February 13, 2017 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee

in SUPPORT of HB0739, "An Act concerning Public Safety - SWAT

Teams - Reporting and Limitations"
Thomas Nephew, Member, Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition
[contact information]
Speaking for the activist group "Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition"
and for myself, I strongly support this legislation and thank the committee
for passing essentially the same bill last year.
The reasons to support this bill remain simple: if we arent even willing to
collect any data about SWAT team deployments around Maryland, this
legislature and our state will be sticking their heads in the sand about the
dangerous militarization of our police forces. And if we arent willing to
create training and deployment standards, the consequences of deploying
these paramilitary forces will play out in arbitrary and capricious ways across
the state.
If militarization means the process of arming, organizing, planning,
training for, threatening and implementing violent conflict,1 there can be no
reasonable doubt that Marylands police forces are militarizing, and that the
spread and indiscriminate deployment of SWAT teams is one of the main
examples. Its not coincidental that SWAT teams were originally modeled on
counterinsurgency tactics developed in Vietnam. 2 They are, fundamentally,
American authority at war with overwhelming force against its own citizens.
Some of us may accept, justify, or even welcome that, but none of us should
deny it.
As this committee knows, the Maryland General Assembly once responded to
a notorious, violent attack by a Prince Georges County SWAT team against
the home of Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo. A drug shipment purposely
mismailed to his address by criminals for retrieval by a second partya
routine evasive technique actually well known to that police department
became the cause of the invasion of his home, the death of his two dogs, an
expensive lawsuit but never so much as a simple apology from a police
force that shouldnt have even been in the jurisdiction. Even after the
lawsuit was settled, the P.G. County police department still maintained it had
done nothing wrongas sure a sign as any that SWAT teams had all but
completely escaped oversight or rational control.3
Its not just white mayors who experience SWAT raids like that one, of course
-- far from it. In 2014, the ACLU conducted a laborious painstaking survey of
police departments around the country, and found that fully 50 percent of
SWAT deployments impacted black or Hispanic targets. Whats more and
worse, over two thirds (68 percent) of those raids on persons of color were
simply for drug searches i.e., not the kind of barricade, hostage, or active
shooter situations that might justify a massive show of force . Mayor Calvos
experience notwithstanding, only 38 percent of deployments to white
households were for drug searches.4

As I testified last year,5 the Calvo raid prompted Maryland to briefly lead the
country in looking at and counting how often its police forces were deployed
like Marine platoons to serve search warrants and the like. The data were
telling:
In FY 2014 (July 1 2013-June 2014), there were 1689 SWAT
deployments in Maryland -- nearly 5 per day, with well over one a day
in P.G. County alone (418 in all).6
About two of every three SWAT raids used forced entry.2,3
In FY 2012, nearly 90 percent of the SWAT raids in Maryland were
executed merely to serve search or arrest warrants; by FY 2014, that
figure had actually climbed to 93 percent.2,7, leaving only 7 percent
for the kinds of emergencies (barricaded structures, bank robberies,
hostage situations) that SWAT teams are imagined to respond to
exclusively.
Half the SWAT deployments in 2012 were for Part II crimes, the
nonviolent class of crimes. The vast majority of those raids were to
serve search warrants on people suspected of drug offenses.3
As I also testified, the state of Maryland demands its agencies and
commissions collect and annually report detailed data--and no doubt rightly
so--on subject matter ranging from the condition of the Maryland Agricultural
Land Preservation Fund, to cemetery complaints, to horse racing and
breeding, to nanobiotechnology research grants, to public drainage
associations.8 Surely its not too much to ask that it resume requiring annual
reports about the highest levels of force employed by its law enforcement
agencies.
Indeed, this committee might go further and prohibit SWAT team
deployments and forced-entry tactics for warrants obtained on the word of a
single informant, or for persons suspected only of nonviolent crimes. It
might add amendments holding police forces liable for damages and
penalties after raiding the wrong place, as happened to Mayor Calvo and
many others.9 It might above all simply adopt ACLUs 2014 recommendation
that tactical deployments be limited to scenarios in which there is an
imminent threat to the lives of civilians or police personnel.10
But for now, I think your responsibility is mainly to see to it that SWAT team
deployments by law enforcement agencies are finallyonce againreported
to the people of Maryland. Only then can we and you, our representatives,
make an informed decision whether a state with SWAT teams breaking down
doors, and terrorizing, injuring, and sometimes killing citizensall too often
just to serve minor search warrantsis really the kind of society we want.
I thank Delegate Moon for introducing this bill, and urge you to report it
favorably.
1 Kraska, P. B. (2007). Militarization and Policing Its Relevance to 21 st Century Police.
Policing, pp.1-13. Retrieved 2/13/17 from
http://cjmasters.eku.edu/sites/cjmasters.eku.edu/files/21stmilitarization.pdf

2 Balko, R. (2013). Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police
Forces. PublicAffairs. New York.

3 Balko, R. (2013). Militarized police overreach: Oh God, I thought they were going to
shoot me next. Salon, 7/10/2013. Retrieved 2/13/17 from
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/militarized_police_overreach_oh_god_i_thought_they
_were_going_to_shoot_me_next/

4 War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. (2014).

American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved from
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-
rel1.pdf 2/13/17.

5 Montgomery County Civil Rights Coalition. (2016). 2016 MCCRC testimony for
HB521, SWAT team reporting Retrieved from
https://www.scribd.com/doc/300403906/2016-MCCRC-testimony-for-HB521-SWAT-
team-reporting, 2/13/17.

6 Fiscal Year 2014 SWAT Team Deployment Data Analysis ;MSAR # 7790 Maryland
Statistical Analysis Center, Governors Office of Crime Control & Prevention September
2, 2014. Retrieved from
http://goccp.maryland.gov/msac/documents/SWATReportFY2014.pdf, 2/23/16.

7 "Shedding light on the use of SWAT teams," Radley Balko, Washington Post, 2/17/14.
Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
watch/wp/2014/02/17/shedding-light-on-the-use-of-swat-teams/, 2/13/17.

8 MD Agricultural Land preservation fund: Md. AGRICULTURE Code Ann. 2-506;

Cemetery complaints: Md. BUSINESS REGULATION Code Ann. 5-311; horse racing
and breeding: Md. BUSINESS REGULATION Code Ann. 11-213; nanobiotechnology
research grants: Md. Economic Development Code Ann. 10-451; public drainage
associations: Md. LOCAL GOVERNMENT Code Ann. 26-902. Retrieved from
https://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/mdcode/, 2/23/16.

9 Balko, 2013.

10 ACLU, 2014.