SWAT stats: police transparency.

• Author: Balko, Radley
• Position: Citings - Brief article

IN JULY 2008, a SWAT team mistakenly barged into the home of Cheye Caivo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, and killed his two Labrador retrievers. In response, the Maryland legislature passed a law that requires every police department in the state to report how often and for what purpose they deploy their SWAT teams. Maryland is the first state in the country to pass such a law, and in March the first reports came in.

The results were disturbing. On average, there were 4.5 SWAT raids per day in Maryland in the last six months of 2009, including about one per day in Prince George's County, where Calvo lives. According to an analysis in the Baltimore Sun, 94 percent of the state's SWAT deployments were related to search or arrest warrants, leaving just 6 percent...