LAPD SWAT Team Propaganda Truck Comes to SF

A History of LAPD SWAT

Around 1967, the LAPD formed 15 four-man teams of specialized paramilitary soldiers who operated under the name Special Weapons And Tactics team. The original purpose of the country's first SWAT team was to provide heightened protection for police stations during civil unrest, which was growing increasingly common as the fight for civil rights and against the Viet Nam War reached new proportions.

In 1969, the SWAT team embarked on its first offensive operation when they conducted a raid against the Los Angeles Black Panther Party, specifically targeting a local BPP leader named Geronimo Pratt, sparking a four-hour gunfight which left 3 LAPD officers wounded and 3 Black Panthers wounded. The raid took place around the same time that Chicago police had murdered Fred Hampton in a similar raid. A quarter century later, Geronimo Pratt was released from prison, vindicated as a victim of the violent and illegal political repression program known as COINTELPRO.

After LAPD SWAT's "success" in these violent political raids, they became a full-time part of the Metropolitan Division in 1971.

By 1975, LAPD SWAT was an established paramilitary power base in Southern California. Faced with a country disillusioned by open guerrilla warfare in the streets, unprecedented political repression, and nation tearing apart from the Nixon White House to the Pentagon, LAPD SWAT turned to Hollywood for public relations assistance. A television program called "S.W.A.T." starring Robert Urich was born. The very first episode features LAPD SWAT fighting against a rash of police assassinations. Each episode brings 1970s cop show cliches to new levels, including the case against the "fashion model stalker" and another in which a terrorist group holds Miss New Mexico hostage.

Through the drug war corruption of the 1980s and 1990s, the scandals of Rodney King, LAPD Ramparts Division, the right-wing media factions under George Bush are re-releasing LAPD SWAT as a summer action movie. Meanwhile, LAPD SWAT is an established right-wing paramilitary squadron operating against political groups, conducting armed raids of people's homes in the "drug war," and expanding their power under the "war on terrorism."