In case anyone was wondering, most SWAT teams do 8-16 callouts a year. Major metropolitan teams might see 50ish on a busy year. The vast majority of these are hostage situations, but bomb situations and active shooters land in there too.
Which might not seem like a lot, but this scales up quickly considering there are more than 17,000 swat units in the US [0].
If we average the callouts to 12 per yer, per units, that's still 204.000 callouts per year on a nation-wide scale. A number that does not seem too unrealistic judging from past data I could find [1].
> Now go outside and start pointing firearms at people or taking hostages and you will probably be getting some SWAT attention.
The article from The Week has a WaPo source that has more detailed data on SWAT deployments in Maryland [0];
"Since the law passed in 2009, the data have consistently shown that on average there are about 4.5 SWAT raids each day in Maryland."
"• Prince George’s County alone averaged well over one SWAT raid each day in 2012 (510 in total)."
"In 2012, nearly 90 percent of the SWAT raids in Maryland were to serve search warrants."
"• 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."
So not really a lot of "pointing firearms at people" but apparently a lot of war on drugs.
Also; Around 51 deployments in Maryland didn't serve search warrants, tho it doesn't detail it further what they instead did.
Your articles source for that 80k figure is literally a guess by a criminologist who gives the range "50k to 80k" based on literally no data. The only data they are using is PG county MD which has one of the highest murder rates in the country.
In 2021 there were ~1,000 police shootings. 85% of shot suspects were armed with a deadly weapon. That's in a nation with a population of 334,000,000 people.
I'll bet you $100 those SWAT deployment figures are so low because they aren't counting all the warrants they have them serve as deployments. Departments use them constantly for that kind of stuff. They love to hut hut around and play soldier.
Side note....did you read about those 150 Americans they chose randomly, and then stripped them of their right to vote as well as their right to firearms? It's funny how I could spread that fake story and people would lose their minds talking about a government not long to stand. Yet, if I say that 150 unarmed Americans were murdered by agents of the state who were violating their civil liberties under color of authority you'll cite the national population and say that shows great professionalism. Oh....the FBI is about to stop tracking those stats since only 57% of total LEO reported to them for the 2021 numbers. Just 44% reported the year prior.
This entire bizzaro world of where it's patriotic to support a group of revenue generators for the state being able to murder someone because, "Well....he took a breath faster then the previous one and I was sure he had a SAW system in your pocket....so me and Fred shot him 37 times. Well....we shot at him 37 times. But a few hit him. Some random house of someone in that area luckily took all the wayward rounds for us!", meaning it takes a true patriot to understand that our rights are all based on supporting someone who will allow you to die or end you themselves if they even see a shadow that makes them think that you mean him harm and are planning his demise.
https://www.ksl.com/article/46295693/when-swat-teams-are-use...