[gingerbread-man]

It depends on how large the town is. Even in medium-sized cities (pop. <1M), it's rare to have a dedicated full-time tactical team. Usually it's a group of 6-20 patrol officers who get a few days each month to train together for various scenarios.

[maxxxxx]

The question is what training they get. I bet at least in some areas it's a lot about cool weapons and how to run into a building, not about deescalation.

I remember years ago there was an incident in Northern Virginia where they went after a few guys who were betting on football http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01.... So the cops went in with a swat team and ended up shooting one guy. No weapons were on site and nobody there had a criminal history. The cops just went in with full force and when somebody made a wrong move they shot him. Same for for the mayor of Berwyn Heights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor.... Excessive force from start without even trying to solve it peacefully.

Stuff like this simply shouldn't happen. It seems a lot of swat teams only focus on using force.

[hobls]

Yeah, that’s why I said maybe Seattle. I sort of suspect not. (And I live here.)