'IRON FIST' OF POLICING SWAT TEAM USE QUESTIONED

First, Clarence Green lost his wife, Olive, to cancer. Then, he lost most of
his keepsakes of her, the girl next door he had known since she was born.

Gone were photographs of his childhood sweetheart as a raven-haired
teenager, and the 1 1/2-carat diamond ring she wore for 44 1/2 years after
he proposed on bended knee.

The mementos and more were destroyed by a December 1996 fire on Fairmount
Street that was preceded by a loud boom and bright yellow light. Green, 69,
a retired roofer, thought it was a thunderbolt. But he soon learned it was
the flash of Fitchburg's finest: The police Special Response Team had
accidentally set his apartment house ablaze with a stun grenade in its quest
to catch a dangerous drug dealer on the fourth floor. The episode left six
police officers injured, 24 people homeless, and lingering questions about
whether strategies of Special Weapons and Tactics or SWAT teams like the
Special Response unit are over the top. After all, the same SWAT unit was
criticized by civil libertarians two weeks ago for an earlier foray in
Fitchburg. The SWAT team had been called in to arrest a group of young men
in 1993 for lingering on the sidewalk and blocking the public way. The team
had ended up allegedly cursing and kicking some of the men in a police van.

A federal jury in Worcester last month absolved the officers of charges they
violated the suspects' civil rights, but the case exposed a growing practice
of police departments - their use of high-powered SWAT teams to handle
everyday predicaments.

Even as law-enforcement agencies have adopted community policing as the
mantra of the moment, the same police forces are deploying paramilitary
squads as neighborhood crime fighters. In growing numbers, small towns are
forming SWAT units.

''We're seeing the kinder, gentler approach, certainly, but the growth of
the iron fist as well,'' said Peter Kraska, a professor in the police
studies department at Eastern Kentucky University.

In an era when high-risk incidents appear ever more dangerous, many
law-enforcement specialists see the value of having a highly trained squad
at the ready.

''My take on them is that conceptually they're absolutely necessary,'' said
Peter Klinger, a criminologist at the University of Houston. ''A bombing, or
when you have people going into school yards and blowing people away, which
is happening more often these days, demonstrates why. Lack of this kind of
expertise in those situations often leads to disaster.'' But when such
specially trained personnel, pumped up and on high alert, are dispatched on
low-key missions, critics say routine operations can become reckless. ''What
is a SWAT person: Are they a soldier or a cop?'' asks Peter Cassidy, a
Boston industrial analyst who is writing ''Garrison America,'' a book on the
militarization of civic institutions.

''It's a conflict within itself and that's why things go wrong,'' said
Cassidy. ''It increases the number of guys pretending they're GI Joe.'' The
first SWAT team was created by the Los Angeles Police Department in the
mid-1960s, following civil unrest. Since then, the trend has quietly spread
to communities large and small.

Nationally, Kraska said that in 1996, 80 percent of the cities he studied
with populations greater than 50,000 had SWAT teams, while 65 percent of
smaller cities had tactical units.

Though precise numbers are not available, more than 50 municipalities in
Massachusetts share SWAT teams with other communities or have their own
squad. The communities range from Boston, a metropolis of half a million
people, to Harwich, a town on Cape Cod with a population of 11,000. Funded
by federal grants, money seized in drug raids, and municipal budgets, and
equipped with battering rams, body shields, high-powered weapons and more,
the squads are trained to respond to hostage crises, snipers, and suspects
who are armed or behind a barricade.

Last month, New Bedford's SWAT team got credit for helping to defuse a tense
hostage-taking at a McDonald's. Police, however, say one gunman may have
been fatally shot by patrol officers before the tactical unit arrived. A
second gunman got away, taking two hostages, also before the SWAT unit
arrived. While police defend their units as potent weapons in the war on
crime, critics say they confer on departments a measure of power and
prestige. ''The real reason they have risen in popularity is that they are
highly exciting and alluring to a good portion of the police subculture,''
Kraska said. ''It's intoxicating to go out and do raids on homes like Navy
Seals.'' Like those in other towns, Harwich police said that in 1996 they
formed their unit because they felt they needed a big-city response to the
coming of big-city crime.

''We've started to get more of the problems that folks in the city have been
dealing with for a while,'' said Lieutenant Barry Mitchell, who oversees the
department's Emergency Response Team.

Mitchell said Harwich's 10 Emergency Response Team members are called from
their regular shifts as police officers about once a month to handle
emergencies involving everything from domestic crises to drug dealing. Last
month, the emergency team flew into action after a woman who escaped from a
home on Main Street told them there was a man inside claiming he was Jesus
and threatening to kill her or anyone who entered. As the team plotted
strategy, the man walked to a liquor store across the street. He was tackled
and arrested.

The police posture is that they must always be prepared for the worst, and
that a disciplined SWAT team increases the likelihood of crises being
resolved peacefully.

''It makes a lot more sense to call in people who are expertly trained in
de-escalating the incident,'' said North Andover Police Chief Richard
Stanley, control officer for the regional SWAT team in northeastern
Massachusetts.

But critics say once a department has a SWAT team it is hard to control the
urge to overuse it.

''They were once reserved for the most serious situations,'' said Kraska.
''But the definition of a high-risk situation has gone from the most extreme
barricade or hostage to ... a situation where anyone refusing to come out of
their home is seen as a need to deploy a SWAT team.'' Fitchburg's SWAT team
received its marching orders in 1990: ''To establish an organized response
to unusual high-risk situations, barricaded suspects, hostage situations and
other similar life-threatening events where citizen or officer safety is at
risk.'' That night in 1993, when the group of young men were loitering on
Green Street, was a busy one for the 10-member Fitchburg Special Response
Team. Armed, masked, and dressed in black, the squad had just stormed a
Beech Street Lane apartment, deploying a stun grenade that diverts attention
with a bang and flash. From a previous undercover buy, police expected to
encounter cocaine, and a female drug dealer, armed and behind a heavily
chained door.

What they found was money, the 38-year-old woman, and her two startled
daughters, 15 and 8 years old.

''They'll never trust a cop again,'' said Cassidy. Fitchburg police said
that because the response team was already on call that night and in the
area, it was then summoned to arrest the nine young men, mostly minorities,
who refused to leave the Green Street sidewalk. ''Regardless of how they're
dressed ... no matter what they're called ... they're police officers,''
said Captain Charles Tasca of the Fitchburg police. ''They're charged with
enforcement of law, protection of property. That's what they did that
night.'' Cassidy, however, said such episodes involving SWAT teams can
undermine the public trust that the same officers try to forge through
community policing. A similar situation occurred in Boston in 1994, when a
Boston SWAT team drug raid on the wrong apartment led to the death of the
Rev. Accelyne Williams from a heart attack.

The city paid $1 millon to his widow, but ripples of mistrust against police
remain in the minority community here.

Cassidy suggested SWAT money would be better used on youth outreach.
Clarence Green would agree.

A year-and-a-half ago, the Fitchburg Special Reponse Team targeted and
arrested a drug dealer known to carry a gun who lived in Green's Fairmount
Street apartment house. Before bursting into his apartment, the team flung a
stun grenade to catch him off guard. But the device sparked a fire on the
stuffing of a sofa, the blaze spread, and the apartment building was gutted.
Now, flies hover around the empty lot where Green used to live. Even though
Green had complained to police about the drug dealer in his building, he
said of the special unit: ''I think they went wild over it.'' After the
fire, Green got a $5,000 settlement from the city. Some of the SWAT officers
were cited for bravery.

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"