They perform high-stakes hostage rescues, work heavily in counter-terrorism and are some of the few trained at great lengths to use assault rifles, carbines and stun grenades. They are considered the “best of the best,” but the once nearly-impenetrable boys club is now allowing females to try their shot at Special Weapons And Tactics.
Recently SWAT has come under fire over and incident in 2005 where a hostage’s 19-month-old baby was killed and earlier this year when they lost their first officer in the line of duty. These events have caused SWAT higher-ups to rightfully re-evaluate their training procedures to add more focus on analytical skills and crisis negotiation than brute strength and force. But the timing they are using to change the training procedures as well as the gender qualifications is poorly done and is the central reason that so many are objecting to the switch.
Previously, candidates spent five days completing 14 events where officials had determined that the tasks were redundant, had little to do with actual police work and were unnecessarily harmful. Despite the Hollywood halo put around the SWAT team and the shoot-out, door-busting tactics, the L.A. Times reported that “from 1972 to 2005, the period for which statistics are available, there were 3,371 SWAT missions. Of those, only 31 resulted in the death of a suspect. Thousands of others were settled without any force whatsoever.”
Since it was founded, the L.A. SWAT team has been an all-male, mostly white team of crime stopping public servants. It looked as though no woman were ever to be considered in this elite tactical division until March 30 when a woman, Jennifer Grasso, 36, entered the intense 12-week course in hopes of being the first woman to don those four letters in the division’s 37-year history.
Not surprisingly, the response to this new milestone in gender equality has been mixed. The most outspoken have been the wives of current and former SWAT officers. They are concerned that the men on the squads could be less safe if standards are lowered for females looking to try out.
The air does get a bit thin up on these pedestals, that so many insist on keeping the “fairer” sex. While the leash has gotten longer, allowing women more places to roam than just the kitchen and the bedroom, the leash still finds itself secured around many women looking to chip away at the glass (and sometimes cement) ceilings.
Things haven’t progressed as much as one would hope since the first woman who snuck her way into American combat in 1782, Deborah Gannett.
While women in the US are allowed into the military, they are not allowed the same ability to begin or transfer freely into combat situations like they do in Israel, France, Sweden, and many African countries.
It is a step in the right direction for the SWAT to begin allowing women to enter the training programs, but it seems as though they are looking for a failed effort when they package this change with changed training standards that make the public perceive lowered standards for the sake of women rather than adjusted standards for the sake of improvements for the changing tactical forces. It will take a while for the world as well as the SWAT to adjust to the open-door application, but it is a test worth taking.
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