Stuff You Should Know - How Swat Teams Work

Episode Date: February 3, 2010

In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck discuss SWAT teams, elite police units that are specially trained for extreme situations. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Under 17, at a middle without parent. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. From HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles Chuck Bryant's with me,

as usual. It just wouldn't be the same if he weren't. That's what I hear. Yeah. Thankfully for me. And me. Oh, sweetie. So that means this is Stuff You Should Know.

All right, Chuck? The podcast, the legend, lives on. Yeah, we thought about a name change recently, but we figured we'd just stick with it. Yeah. Stuff You Should Know. Yes. We thought about a name change?

I just made that up. Oh, okay. I was gonna say, you never CC me on emails anymore. Yeah. So Chuck, has a SWAT team ever raided your house? No. I did have a cop come to my door one time in Athens, though. For what?

I don't know why, actually. I don't remember. I just remember being woken up and there was a cop at the door. And I can't remember exactly why he was coming by. It was a mistake, clearly. But I also, you know, didn't fully open the door, if you know what I'm saying.

Right. Are you making air quotes that you don't remember? No. I thought it was a mistake. It really was. I honestly don't remember why he showed up. I just remember thinking, I'm just gonna crack the door here

and see what this cop wants. Have you ever been arrested? No. Really? Does that surprise you? A little bit, yeah. I mean, you went to college in Athens. You lived in LA for a while.

I did get shaken down in front of the Georgia Theater one night, like against the wall, frisked for no reason. What is it with the buzz? They're always shaking people back. Yeah. I mean, they literally had no reason. They put all of our friends up against the wall, like stopped the car and just jumped out

and as we were leaving a show. I think Georgia Theater being in the vicinity of it was probable cause under law in Athens. It was weird and then they just left. As soon as they came, they just like left. It was so odd. Well, luckily for you, you didn't die of a heart attack. No.

You weren't shot in the chest. No. You weren't shot three times. No. Had it been a SWAT team that shook you down or came to your door, all of these things may have happened. I might have been two tapped. Yeah.

Yeah. What SWAT teams are, Chuck, we should probably get to that finally, right? Yes. SWAT teams are specially trained and specially equipped and armed divisions of police departments. Yeah.

Heavily armed. Very. Yeah. A lot of their stuff is cobbled together through military surplus. Yeah. I didn't realize that. I didn't either.

Pretty cool. Thanks to the Grabster who wrote yet another fine article. Yeah. He's one of the faves around here. He is. And ironically, neither one of us have ever met him. No. No.

I have no idea what he looks like. Have you? Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to spoil it for you though. Yeah. I don't like doing that. I like keeping like a non-image or.

Yeah. I see him with a beard. Does he have a beard? He does. But we get that a lot when people see pictures of us. They write in and to express their displeasure. Which is always nice. Yeah.

We're obtuse. Yeah. Yeah. Special weapons and tactics, Josh, is the name now. But what was it originally? Special weapons attack team. Yeah. They realized it was a little too aggressive sounding.

A little bit. Yeah. So the guy who came up with the original name, Special Weapons Attack Team, was a guy named Darryl Gates, who was police chief of LAPD for a very, very long time. While you were there, in fact, were you there during the Rodney King incident and the ensuing riots? No.

My brother was though. Yeah. Was he anywhere near South Central? Well, it happened all over. He saw he was in the area of the riots. Really? Wow. And clearly stayed in his apartment.

So your brother's not Reginald Denny? No. Good. Yeah, that'd be bad. I hope that guy's doing all right. But yeah, me too. But Gates didn't actually invent the SWAT team. He's falsely credited with that though, many times.

He did champion the idea. I get the impression that a friend of his or somebody lower on, or I should say higher, on the totem pole came up with that idea. And being in a position of authority, he was still a high-ranking officer then, although not yet police chief. Gates said, this is a great idea.

Sure. So he assembled the world's first SWAT team, or at the very least, the United States' first SWAT team. LAPD, leading the way, as usual. Right. They also brought us bribery, corruption, planning weapons. Brutality.

Brutality. Yeah. A lot of stuff. A long history of bad things. Sure, yeah. They've cleaned it up, though, I think now. Have they? Supposedly.

They, every decade, they've cleaned it up, and then something horrible happened, and they've cleaned it up. Sure. Then 50 horrible things happened. But again, they are credited with coming up with the first SWAT team in America. That was 1967.

Right. So they sat around for two years and waited until an organization known as the Black Panthers did not want the LAPD to enter when they came in knocking on some gun warrants at their headquarters. One of their first encounters, that in the Symbionnes Liberation Army. Right.

I actually read accounts of these two things. Yeah. The Black Panther standoff in 69 and the SLA standoff in 74 were days long. Right. Right? In the SLA standoff, they shot tear gas into the house. Nothing.

They just returned fire. Wow. Everybody either died of gunshot wounds or burned in the fire. Jeez. The Black Panthers all made it out alive. But this was after several days, too. And in both cases, both sides fired several thousand rounds

at one another. Wow. Yeah. That's a serious standoff. So yeah. And this is, it definitely remains in the mentality of the LAPD SWAT team, because they have an unofficial patch that has 41 and 54.

The Black Panthers' headquarters where the standoff took place was at 41st Street. And then the SLA standoff was at 54th and, I think, Compton Avenue. So they have 41 and 54. Compton Reminder. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this created, at the very least,

it showed the world that you do need SWAT teams. Yeah. Because up to this point, before the SWAT teams were created, any officer who came up on the scene was expected to resolve the problem. Sure. I wouldn't say minimal firearms, but certainly not special, especially equipped gear and ammo.

Right. And then in 1975, I don't remember what network it was on, but SWAT came out. Yeah. The cop show about SWAT teams. Bob Urik. Oh, was he in it? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I never saw it. I saw the horrible, horrible remake, the movie version. Yeah, I didn't see that with Sam Jackson and Colin Farrell. I didn't see that. That's a deadly combination. Now, was that a remake, or was it just? Drinking water in rural Mexico, but in movie form, you know? What, Sam Jackson and Colin Farrell?

Yeah. Yeah. Sam Jackson's almost a parody of himself at this point. Yeah, he has been the whole time. We just didn't catch on at first. Is that what it was? Yeah. Gotcha.

So let's talk a little bit about how many there are in the country. Supposedly, there are about 1,200 SWAT teams in the United States, and 90% of police forces in cities of 50,000 or more have some kind of SWAT team. Right, not bad. No, not at all. And 70% in smaller towns?

Yeah. Which is pretty much everybody. I think there's 1,200. Yeah. And that's maybe 1,200 across the country. In some cities, smaller towns have kind of gotten together with other nearby smaller towns. Sure, that makes sense.

And have been like, hey, we'll throw in a few SWAT team members and some equipment. You guys do the same. We'll have a regional SWAT team. Right, I've got two-point men if you've got a sniper. Right. And they'll just combine forces. It's like collecting Harry Potter trading cards,

except with real-life SWAT team members. Right, I never thought about that. So what do they use these people for? Chuck, this elite group of tactically trained, heavily armed paramilitary police officers. Well, Josh, there's quite a few scenarios. A high-risk warrant, obviously, if they're going to serve a warrant to a known violent felon who

may have a gun or armament, they want to bring in the SWAT team. Sure. Any kind of hostage situation or barricade situation, obviously. A high-risk person is when someone needs to be transported like some nasty serial killer. Sure, Henry Hill. And obviously terrorist attacks or riots,

you call them the SWAT team. Or the riot crew, which we should do. This made me want to do one on riot control, actually. We should do that at some point. Cracking heads. Oh, is that how they do it? Cracking hippies' heads, yeah. Hippies.

We should do that, because we could talk about the Battle for Seattle in 1999. Yeah, my friend was there. Yeah, that's right. I think you said that inciting the riot, throwing bricks and Molotov cocktails or something? No, he had funny signs that he held up, like Simpson's references and stuff.

Our kind of guy. All right, so look for riot control coming up, right? Indeed. So Chuck, there's about 40,000 SWAT raids in the US every year. Wow. Yeah, that's a lot, isn't it? Yeah, I didn't realize that. It's growing and growing.

In the last 25 years, it's increased 1,300%. Now, is that because they're a little more trigger-happy, or because there's more SWAT guys, or because there's more situations that need it? Or all three, probably. It's probably all three, plus a little bit of looser federal funding coming in than there ever was before, the Department of Homeland Security is around.

They have deep pockets. So a police station might say, wow, sure, let's get that tank, since we have the dough. Right. Nice. Yeah. Although it's really not a tank. Well, we should talk about that, actually,

since a lot of times the vehicles are transformed into SWAT vehicles. So they'll just take a delivery van and arm it, paint it black, and throw some bat shields up on it. And all of a sudden, that's an armed vehicle. Yeah, and a lot of times it sees stuff. Yeah. Sometimes they use RVs.

I love this part. Go ahead. I know where you're going. It'll be like a mobile command headquarters. Sure, because you need that. The reason it's so valuable is really obvious, but it's easy to overlook because they have a bathroom. Yeah, I've never seen the movies.

You never see the hostage standoff where the guy says, I have to go take a leak. Yeah, you stay there waving your gun. Don't shoot anybody while I'm gone. You never see anyone sneeze or go to the bathroom, anything like that unless it's important to the film. Right, and a lot of times they'll use these transports, though, heavily armed

to actually carry the SWAT team members into an assault, but it doesn't always work. In 1988, after German terrorists seized the Nakatomi building in Los Angeles, the LAPD SWAT team used their heavily armored vehicle to try to breach the door to the building, and they were fired upon by the terrorists using a rocket launcher, which I think

killed or injured everyone inside. She's staying fenced up. Yeah. Ask me what that means. What does that mean? Shoot the glass. OK, thanks. If no one out there realizes that we're talking clearly

about the movie Die Hard, then. Why? Then you really need to get out more. At least rent more movies. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Chuck, let's get down to basics here, dude. OK. We've gotten so far, I feel.

It's ridiculous. Have we? No, not really. Not as bad as we did with the whole G.I. Joe, Tyrae, and Ninja. Yeah, true. Yeah. How do you become a SWAT team member? Well, Josh, there's different ways you can become a member.

You obviously have to be a police officer. And many times, you can volunteer, if you just want the extra action and you feel like you're capable, or you're a really good marksman, or just a tough guy. Sometimes, though, you are actually forced into duty. Yeah, like a couple of years of service. It's like a point in a police officer's career.

Right. Like you started as a rookie, you worked a B, and then maybe at some point, you're a detective. And then after that, a SWAT, or maybe those are your version. But yeah, on some forces, you're expected to eventually be a SWAT member for a little while. Yeah.

On smaller scales, SWAT team members will be regular police officers as well, or just driving around, like looking for bad guys or whatever. And then there's a call out, which is what they're called. Yeah. And then they'll go and get their stuff and get ready, right? Right. In places like LA, New York, their SWAT teams

are just SWAT members. 24-7. They train all the time. Yeah. They're very well-funded, very heavily armed. And that is the SWAT team that we generally think of when we think of SWAT, right? Yeah.

So how do they get to be this way? I mean, clearly, they're born bad asses, but they have to go through training, right? Yeah. And like you said, the training never ends when you're being in the military. You don't stop training. Right.

You're constantly training because you got to keep up the physical fitness. You should be an expert marksman, although it's not absolutely required. I think it is. And a lot of the ones where their SWAT teams, like 24-7, like you said, I think that they do require them to be such expert marksmen that they're automatically

qualified to teach marksmen courses. Right. I believe master marksmen is the term we're looking for. Yeah. Which makes sense. Sure. So what they do here, obviously, is set up scenarios to practice.

When you see in the movies when they have the fake city scene or the fake house, and then they push the button and out comes a dummy of a bad guy with a gun. Like in the police academy? Yeah. Or out comes the dummy of a lady holding a child and invariably in the movie that they shoot the lady by accident. Right.

They have to start all over again. That's really how it goes down, though. Yeah. Which makes a lot of sense, because as the Grabster points out in the article, sitting around and talking about what you should do is not really good training. You need high levels of training. Or computer sims.

They do that, too. Sure. Which I think usually require you walking around with a gun as well. Oh, they do? Yeah. OK. I don't think it's just like a joystick.

I think you're in a room where it simulates like the mannequins coming out or whatever. Like a white gun. Right. But instead, it's like all the characters from Sonic the Hedgehog. Gotcha. So Chuck, we've got gun training.

There's often, well, I shouldn't say often, in some cases, specifically with the LAPD, there's also a lot of hostage negotiation training as well. Yeah. In most places, keep SWAT and hostage negotiation totally separate. They don't want them to mix. They actually probably want them to butt heads a little bit

so that there's real discourse about whether or not to go in with guns blazing or to try to resolve the situation through negotiation. But in the LAPD SWAT, every single one of them is a trained hostage negotiator that's qualified to take over negotiations. That's the lead negotiator. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

It is pretty cool. And that was multifaceted. Yeah, that was one of my favorite podcasts we did too about hostage negotiation. So these are closely tied segments of private law enforcement, I guess. I keep wanting to call it military. Well, it's paramilitary.

I mean, they very much resemble a military team. They have stealth reconnaissance team members. People who, if they are getting some information about the layout of the house, maybe from the negotiator, the hostage was let go or something like that, but they need more, they'll send a couple of guys in and they will drill a hole and put a pinhole camera in to keep an eye on the guy, get more information about the house,

that kind of stuff, right? They have snipers, obviously. Yes. They have anti-sniper snipers. Do they? Yeah, because what if there's a sniper shooting at you? Well, wouldn't that just be a sniper? Yeah, but they call them anti-sniper snipers.

Well, yeah, I guess that's true. Most snipers aren't just like some jerk walking around, waving a gun inside of a house. Sure. Probably hard to hit. Yeah, and what else do they have? Explosive guys, experts? Yep.

Demolition, I guess you would call it? Yeah. Pretty cool. Yeah, so I mean, this is not your average ordinary patrol guy who's going to pull you over for running a stop sign, right? No, definitely not. So Chuck, we've kind of referred to it here there.

There's like a guy waving a gun in a house or whatever. SWAT situations are generally where there's a standoff, like you said, to where there is a guy in a house, so he has hostages. He's barricaded himself inside. He's not responding, right? Yeah, that's true. So the SWAT team is called out.

The SWAT team apparently takes about an hour to assemble and make it to the scene, right? Yeah, even though I think you'd mentioned that they listen in on the police radio, and if they hear of a scenario where they might be called, they'll go ahead and start loading the shotguns with shells and start getting ready just in case. Putting on the grease paint.

Yeah, exactly. The chicken blood across the forehead, yeah. But when they make it out, one of the first things they'll do, apparently, is come up with quick and dirty. I just made air quotes, as you saw. Contingency plans, so in case this thing just falls apart right when they get there, they need to know how to get in, get as many people out as possible,

neutralize the guy, which is another word for kill. Yeah, exactly. And if they do have time, if the situation's what the cops call static, meaning the guy's just, he's responding to the negotiator, he's not shooting anybody yet, it's still a standoff, but there's not, nothing, there's the element of time, they have time, then they're going to start planning, right?

Yeah, that's when you bring in the RV, and that means you can use the bathroom if you want, and come up with a very safe plan, because ideally, I know the Grabster points out, even though these guys have a reputation as being very trigger happy, ideally, you want to end it peacefully, even if you're a SWAT team member. So they're getting information from the hostage negotiator,

from any hostages that may be released, from their stealth guys, and they've decided that enough enough, it's time for this guy to go down, right? Yes. So they've assembled, they've got their plan set, they've got all the information they need, and they go through the barricade, they go through the door, what does that look like

if you're standing there, and all of a sudden, you're in the house, the door opens up, and then comes the SWAT team. What's going to happen? Well, first thing first, you probably would not see 10 guys, because they form what's called a snake, and that's why in the films you see, in the picture shows, you'll see them in a dead straight line, obviously,

because it minimizes the targets. Right, yeah. They can shoot at. The guy in front of that line is called the Point Man. Very brave person. Very brave, but also, that guy has to be as cool as a cucumber under some of the highest amounts of stress a human being can go through.

He has to be able to take in an entire situation in a split second and decide if that's a woman holding a baby, so don't shoot her, because this isn't Police Academy, or if the guy has a gun, if it's pointed at them, what's going on exactly, and then act on this information in a really quick manner, right? I would be at the tail end of that snake if I was a SWAT guy.

Yeah, I'd still be in the bathroom. In the motor room? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Well, also in the movies, they get it right most times, is you'll see them come in in a single file, and then immediately it seems like they all go to a designated spot in the room almost as if they were

trained to do so, and it's because they are. Yeah, they're called the areas of responsibility. Yeah, they have it all planned out beforehand. Yeah, so you have like eight guys, and they already know the layout of the room where they're entering and where the guy has the hostages, right? Yeah, exactly.

Each person has a portion of the room that they're responsible for, so the point man comes in, and maybe his is dead ahead, the guy behind him is to the right, and the little corner of the guy behind him is a little beyond that, so everybody's aiming at different parts of the room. Clear, clear. And then once they, right, exactly,

once they've noticed that their area of responsibility is clear, then they're going to train their gun on the guy who is the problem. Right, and there also, we've forgotten to mention, generally, a lot of yelling and screaming going on, and maybe a, what was it called, a flashbang grenade? Yeah, because one of the things that they want to do is disorient and confuse the suspects.

Yeah, so you can shoot them. So you can shoot them in the head. Or ideally, put them on the ground and cuff them. Sure. We have to say that, because that's really what they're after. Right, we can't just say that they're kill-crazy, vengeance-minded thugs. No, and that's actually evidenced

by the percentage of SWAT assaults that were not a single gunshot is fired. It's about 90% of all. Yeah, that's pretty good. I bet that 10% is pretty exciting. Pretty bloody. Thousands of rounds of ammo. They also point out, or Ed does rather,

that when you have your area of responsibility, you plan to sing out, obviously, to go in and cover the room. But your point man, and actually everyone on the team, is sort of like the quarterback coming to the line of scrimmage. When you do that in the NFL, you see the defense. And sometimes you have to change the play, because the layout has changed, or it's not exactly how you thought, or there were more guys in there

than you thought. So you don't want to be the guy who's like covering your empty corner, which makes up your area of responsibility the whole time. Yeah, you want to be Peyton Manning. Sure. At the line of scrimmage. Yeah.

Except you have a gun. Right. Can we talk about the guns? Yeah. This is my favorite part. Is it you, gun guy? No, neither one of us are. But we always go all giggly when we talk about these guns.

I guess it's just being raised as kids watching the A team and stuff like that. I'm very excited. Because I'm not a gun guy at all. Both of us are little pansy liberals. Yeah. I have a panty waist on right now. I know.

But I love these guns. Sure. So equipment-wise, every officer has a nice, reliable, high-powered handgun. First things first. Correct? Yeah. Which they usually wear lower on their leg.

For quick reach. Yeah. And then the holsters will be modified so that they can draw really fast. Although I imagine if you're going in, you already have your gun out. Right, sure. I think it's technically is to look kind of like Han Solo.

Is that what it is? Yeah. And they also will usually have a submachine gun and a shotgun. And clearly, they're not going to go in with all three. But they have a great amount of leeway with their own personal arsenal. They can pick out their own guns, essentially. And a lot of times, if you look at the SWAT arsenal,

it's kind of ragtag and piecemeal. Because in addition to seizing delivery vans used for drugs, they also seize weapons from drug dealers. So one guy might have an Uzi, another guy might have a Heckler and Koch MP4 or something like that. AK-47. Yeah. Can I show you something cool?

I got a picture for you. Oh, you even have it turned over so I couldn't see where it is. I was going to surprise you with this. And the article Ed talks about shotguns are clearly popular because you can not be too discerning with where you're aiming and still hit something that can. I would think that you wouldn't want a shotgun in a SWAT hostage situation.

Well, it depends on the situation. So I think that's why they picked their guns. But he pointed out that sometimes you can combine the shotgun with the machine gun. What? Did you see that? No. The Nightmaster QS. And I'm going to show you a picture.

And I would love to be able to post this on the blog. But look at that bad boy. Holy cow. It is essentially, if you know guns, if you picture like an M16 with a clip, right in front of the clip is the front end of a shotgun without the barrel on it attached to the gun. Right.

It's like an M16 with a grenade launcher attachment, but instead of the grenade launcher, it has a shotgun. And I'm anti-gun, but that's my new zombie defense weapon. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to hurt anybody, but this does make me wish for a zombie apocalypse. Yeah. Yeah.

Nice one. So that's the Master QS. That is the, are you going to hang that up in your cubicle? Well, people might think I'm some creep, but that's not the case. People not stop by your desk quite as often and bug you. We mentioned the flashbang grenades, obviously. If it's a riot situation, they have

all manner of non-lethal things that they can shoot at you, foam and wood and things that will stop you but not kill you. They use grappling hooks and tiger claws. No, that's a ninja. I get the too confused sometimes. Yeah, I understand. Bolt action rifles are the sniper rifle of preference. Right, but they're not allowed to use a 50 millimeter

or 50 caliber. Right. Is it 50 millimeter or 50 cal? 50 cal. OK, these are sniper rifles that I think we've mentioned before and probably the Delta Force podcast. I think we have, because I think either Special Forces or Delta Force or both requires their snipers

to be able to be accurate with a 50 cal sniper rifle up to 1,500 yards. And why can't they use them in the private police sector? Because it will go right through your target and through a couple of hostages as well. It can also go right through walls. Check that out. It's huge.

That's twice as tall as the dollar bill. Yeah, I'm showing Josh a picture of a 50 cal round. And they did a measurement next to a ruler, and it's about five and a half inches long. Well. Is this bullet? Yeah. With the casing, obviously, but.

It's enormous. It can rip very big holes and things. Yeah. So they don't allow them to use that, because it could potentially kill hostages like on the street behind the house. It could potentially kill a fruit vendor two towns over. Yeah, good.

That's not good. Well, you want your fruit vendors alive and well. And surveillance equipment, obviously. Yeah, that pinhole camera I mentioned. Sure. High-power binoculars, NVGs, night vision goggles. Yeah. Have you ever used those?

No. I have. Have you, really? Yeah. Were you carrying this thing? No, no, no. My brother-in-law is in the Marines, and he let me wear his out in the neighborhood one night.

Did you toilet paper your neighbor's house? No, but I walked around and looked at stuff. That's cool. It was about the coolest thing ever. Really? Did you notice anything that you wouldn't normally see, like squirrels doing weird stuff? Well, not weird stuff, but you can see in the dark.

Although not complete dark. You know, they work by amplifying available light. Right. But if it is complete dark, what can they use? Thermal imaging cameras. Yeah. I have a story about this. Chuck.

Let's hear it. Back in the turn of the last millennium, Chuck, there was a lot of debate about whether or not police departments or law enforcement should be using these thermal imaging cameras, because they said that they could see right through walls. There was way too much detail. Right.

It was just unfair and it violated privacy. Sure. Right? And they were using them in flyovers of suspected grow houses. But basically, you could just ride around and look right into somebody's house. What?

Oh, marijuana grow house? Now you're hip. OK. So the law enforcement officers are saying, like, no, no, no. You can't see through houses. You can't. All you can see is like whether there's

a lot of heat coming off of the house. Sure. Well, I found it in an alternative newspaper in East Tennessee called Washboard Weekly. And I got to the bottom of this. And I found out that I think the Union Pacific Railroad's employed security guards who had these thermal imaging cameras to look for bums on board.

Really? And I got in touch with one of these guys. Hobos. Hobos. Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend the bums. Strictiff.

And I got in touch with one of these security guards. And he was boasting about how it could see right through two inch thick steel walls in cable cars. Wow. Or not cable cars, but box cars. Yeah, yeah. Right? And he said, you can see everything.

You can make out basically details. These things are so good. So I cracked the case. Oh, really? Yeah, no one paid attention. But I figured it out that law enforcement shouldn't be using those things. There were 20 people in East Tennessee

that were very upset as a result of this finding. Exactly. Yeah. I thought you were going to say you got to see it or use it or get a demo. No, I just got to the bottom of it. That's all. Well, good job.

Thanks. Investigative reporter Josh. Yeah. And Chuck. Yes, Josh. That's a pretty good segue. Don't you think to, I guess, accusations of overuse and overaggression of SWAT teams?

Yeah. Sure, there's a lot of controversy and criticism right now over the past decade or so. For instance, calling out the SWAT team to serve a warrant on a nonviolent offender seems like it might be overkill. Yeah, and it has been just plain old kill in several occasions.

Yeah, let's talk about a couple of these. OK. And we're not trying to blow the whistle, these things have actually happened, sadly. In South Carolina, in a high school drug raid, a SWAT team was called in to a high school drug raid. And they forced students, as young as 14, to kneel down at gunpoint and drugs dogs sniffed around

and their lockers and their backpacks. And they, of course, found no drugs. Yep. I would say that is overkill and misuse of SWAT team. Very much so. You want to hear another one? Yeah, let's hear it. In 2006, in Maryland, police raided

the home of Cheryl Noll to, I guess, seize drugs from her 19-year-old son. Those drugs turned out to be marijuana. Right. Just a tiny amount. But the cops came in at 4.30 in the morning. Cheryl Noll had no idea what was going on. So she heard somebody storming into her house,

and she grabbed her register gun and had it pointed at the floor in her bedroom where she was standing. Right. The cops kicked the bedroom door in without identifying themselves. And without telling her to drop the weapon, they shot her three times. The third time was when she was already on the ground.

Really? She was dead. And they ruled it a justifiable killing. Really? Yeah. You know, that happened in that old lady in Atlanta just last year. But it wasn't SWAT, though.

It was just regular cops. It was, I think, Red Dog. Oh, was it? Yeah. And they just busted in on her. And I think she had a gun, right? Yeah. And acted in self-defense, and they killed this old lady.

Yeah, they shot her like seven or eight times. Yeah, very sad. I think Red Dog got disbanded because of that. Did they? Yeah. Here's another good one. This is my favorite one. An optometrist, at some point, was shot and killed

by a SWAT team officer when the team was called out to arrest him for betting on football games. Yeah, a guy named Salvatore Kulosi, Jr. Where was this, do you know? It was in Boston, and the guy was complying. He was outside of his house, hands up doing everything the cops were telling him to do. And one of the SWAT team members had a, I think,

H&K or somebody's, 45, trained on the guy's chest with his finger on the trigger, and accidentally shot him in the chest and killed him for betting on NFL football. Yeah. Well, thankfully, these incidences are incidences. Maybe. Incidences are few and far between. Yeah.

And I mean, the police department in the city tends to side with their SWAT team. They'll pay out like $1 million for a wrongful death or something like that. But it's not really having any impact on the use of SWAT teams. But something else is, Chuck. What's that?

Did you notice the sidebar on the active shooter doctrine? Yes, I did, actually. That's when it's like some kook goes into the office building and starts shooting people up or a school shooter. Right, school shooting is what gave rise to this, the 96-columbine shooting for an hour while this rampage was going on. The regular cops created a perimeter

and just stood outside of it waiting for the SWAT team, which is exactly what they were supposed to do. Yeah, that's not good, though. But no, it's not. Because by the time the SWAT team finally went in, everything was over. There were, I think, 17 dead and 35 injured. One guy bled to death in the court

before the SWAT team made in. And both shooters had killed themselves. So that gave rise to this active shooter doctrine, which is kind of this new school of thought that has led to new training for just the average patrol officer to handle this kind of thing rather than sit around and wait for SWAT. So to act fast?

Yeah, and to act tough as well. I mean, if somebody's running around shooting, you can't just call and say, we need SWAT and wait an hour. You have to go in and kill the guy yourself. Neutralize. Yes, neutralize. Sorry. So that's leading to a whole new sentiment.

And like I said, training for regular officers across the country, which is really odd for SWAT now, because they're being relegated to just static situations where there's like a hostage and there's time, the element of time, which I wonder how many SWAT team members are happy about this active shooter doctrine. Yeah, seriously.

It's kind of their thing. You know, notice if we say guys a lot, we're not trying to be sexist. But most of these creeps who take hostages and barricade and then shoot up schools and office buildings, they're usually guys. Sure. Let's be real here.

Women are far too sensible to do something like that. Well put, Chuck. Sure. Well, if you want to learn more about SWAT, you can type in how SWAT teams work in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com, which of course leads us now to listener mail. Yes, Josh.

I'm going to call this Gilligan's Island reference. I'd like it already. It starts out good. This is from Dan in Fort Collins. I guess it's Colorado, right? Yeah. Hi, Chuck and Josh. Great red dawn reference in the Honey Bee episode.

I wonder how many people got that. Remember when I said Wolverines was spray painted on the front? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, should we go back in time? No, no, no. People remember it was just a couple of weeks ago. But Dan, no one actually noticed that except for you so far. Way to go, Dan.

So you're on the ball. He points out that there was a classic Gilligan's Island episode, but we're in the all classic, he says, where a Beatles-like group, the mosquitoes, got stranded on the island. You remember that? Yeah. Was there an episode where someone

didn't get stranded on the island? Even Ja Ja Gabor got stranded there. For reasons I can't remember, the castaways put together two groups of competing bands, one with the guys. The other was the Honey Bees, featuring Ginger, Mary Ann, and Mrs. Howell. And you can see that on YouTube. He gives the address, but I'm sure you can search for that

if you want to see it. So when the mosquitoes, Bingo, Bongo, Bango, and Irving, did get off the island, they sided the Honey Bees and said they had enough competition already. And all this is the course in reference to the Honey Bee cast, but it leads to this eternal question. Ginger or Mary Ann? Ginger.

Dance is Mary Ann. Mary Ann. I say Mrs. Howell. Sick of. Cougar central, buddy. I can't decide that is an eternal question. OK. She's loaded.

Well, she's rich. She's a Cougar central. Cougar central. She's sick of. She's experienced. I'll go with Mary Ann, too, though. Well, yeah. I think ultimately in the long run, definitely Mary Ann.

Although growing up as a young Baptist, it was very conflicting. It's the classic scenario of good girl, bad girl. Yeah, but ultimately, isn't the best to hope for an equal, a balanced mixture of the two. Don't you want a good girl who knows how to be a bad girl as well? I guess so.

You want Ginger and Mary Ann? Yeah. I've got Ginger and Mary Ann. Hey, now. And he goes on to say hi to Josh and Jerry because he addressed it to me. And how does Josh manage to say howstuffworks.com in time with the music at the end of every show?

And then he says, oh, I get it. Jerry does that. Wrong. That is just my natural timing. No, Jerry is the secret behind this mess. We all know that. Yep. Yeah, if she even left in one beep,

we would be in big trouble. Yeah, yeah. Well, if you have a compliment for Jerry, if you've figured out that she is the sorceress behind this entire contraption, kudos to you. Send the compliment to us in the email. Beep. Send a compliment.

Leave that in. Do you see, this is what Jerry does. Send the compliment in an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more howstuffworks? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com home page.

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The South Dakota Stories, volume one. She was a city girl, but always somewhere else in her head. Somewhere where bison roam, rivers flow, and people get their hiking boots dirty, like actually dirty. So one day, she fled west and discovered this place of beauty, history, and a delicious taste of adventure. But before she knew it, she was driving away with memories to share and the hopes of returning.

Because there's so much South Dakota, so little time.