Overkill

Today, my paper on SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics is finally released. You can read it here. It's been the thrust of my research for nearly a year, now. It offers a history of SWAT teams, legal background, analysis and criticism of their increasingly frequent use and abuse, and an appendix of cast studies that documents more than 150 cases of botched raids.

It's a free download. If you want a slick, bound copy, you can order one for ten bucks, and you'll also get a copy of Gene Healy and Tim Lynch's paper on the constitutional record of George W. Bush (call it"Cato's left-flank package").

We're also launching an interactive map to accompany the paper. And I frankly think the map is what's going to convince most people of the scope of this problem. The map plots every botched raid I found in my research, with a description of what happened and a list of sources. You can sort the map by type of incident. So, for example, if you wanted to see only those raids where an innocent person was killed, it would look like this. If you wanted to see raids where a nonviolent offender was killed (a recreational gambler or potsmoker, for example), it would look like this. If you wanted to see all of the"wrong door" raids where no one was killed, it would look like this.

The map is also searchable by year, state, and type of incident.

Cato's news release on the paper is here.