicAffairs, 2013).
These included the 1965 Watts rebellion, Charles Whitman’s
shooting spree at the University of Texas at Austin, and a barricade scenario that left several police officers dead.
Rob Deal, “Police Armed With AR-15s Roam the Streets of an
Arkansas City Stopping and Asking for Citizens’ ID,” Republican
Party of Benton County Blog, December 18, 2012, available at
http://bentoncountygop.org/blog/?p=154 (last visited March 18,

92 American Civil Liberties Union

2014).
32. 	 “Stop and frisk” has been defined as “a crime-prevention tactic
that allows a police officer to stop a person based on ‘reasonable
suspicion’ of criminal activity and frisk based on reasonable
suspicion that the person is armed and dangerous, [which] has
been a contentious police practice since first approved by the
Supreme Court in 1968.” See David R. Rudovsky and Lawrence
Rosenthal, “Debate: The Constitutionality of Stop-and-Frisk in
New York City,” 162 U. Pa. L. Rev. Online 117, 117 (2013). Its legality and efficacy have both been questioned, and its detrimental impact on communities of color has been well documented.
See, e.g., Brett G. Stoudt, Michelle Fine, and Madeline Fox,
“Growing Up Policed in the Age of Aggressive Policing Policies,”
New York Law School Review 56 (2011/2012): 1331-1370.
33. 	 For more information about the government’s use of illegal
domestic spying tactics, see the ACLU’s Spy Files: the ACLU’s
Campaign to Stop Illegal Spying, available at https://www.aclu.
org/spy-files (last visited April 21, 2014).
34. 	 For more information about border militarization, see the ACLU’s Border Communities Under Siege: Border Patrol Agents Ride
Roughshod Over Civil Rights, available at https://www.aclu.org/
border-communities-under-siege-border-patrol-agents-rideroughshod-over-civil-rights (last visited April 21, 2014).
35. 	 Kraska (2007), p. 6.
36. 	 David Klinger and Jeff Rojek, “Multi-Method Study of Special
Weapons and Tactics Teams,” p. 7 (an unpublished study of the
U.S. Department of Justice) (2008), available at https://www.
ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/223855.pdf (last visited April 24,
2014).
37. 	 Abigail R. Hall and Christopher J. Coyne, “The Militarization of
U.S. Domestic Policing,” George Mason University Department of
Economics Working Paper No. 12-50 (August 2, 2012) (“[D]uring
the past four decades domestic policing in the U.S. has become
increasingly militarized. That is, domestic law enforcement has
taken on the characteristics of the armed forces by engaging in
military-like training, acquiring military weapons and utilizing
military tactics in everyday operations.”).
38. 	 David Klinger and Jeff Rojek, “A Paramilitary Policing Juggernaut,” Social Justice, 1043-1578 (March 22, 2009).
39. 	 Balko (2013). See also Jon Fasman, “Cops or Soldiers,” The Economist, March 22, 2014, available at http://www.economist.com/
news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-becometoo-militarised-cops-or-soldiers (last visited April 25, 2014).
40. 	 See, e.g., Kraska (2007).
41. 	 Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/battering%20ram (last visited March 19, 2014).
42. 	 There are other kinds of distraction devices such as “tactical
balls,” which wobble and spin when rolled or tossed into a room,
but flashbang grenades seem to be the most well known. For the
most part, the incident reports the ACLU studied tended to use
either the words “flashbang” or “distraction device” to refer to
these weapons.
43. 	 See Virginia Hennessey, “Monterey County agrees to pay $2.6
million in ‘flash-bang’ death of Greenfield man,” The Monterey
Herald, Aug. 19, 2013, available at http://www.montereyherald.
com/localnews/ci_23897554/monterey-county-agrees-pay-2-6million-flash (last visited March 19, 2014).
44. 	 Shaila K. Dewan, “City to Pay $1.6 Million in Fatal, Mistaken
Raid,” New York Times, Oct. 29, 2003, available at http://www.

45. 	

46. 	
47. 	

48. 	

49. 	

50. 	

51. 	

52. 	

53. 	

54. 	

55. 	
56. 	
57. 	
58. 	
59. 	

nytimes.com/2003/10/29/nyregion/city-to-pay-1.6-million-infatal-mistaken-raid.html (last visited March 19, 2014).
Charlie LeDuff, “What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?” Mother
Jones, November/December 2010 Issue, available at http://www.
motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/aiyana-stanley-jones-detroit,
(last visited March 19, 2014).
Bill Donnelly, “SWAT-ing at Flies,” New York Times, Op-Ed; p.
A20; Letters to the Editor (July 18, 1997).
American Forces Press Service, “Military Sealift Command to
Deliver Largest MRAP Shipment,” U.S. Department of Defense:
News, Dec. 14, 2007, available at http://www.defense.gov/news/
newsarticle.aspx?id=48416 (last visited March 21, 2014).
David Zucchino, “From MRAP to scrap: U.S. military chops up
$1 million vehicles,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 27, 2013, available
at http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/27/world/la-fg-afghanistan-armor-20131227 (last visited March 21, 2014).
Nick Gillespie, “Police in Columbia, South Carolina and 499
Other Cities Get ‘Free’ Tanks,” Reason.com, Nov. 18, 2013, http://
reason.com/blog/2013/11/18/police-in-columbia-south-carolina-and-49 (last visited March 21, 2014).
Tom Benning, “Dallas County sheriff acquires ‘a beast’ to handle
the bad guys,” Dallas News, Oct. 18, 2013, available at http://
www.dallasnews.com/news/metro/20131018-dallas-countysheriff-acquires-a-beast-to-handle-the-bad-guys.ece (last visited
March 21, 2014).
Alex Greig, “California police department gets $650,000
37,000lb armored military truck,” UK Daily Mail, MailOnline, Dec. 21, 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2527699/California-police-department-gets-650-000-37000lb-armored-military-truck.html (last visited March 21,
2014).
Nate Carlisli, “Blankets to armored vehicles: Military gives it,
Utah police take it,” Salt Lake Tribune, Jan.19, 2014, available
at http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57358599-78/police-program-utah-1033.html.csp (last visited March 21, 2014).
Molly Bloom, “Ohio State University Police Get IED-Resistant
Military Vehicle for Use on Football Game Days,” NPR State Impact: Eye on Education, Sept. 30, 2013, available at http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2013/09/30/ohio-state-university-police-getied-resistant-military-vehicle-for-use-on-football-game-days/
(last visited March 21, 2014).
Some examples of SWAT incident reports and weapons transfers
received in connection with the ACLU’s investigation are included as Appendix C.
See Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927, 931-933 (1995).
See Hudson v. Michigan, 547 U.S. 586, 589-90 (2006).
See Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385, 394 (1997).
Id.
Hudson, 547 U.S. at 591, 599. State courts can offer greater
protection under law than is provided under federal law. See,
e.g., Berumen v. State, 182 P. 3d 635 (Alaska Ct. App. 2008)
(officers serving search warrant knocked on door but failed to
announce who they were before entering residence, violating
state’s knock-and-announce rule; exclusionary rule applied
under state law). In addition, people who are harmed by SWAT
team officers could sue the SWAT team and police department
for violating their Fourth Amendment rights. In reality, though,
it is difficult to prevail in such lawsuits because courts often find
that even if officers violate a person’s constitutional rights, if

60. 	

61. 	

62. 	
63. 	
64. 	

65. 	

66. 	
67. 	
68. 	

69. 	

70. 	
71. 	

the officers “reasonably” believed that their conduct was lawful,
they are immune from liability (referred to in the law as having
“qualified immunity”). Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202 (2001).
See, e.g., Whittier v. Kobayashi, 581 F.3d 1304 (11th Cir. 2009)
(SWAT officer who killed a man in his home during a SWAT
raid was entitled to qualified immunity because “a reasonable
officer could have had a reasonable suspicion that knocking and
announcing his presence would have been dangerous under the
circumstances facing the SWAT team.”).
See Wilson v. Arkansas, 514 U.S. 927, 934 (1995). See also United
States v. Keszthelyi, 308 F.3d 557, 569 (6th Cir. 2002) (quoting
Stack v. Killian, 96 F.3d 159, 162 (6th Cir. 1996); Ramage v.
Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Gov’t, No. 08cv338, 2010 WL
2624128, at *5, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63688, at *13 (W.D.Ky.
June 25, 2010) (evaluating whether the decision to use a SWAT
team was reasonable under the circumstances); Solis v. City
of Columbus, 319 F.Supp.2d 797, 809 (S.D.Ohio 2004) (“[S]
omething more than probable cause is required in order for a
hyper-intrusive search to be reasonable [and] something more
than usual care in the execution of such a search is constitutionally required”).
Defense Logistics Agency, Disposition Services, “Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO): Providing Support to America’s
Law Enforcement Community Since 1997,” available at https://
www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/rtd03/leso/, Jan. 23, 2014 (last
visited March 17, 2014).
See supra, note 14 at 4; supra note 61.
10 U.S.C. § 2576a(a)(1)(B).
Defense Logistics Agency, “Fact Sheet: Responses on Excess
Property Program for Representative Henry Johnson,” sent in
response to an inquiry from Representative Johnson requesting
additional information on military-grade equipment to civilian
police, Jan. 14, 2014. Attached as Appendix D.
The Mamba is a type of MRAP designed for use by the
South African National Defense Force. See, e.g., http://www.
defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6254:fact-file-mamba-apcmrap&catid=79:fact-files&Itemid=159.
Abraham H. Maslow (1966). The Psychology of Science, p. 15.
The Keene Police Department’s application for a BearCat APC is
one of the documents included in Appendix C.
Callum Borchers, “Armored truck maker in middle of debate
on dollars and safety,” Boston Globe: Business, Jan. 4, 2013,
available at http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/04/
pittsfield-company-selling-bulletproof-security-sparks-debate-over-cost/2DAQ3GHM8b4eNdeXcL2NqJ/story.html (last
visited April 4, 2014).
Al Baker, “When the Police Go Military,” New York Times, Dec.
3, 2011, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/
sunday-review/have-american-police-become-militarized.html?pagewanted=all (last visited April 21, 2014).
Supra note 18 at 6.
See, e.g., Michelle Alexander, “Obama’s Drug War,” The Nation,
Dec. 9, 2010, available at http://www.thenation.com/article/156997/obamas-drug-war (last visited April 3, 2014) (“The
Byrne grant program, originally devised by the Reagan administration to encourage state and local law enforcement agencies to
join the drug war, has poured millions of dollars into drug task
forces around the country that are notorious for racial profiling,

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 93

72. 	

73. 	
74. 	
75. 	

76. 	

77. 	
78. 	
79. 	
80. 	

81. 	

82. 	

83. 	

84. 	
85. 	

86. 	

including highway drug interdiction programs and neighborhood ‘stop and frisk’ programs. These programs have successfully ushered millions of poor folks of color into a permanent
undercaste—largely for engaging in the same types of minor
drug crimes that go ignored in middle-class white communities
and on college campuses.”)
National Criminal Justice Association, “SAA Taskforce Performance Measures: A Look at Metrics Used to Evaluate MJTFs,”
National Criminal Justice Association, available at http://www.
ncja.org/sites/default/files/documents/Taskforce-Performance-Measures.pdf (last visited April 3, 2014).
Supra note 18 at 10.
A copy of this memo is attached as Appendix F.
This finding is consistent with previous attempts to examine the
prevalence and impact of SWAT using raw data such as incident
reports. Klinger and Rojek (2008) attempted to collect standardized after-action reports from SWAT teams and characterized
law enforcement participation in the study as “dismal.” See
Klinger and Rojek, supra note 36 at 2.
Public Citizen Health Research Group v. FDA, 704 F.2d 1280, 1288
(D.C. Cir. 1983), cited in FOIA Advocates, “FOIA Exemptions,”
available at http://www.foiadvocates.com/exemptions.html (last
visited April 21, 2014).
See Maryland Public Safety Article § 3-507(e)(2).
Id.
Id.
S.B. 185, “Law Enforcement Transparency,” (2014), available at
http://le.utah.gov/~2014/bills/sbillenr/SB0185.pdf (last visited
April 3, 2014).
Aaron C. Davis, “Police Raid Berwyn Heights’ Mayor’s Home,
Kill His 2 Dogs,” Washington Post, July 31, 2008, available
at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003299.html (last visited March 17,
2014).
Rosalind S. Helderman, “Bill Calls for More Scrutiny of SWAT
Teams by Police,” Washington Post, Feb. 5, 2009, available
at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/02/05/ST2009020500034.html (last visited March 17,
2014).
Maryland Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention,
Law Enforcement: SB 447—SWAT Team Reporting, available at
http://www.goccp.maryland.gov/msac/law-enforcement.php
(last visited March 17, 2014).
Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, http://
www.bjs.gov/, March 5, 2014 (last visited March 17, 2014).
The other federal agency responsible for some criminal justice-related data collection is the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI). The FBI, through the Uniform Crime Reports, collects
and publishes information pertaining to crime rates, law enforcement officers killed or assaulted, and hate crime statistics.
The ACLU does not recommend designating the FBI as the federal agency with primary responsibility for collecting, maintaining, and evaluating information pertaining to the militarization
of policing because BJS is the more appropriate federal agency
for taking on this responsibility.
The process for acquiring equipment through the 1033 Program
is fairly straightforward. States enter into a Memorandum of
Agreement (MOA) with DLA. A law enforcement agency interested in participating in the program simply completes an ap-

94 American Civil Liberties Union

87. 	

88. 	
89. 	
90. 	

91. 	
92. 	

93. 	

94. 	
95. 	
96. 	

97. 	

98. 	

99. 	

plication and submits it to the state coordinator, who approves
it and sends it to LESO. From there, the process for acquiring
excess property is simple. A local agency may search the DLA
website, which functions as a sort of catalogue, and submit an
online request for the equipment it seeks. The state coordinator
approves or disapproves the request and forwards approved
requests to LESO. From here, the request is sent to Military
Standard Requisitioning and Issue Procedures (MILSTRIP) for
final approval.
MOA, 11. This minimal limitation would seem to allow for the
transfer of an extraordinary amount of equipment. If every officer in every participating agency is allowed to have one of every
type of item available, including rifles, robots, and APCs, this is
not a meaningful limitation at all.
A copy of this checklist is attached as Appendix E.
MOA, 10.
As part of an ongoing effort to document the costs of securing
the homeland, the Center for Investigative Reporting did a
comprehensive investigation into states’ receipt and distribution
of DHS and other federal agency grant dollars in 2011 as part
of its “America’s War Within” series. To the best of the ACLU’s
knowledge, this is the most comprehensive collection of data
(from 2009, however) on federal handouts to state and local law
enforcement agencies. The Center for Investigative Journalism,
“Price of Peril: Homeland Security Spending by State,” http://
cironline.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/homelandsecurity/
priceofperil.html (last visited March 21, 2014).
Supra note 21 at 1.
Senator Tom Coburn, Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact
of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities, 4, 5 (Dec. 2012),
available at http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=b86fdaeb-86ff-4d19-a112-415ec85aa9b6
(last visited March 17, 2014).
The town of Keene, New Hampshire, held a hearing when its
local police department sought a grant from DHS to purchase
a BearCat. See “Free Keene: BEARCAT Hearing Promises Controversy,” NewHampshire.com, Aug. 12, 2013, available at http://
www.newhampshire.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130812/
AGGREGATION/130819787/0/newhampshire01 (last visited
March 21, 2014).
Kraska (2007) at 6-7.
Id. at 7.
Forty-seven percent of adult Americans report that they have
a gun in their house or elsewhere on their property. Gallup
Politics, “Self-Reported Gun Ownership in U.S. Is Highest
Since 1993,” Oct. 26, 2011, available at http://www.gallup.com/
poll/150353/self-reported-gun-ownership-highest-1993.aspx.
The U.S. Constitution prohibits government entities from
targeting people based on their race, religion, or any other constitutionally protected status.
Gabe Rottman, “Radically Wrong: The Right to Think Dangerous Thoughts,” ACLU Blog of Rights, March 1, 2013, available
at https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/radically-wrong-right-think-dangerous-thoughts
(last visited April 3, 2014).
Enrique Flor and David Ovalle, “Hialeah police chief details
tense moments of hostage rescue,” Miami Herald, July 31, 2013,
available at http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/28/v-fullstory/3528358/hialeah-police-chief-details-tense.html (last visited

March 20, 2014).
100. 	See, e.g., New York Civil Liberties Union, “Stop and Frisk Data,”
Racial Justice, http://www.nyclu.org/content/stop-and-friskdata (last visited April 4, 2014); Bailey v. City of Philadelphia,
“Plaintiff ’s Fourth Report to Court and Monitor on Stop and
Frisk Practices, C.A. No. 10-5952 (E.D.Pa.) (filed Dec. 3, 2013),
available at http://www.aclupa.org/download_file/view_inline/1529/198/ (last visited April 4, 2014).
101. 	Some incident reports did not contain any information as to
how many people were in a residence at the time of a deployment. This impedes analysis of the impact of SWAT on the lives
of the people inside homes that are raided.
102. 	This is despite the fact that white people and minorities use
and sell drugs at roughly the same rates. See, e.g., Drug Policy
Alliance, “Race and the Drug War,” http://www.drugpolicy.org/
race-and-drug-war (last visited April 4, 2014) (“Although rates
of drug use and selling are comparable across racial lines, people
of color are far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested,
prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations
than are whites”).
103. 	As noted, many of the incident reports studied were ambiguous
on the subject of whether a BearCat was used, so it is impossible
to know this definitively. Nonetheless, based on our review of
the documents, we think a reasonable inference can be drawn
that no BearCat was used in a number of cases in which SWAT
accomplished its objective.
104. 	In examining the SWAT incident reports, the ACLU assumed
that records were made of injuries often enough that the absence of a notation regarding civilian injury likely meant that
no civilian injury occurred during the deployment. In addition,
some police departments file use of force reports separately
from SWAT incident reports, so it is possible that the SWAT
deployments studied resulted in deaths and/or injuries that were
not recorded in the SWAT incident report. For both of these reasons, the actual number of civilian injuries and/or deaths could
be higher.
105. 	A chilling video of the shooting is available here: http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/24/james-boyd-killed-bycops_n_5021117.html. The ACLU of New Mexico is calling on
the mayor to change the training and culture within the Albuquerque Police Department so incidents like this one are not
repeated. See “Action Alert: Ask ABQ Mayor Berry to Reform
APD,” American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, March 27,
2014, available at https://www.aclu-nm.org/action-alert-askabq-mayor-berry-to-reform-apd/2014/03/ (last visited April 24,
2014).
106. 	See George Chidi, “Texas grand jury refuses murder indictment on man who killed deputy on (sic) no-knock raid,” The
Raw Story, Feb. 8, 2014, available at http://www.rawstory.com/
rs/2014/02/08/texas-grand-jury-refuses-murder-indictment-onman-who-killed-deputy-on-no-knock-raid/ (last visited March
19, 2014).
107. 	See generally, Early Childhood Matters, “Community Violence
and Young Children: Making Space for Hope” (November
2012), available at http://bernardvanleer.org/Community-violence-and-young-children-making-space-for-hope (last visited
April 21, 2014).
108. 	Specific recommendations for how to implement such safeguards are set forth in an article by ACLU Senior Policy Analyst

Jay Stanley, “Police Body-Mounted Cameras: With Right Policies
in Place, a Win for All” (Oct.2013), available at https://www.
aclu.org/files/assets/police_body-mounted_cameras.pdf (last
visited April 4, 2014).
109. 	See generally, Jason Sunshine and Tom R. Tyler, “The Role of
Procedural Justice and Legitimacy in Shaping Public Support for
Policing,” Law & Science Review, Vol. 37, Number 3 (2003).
110. 	Emily Ekins, “58 [sic] Percent Say Police Departments Using
Drones, Military Weapons Goes Too Far, 60 percent of Tea Partiers Agree,” Reason-Rupe Poll, Dec. 17, 2013, available at http://
reason.com/poll/2013/12/17/56-percent-say-police-departments-usin2 (last visited April 21, 2014).
111. 	Tom R. Tyler and Albert A. Pearsall, III, “The Paradox of American Policing: Performance Without Legitimacy,” A Newsletter
of the COPS Office, Vol. 3, Issue 7 (July 2010), available at http://
cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/July_2010/AmericanPolicing.asp
(last visited April 4, 2014).

War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing 95

During a “no knock” SWAT raid, an officer
threw a flashbang grenade into the room
where the Phonesavanh family was
sleeping. It landed, and exploded, inside
Baby Bou Bou’s crib.
Officers were searching for a relative
suspected of selling a small amount of
drugs. Neither the suspect nor any drugs
were found in the home. At the time this
report was published—three weeks after
the raid—Baby Bou Bou was still in a
medically-induced coma.