balko_whitepaper_300x394.jpgToday, my paper on SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics is finally released. It’s been the thrust of my research for nearly a year, now. It offers a history of SWAT teams, legal background, analysis and criticism of their increasingly frequent use and abuse, and an appendix of case studies that documents more than 150 botched raids.

You can download it for free [pdf]. If you want a slick, bound copy, you can order one for $10, and you’ll also get a copy of Gene Healy and Tim Lynch’s paper on the constitutional record of George W. Bush.

We’re also launching an interactive map to accompany the paper. The map plots every botched raid I’ve found in my research, with a description of what happened and a list of sources. You can sort the map by type of incident. So, for example, if you want to see only those raids where an innocent person was killed, it would look like this. If you want to see raids where a nonviolent offender was killed (a recreational gambler or potsmoker, for example), it would look like this. If you want to see all of the “wrong door” raids where no one was killed, it would look like this.

The map is also searchable by year, state, and type of incident.

Cato’s news release on the paper is here.