SWAT team training exercises

Future of SWAT Teams

As with all police officers, SWAT teams use tactical communication as a means to diffuse and deescalate violent encounters. They also need to fill the gap between shouting and shooting, which is where less lethal capabilities are essential.

In a lot of agencies, especially small or mid-sized, the SWAT teams are the only ones to have non-lethal projectiles. The average officer on the street may have a taser, an ASP or baton but 37 or 40mm projectiles and launchers are exclusive to SWAT teams or crowd management units. This is because these weapons require a higher level of training to utilize operationally.

It’s less onerous on the department to train a smaller group of people such as SWAT as opposed to all sworn members. Currently we are seeing a bit of a shift with some of the departments moving towards an increase of less lethal weapons such as 40mm launchers and ammunition for use in the patrol bureau.

Greater need for training

This change in methodology carries with it the necessity for more training. This can be very challenging, cumbersome and expensive for the department to train hundreds of people as opposed to dozens of people. In the future, some SWAT teams could be used as more specialized Hostage Rescue Teams (HRT). This will precipitate the need for the formation of secondary perimeter teams.

Perimeter teams

A perimeter team can be comprised of regular patrol officers equipped with more advanced weaponry. They can get to the scene quickly and set up the perimeter. They will make up the inner perimeter, surrounding the situation. If something were to happen, such as the suspects trying to escape, the inner perimeter would have the weaponry to deal with it.

Perimeter teams would also have less lethal weapons requiring a higher level of training than the average patrol officer. They will wait for the HRT to come in. This force structure is happening now in select law enforcement agencies. For the average SWAT team, training is going to become increasingly more important and demanding. They will have to be held to higher levels of training and capabilities than are currently mandated. Increased less lethal weapons are going to be a big part of that change.