Is Peter Kraska right?

He is a professor at Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies who has done some reporting on police SWAT teams. The Economist has based an entire article on Kraska's work. That seems strange to me. I wouldn't have expected the magazine to write an article like this based primarily on one person's thoughts. After all, The Economist is not a small-town tabloid and Kraska makes some serious charges in his attempt to demonstrate that the U.S. police have become far more militarized than ever before.

Here are some of Kraska's claims:

SWAT teams were deployed about 3,000 times in 1980 but are now used around 50,000 times a year. Some cities use them for routine patrols in high-crime areas. Baltimore and Dallas have used them to break up poker games. In 2010 New Haven, Connecticut sent a SWAT team to a bar suspected of serving under-age drinkers. That same year heavily-armed police raided barber shops around Orlando, Florida; they said they were hunting for guns and drugs but ended up arresting 34 people for “barbering without a licence”. Maricopa County, Arizona sent a SWAT team into the living room of Jesus Llovera, who was suspected of organising cockfights. Police rolled a tank into Mr Llovera’s yard and killed more than 100 of his birds, as well as his dog.

According to Mr Kraska, most SWAT deployments are not in response to violent, life-threatening crimes, but to serve drug-related warrants in private homes.

He estimates that 89% of police departments serving American cities with more than 50,000 people had SWAT teams in the late 1990s—almost double the level in the mid-1980s. By 2007 more than 80% of police departments in cities with between 25,000 and 50,000 people had them, up from 20% in the mid-1980s (there are around 18,000 state and local police agencies in America, compared with fewer than 100 in Britain).

There is no easy way to determine the validity of Kraska's numbers as police departments are not very forthcoming about the details of their SWAT raids.