A SPECIAL REPORT: HOOKED ON SWAT

Fueled With Drug Enforcement Money, Military-Style Police Teams Are
Exploding In The Backwoods Of Wisconsin

On Oct. 5, about 50 miles north of Madison in the peaceful Green Lake
County countryside of rural Dalton, the Olveda family was enjoying a
quiet evening.

Wendy Olveda, five months pregnant, was on the computer preparing
lessons for the fifth-grade class she teaches at Markesan Elementary
School. Jesus, her husband, was in the bedroom reading, and their
3-year-old daughter, Zena, was passing the time quietly on a couch.

Suddenly the door burst open and several armed men in black uniforms
burst into the home. Within seconds Wendy and her husband, Jesus,
were thrown roughly face down to the floor and ordered to put their
hands behind their heads.

An officer kept a gun trained on their backs while Zena, still on the
couch, watched in silence.

"I could hear my wife saying, 'You're at the wrong address,' but they
didn't listen," Jesus said later. "When I lifted my head to say they
were at the wrong address, one of them put a knee on my head and
ground it into the floor."

It was a textbook SWAT team execution of what's known in law
enforcement as a no-knock drug search. The only problem was, the cops
had the wrong house. The suspects were next door.

When the police finally figured this out, they rushed through a
garage door and ran across the Olvedas' property to the house next
door. One officer had to return to retrieve the search warrant.

"This is a very traumatic experience for my whole family," Wendy
Olveda said. "I don't know how I'm going to be able to sleep. How can
such a thing happen to an innocent family?"

The Olvedas filed a claim for $550,000 against the officials
connected with the Green Lake County drug task force, including the
Berlin and Markesan police departments and the Green Lake County
Sheriff's Department, which supplied the men for the fiasco. The
claim was rejected, and now the family plans to take the agencies to
court.

Except for the fact that they were not even suspected of a crime, the
Olvedas' experience is not as rare as one might think. Throughout
rural Wisconsin, squads of cops in black battle dress armed with
military-style weapons and trained in "dynamic entry" are becoming
increasingly active.

Since January 2000 alone, six SWAT teams were put into action in the
state, most recently in tiny Forest County, where only 18 patrol
officers serve a 1,000-square-mile jurisdiction with a population of
just over 9,000.

A survey by The Capital Times located 83 SWAT teams in the state, 28
of them formed in the past 10 years, 16 of those in the last five.

Since the 1970s, the state's urban centers have been a breeding
ground for Special Weapons and Tactics teams. Today there are nine
such teams in Milwaukee County alone, and seven in Waukesha County.
But most of the new SWAT teams have cropped up not in urban centers,
but in the backwoods of rural Wisconsin - places like Forest County
and Rice Lake, where populations are small and tax dollars are scarce.

Aware that the term SWAT (an acronym for Special Weapons and Tactics)
might scare citizens, most police departments use terms like
"emergency response teams," "tactical units" or "rapid response
teams."

But SWAT is what SWAT officers call it, 1,200 of whom belong to the
Association of SWAT Personnel-Wisconsin Ltd., which provides its
members with information on equipment and training opportunities.

In the course of exploring the SWAT team explosion, The Capital Times
found several patterns:

To sell local governments on the need for SWAT teams, police
officials usually talk about preparedness for terrorist incidents or
barricaded hostage situations.

But once trained, SWAT personnel are most commonly used to serve drug
warrants and make drug arrests.

The federal war on drugs provides powerful incentives for stepped-up
police activity, handing out money on the basis of the number of
arrests scored.

Some federal money meant for community-oriented policing actually
goes to pay for SWAT officers.

Despite the federal dollars, SWAT teams are money losers for the
small communities that create them, and some are starting to pull the
plug.

SWAT-related mishaps resulting in injuries and accidents are rising
along with teams and arrests.

Ask law enforcement officials why they formed a SWAT team and they'll
often talk about barricaded gunmen or the specter of terrorism.

"In today's society, you have to watch for terrorist activity," said
Sheriff Orval Quamme in Jefferson County, which started its team in
1998.

"It's always important to have the upper hand," says Chief John
Johnson of the Muskego Police Department in Waukesha County. "It's
like the Boy Scouts - you got to be prepared."

"I think a lot of these trends started in Hollywood in the '70s,"
said Clyde Cribb, a captain with the Brown County Sheriff's Office,
one of the state's larger sheriff's departments, which has fielded a
team since the mid-1980s.

"Pretty soon, every little town with a department wanted a SWAT team."

Criminologist Peter Kraska, one of the nation's leading authorities
on SWAT teams, has a similar opinion.

"It taps into a lot of masculine fantasies about being a warrior,"
says Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University.

"Culturally, it can infect the mindset of the whole police
department, or the whole police institution. It's insidious."

In his 1997 study titled "Militarizing Mayberry and Beyond," Kraska
found that between 1985 and 1995 the number of SWAT teams serving
small jurisdictions nationwide increased by 157 percent, and that
doesn't include teams with jurisdictions serving populations under
25,000. (Wisconsin has several teams in jurisdictions that are even
smaller, such as Forest County, with a population of 9,212;
Mukwonago, population 7,191; and Rice Lake, population 2,705).

During the same 10 years, Kraska found a nearly tenfold increase in
the use of SWAT teams. By far the most common use - 66 percent - was
for executing search and arrest warrants.

"The problem is, when they set these things up, they don't just sit
around and wait for another Columbine to happen," Kraska says. "They
pretend they have a serious drug problem."

Police officials would dispute that they're pretending, but when
asked what they use their SWAT teams for, they talk about drugs.

In Trempealeau County, the Sheriff's Department felt compelled to
start a SWAT team last year because of, as Lt. Mike Wineski puts it,
"some of the things nationally, and some locally, mostly at the
schools."

He later added, "We've seen drug search warrants increase over the
past few years."

In Forest County, which officially launched its team in April,
Sheriff Roger Wilson persuaded the county to fund a SWAT team after a
July 15, 2000, gun battle that ended in the death of two men, one of
them Crandon Police Officer Todd Stamper.

Asked what he plans to use the team for, Wilson replied, "Drug
searches and stuff."

In Green Bay, where "barricaded crises are happening less and less,"
according to Capt. Bruce Tilkens, the team still manages to keep
busy. "We assist the drug task force on a regular basis."

Lt. Patrick LaBarbera, who heads the Jackson County SWAT team and the
West Central Metropolitan Enforcement Group, a federally sponsored
multicounty drug enforcement cooperative, said of SWAT personnel,
"Probably their most common involvement is drug search warrants."

In Vernon County, where the Sheriff's Office launched a SWAT team
early this year, the team has been called into action once. On June
21 they burst into a home next to a day care center and seized 12.5
grams of mushrooms, 0.9 grams of cocaine and 52.7 grams of marijuana.

The teams can also be used to intimidate. Last fall, the Columbia
County Emergency Response Team stood guard during last year's
Weedstock in Sauk County, an annual event where hundreds of young
people gather peacefully to smoke marijuana and listen to music.

Bureaucratic support of SWAT teams reaches all the way up to the
federal government, which rewards drug arrests with cash, the latest
in military gadgetry and sometimes even an opportunity to train with
elite military units such as the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs.

Each year the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance disburses
millions of dollars in federal funds to Wisconsin drug task force
units, which routinely work hand in hand with SWAT teams. A fifth of
that money is calculated on the basis of drug sales arrests, creating
a powerful incentive to focus on the aggressive pursuit of drug
activity.

Here's how it works. Justice Assistance determines what federal funds
are available for law enforcement and allots 20 percent - a little
over $740,000 a year - to agencies based on drug sales arrests. That
20 percent serves as a guideline for the Office of Justice Assistance
when it determines agencies' actual awards.

Once the money is distributed to the task force, it trickles back to
individual law enforcement agencies in the form of reimbursements for
overtime costs related to drug enforcement. Police departments can
request reimbursement for drug-related activities ranging from a
full-fledged SWAT team raid to a traffic stop during which illegal
drugs are found.

Overtime costs stemming from non-drug related policing, such as a
stake-out for a burglary case, are not eligible for reimbursement.

"From a manager's standpoint, when you're dealing with dollars and
cents, it's an easier pill to swallow knowing you're recouping costs
through the program," LaBarbera said.

Office of Justice Assistance officials were not able to provide the
actual awards because they are grouped in with other federal funding
based on crime and population. But the OJA guidelines provide a sense
of the dollar amounts attached to drug sales arrests, each of which
in theory earns a task force about $153. For instance, Milwaukee
County drug task forces were in line for $284,973 in 2000 for the
1,852 drug sales arrests made in the county. That was down from 2,122
arrests in 1999, theoretically representing a nearly $40,000 funding
decrease.

But as Milwaukee County's share decreases, rural counties with new
SWAT teams are increasing their take. Between 1999 and 2000, Jackson
County boosted drug sales arrests from 13 to 57, raising the amount
of potential funds available to the drug task force from $1,987 to
$8,770.

In 2000 in tiny Forest County - which was still in the process of
training officers for the SWAT team it launched this year -
authorities made 35 drug sales arrests, putting the drug task force
overseeing the county in line for $5,386. That more than doubled the
previous year's total of 16 arrests for $2,446.

And 2000 also marked the debut of the team in Crawford County, where
drug sales arrests increased from nine to 14. Grant County, which
began a team in 1999, increased arrests from 11 to 34. In Juneau
County, which launched a SWAT team in 1998, drug sales arrests rose
from 37 to 57 between 1999 and 2000. (Trempealeau County, which began
its team in 2000, was the exception - it actually saw a decrease in
drug sales arrests, from 15 in 1999 to 10 in 2000.)

In fact, the proliferation of SWAT teams in rural Wisconsin
corresponds with an increase in drug arrests across the board,
including small-time marijuana possession, by far the biggest
category. Factoring out the urban sprawl of Milwaukee County,
marijuana sales arrests in the state increased from 1,368 in 1998 to
1,650 in 2000, a 20.6 percent increase. Drug arrests for simple
marijuana possession reached 12,817 in 2000, an 18.9 percent increase
over two years.

In 1994 the federal government stepped up its practice of handing out
free military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, making
available everything from M-16 automatic rifles to armored personnel
carriers. Several departments now possess grenade launchers, which
can be used to deliver both tear gas and crowd-dispersing, non-lethal
rubberized fragmentation grenades.

Officials with two of the state's newer SWAT teams, in Vernon County
and Jackson County, said the $10,000 to $15,000 cost of starting a
team is almost completely covered by state and federal donations,
either in cash or in kind. Those costs include a 40-hour basic SWAT
training course, weapons, protective gear, uniforms, diversionary
flash-bang grenades, tactical shields, surveillance equipment and
break-in tools for no-knock raids.

The federal government also indirectly funds military-style policing
from an unlikely source: the Community Oriented Policing program,
which throughout the 1990s has promoted a softer, gentler approach to
law enforcement and has funded thousands of new community-oriented
police officers.

The two philosophies would seem to be at opposite poles of the law
enforcement spectrum, but Kraska says the extra officers hired for
community policing are often trained in SWAT operations.

"There's no doubt it's bastardizing the concept of community
policing," he said.

Vernon and Jackson counties, asked by The Capital Times to provide
detailed budget information about their SWAT teams, both reported
using officers funded with COPS grants on their teams.

Despite the federal and state aid, SWAT teams are money-losing
propositions for local taxpayers. LaBarbera, who heads Jackson
County's nine-man team, estimated overtime costs for ongoing training
at about $6,000 a year. Undersheriff Jim Hanson of Vernon County -
where the Combined Tactical Unit includes 10 officers from the
Sheriff's Office and the Viroqua and Hillsboro police departments -
estimated that county taxpayers pay $7,200 and $8,400 a year for SWAT
training. He pointed out that local taxpayers also contribute to the
state and federal money pools that paid for the team's start-up costs.

"It's still tax money however you slice it," he said.

The costs have prompted a few departments to pull the plug. In
Marquette County, where there are only 10 county patrol officers,
Sheriff Rick Fullmer disbanded the SWAT team in 1996 because, he
said, it was simply not worth the money. Besides the start-up costs -
which include a basic SWAT course for team members, protective
clothing, equipment and weapons - he said it would cost his
department a minimum of $10,000 a year for training.

Fullmer said with Marquette County's narrow tax base - its 2000
population estimate was only 13,885 - the cost is too much, and
budgetary concerns would compromise training.

"I said, this is ridiculous. All we're going to end up doing is
getting people hurt."

Now if he needs a SWAT team, he can call Columbia County, though he
knows of only three instances in his 24 years with the department
that the department resorted to SWAT action. Even if he didn't have
access to another team, he said, he wouldn't start one.

In Ashland, which employs eight patrol officers and where former
Police Chief Page Decker disbanded the team, his successor, Dan
Crawford, is trying to restore it.

In both cases, disbanding the teams caused dissension in the ranks.

"I'm of a mind that you should be tactically ready and sound, ready
to take care of business when you have to," says Capt. Mick Brennan,
who is working with Crawford to reconstitute the team.

Former Marquette County Sheriff Steve Sell has a different take.

"Quite frankly, they get excited about dressing up in black and doing
that kind of thing," he said.

If SWAT teams and arrests are on the rise, so is the number of
SWAT-related mishaps, including deaths or serious injuries of
citizens or officers.

Between 1995 and 2000 there were at least 230 such incidents
nationwide, including the 1995 accidental shooting of a Dodge County
man as he was being handcuffed during a drug raid.

"All for what end?" Kraska says. "My data show almost all of the time
it's for small-time drug cases. I would submit it's not worth the
risk."

In the Dodge County case, only a small amount of marijuana was found
in the trailer.

The city of Neenah and Outagamie County recently paid a $67,000
settlement for a 1998 drug task force raid during which an officer
went to the wrong door. And a Muskego woman who was forced to the
ground and handcuffed during a botched drug raid last Valentine's Day
has filed a $1.2 million claim against Muskego and Waukesha County
officials.

"It's a Catch-22," Muskego Police Chief Johnson says of sending in a
SWAT team. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Obviously it's a
traumatic thing, if you're a citizen."

You don't have to tell that to Wes Jankowski of Fall River.

On the afternoon of Dec. 5, 1997, Jankowski was awakened from a nap
when he heard loud pounding on his door. When he got up to see what
the commotion was, the door flew open and he was staring down the
barrel of a machine gun.

"It looked like a short Darth Vader," Jankowski said of the
diminutive officer wielding the gun, "but it was scary. He stuck an
Uzi in my face and threw me on the floor."

The intruders were members the Columbia County Emergency Response
Team, which was acting on a single tip from a confidential informant
that there were drugs being sold from the house. While the first
officer forced Jankowski to the floor, holding a gun to his back,
others piled in behind. In seconds, they were in every room of the
house, looking through drawers, under beds, in cabinets.

In addition to the 12 men in black battle dress uniforms and Kevlar
helmets, other officers were outside at the perimeter, hiding behind
trees, rifles trained on the house.

After a search that lasted nearly eight hours, police uncovered 5.1
grams of marijuana, enough for about five or six marijuana
cigarettes, and 12.6 grams of hallucinogenic psilocybin mushrooms,
all of which belonged to Jankowski's roommate.

Jankowski told The Capital Times he still has flashbacks from the episode.

"It still runs through my head sometimes," he said. "Especially the
door coming open and the barrel of the gun sticking in my face."