Men in black.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Raids by SWAT teams - Brief article

Several years ago in this space, I expressed concern about the spread of SWAT teams. But I had no idea how absurd--and dangerous--the situation had become until, thanks to a new book by Radley Balko, The Rise of the Warrior Cop, excerpted in the Journal, I learned that by 2005, 80 percent of towns between 25,000 and 50,000 people have SWAT teams that collectively conducted approximately 50,000 raids nationwide.

In one such raid described by Balko, Matthew David Stewart of Ogden, Utah, woke up one night to the sound of his front door being battered down. Thinking he must be under attack by...