CITIZENS, LAWMAKERS CALL FOR SWAT TEAM CHANGES

Calls Of Unnecessary Force Prompt Regulation Proposals

On a January morning, Howard County police learned that two of their
cruisers had been broken into while parked in an Elkridge
neighborhood. Someone stole penlights, a Police Department baseball
cap, citation books - and a high-powered rifle and nearly 150 rounds
of ammunition.

The next day, a SWAT team raided Mike Hasenei's nearby mobile home.

Hasenei says an officer hit him in the face with a shield, knocked
him to the ground and handcuffed him and his wife. Police shot one of
the family dogs.

But no weapon was found. And Hasenei has added his voice to those
raising questions about the use of SWAT teams by Maryland police
agencies. "It's just a sad situation that could have been avoided if
they had done some homework," said Hasenei, a 38-year-old senior
computer analyst for Marriott International.

Howard County Police Chief William J. McMahon defended the raid, one
of three that night on homes in Elkridge's Deep Run Park.

"The bottom line is that we had information that we believed the
weapons can be in that home, the judge agreed and authorized to do
the search," McMahon said. "Nobody feels good about the fact that a
dog was killed."

Hasenei, who has filed a complaint with county police, says he plans
to testify Tuesday at a state Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee
hearing. He is in favor of a bill that would require a standard
report for police agencies that would include how often SWAT teams
are deployed, for what purpose and the results of those raids.

Requests for data from several police agencies throughout the
Baltimore region produced varying amounts of information about
tactical unit deployment last year, including how many warrants led
to arrests in Baltimore County and the number of hostage situations
handled in Howard County. But none could readily provide
comprehensive information about their units' activities last year.

In pushing for the bill, Hasenei joins Cheye Calvo, the mayor of a
suburban Washington town, whose dogs were killed by a SWAT team last
year in a raid that made international news.

"It's pretty clear to me that police are using SWAT teams for duties
that used to be performed by ordinary police officers," says Calvo,
whose Berwyn Heights house was raided July 29 when police mistakenly
thought his wife was involved in drug trafficking. "No question,
there are times when SWAT teams are appropriate. What strikes me
about this is that police are using SWAT teams as an initial response
rather than a last resort."

Sen. Brian Frosh, a Democrat from Montgomery County who is chairman
of the Judiciary Committee and is co-sponsoring the bill, said, "It's
not just how they decide on who to raid, it's how they carry it out."

During the past two decades, raids by police agency tactical teams
have been on the rise nationally, experts say. Peter Kraska, a
professor of criminal justice and police studies at Eastern Kentucky
University, has conducted two national surveys of police departments
during the past decade. According to Kraska, the number of
deployments jumped from 2,500 annually in the early 1980s to between
50,000 and 60,000 by 2005.

The rise in the use of SWAT, or special weapons and tactics, teams
was largely the result of the Reagan administration's war on drugs,
Kraska said. His research details the transformation in how units are
used: from negotiating hostage situations, combating criminals with
high-powered weapons and curtailing major drug deals in the early
days, to deployments for recreational narcotics users or small-time
marijuana dealers in more recent years.

"They terrorize these people unnecessarily," Kraska said.

Radley Balko, a former policy analyst at the Cato Institute in
Washington who wrote a paper that details the history of SWAT teams
and accounts of several raids that went awry, said that this week's
hearing in Annapolis is a positive step.

"It's really sort of an obvious reform," he said.

However, the executive director of the National Tactical Officers
Association says reporting requirements for SWAT teams should emanate
from the law enforcement community, not legislators.

"Our data shows that when SWAT teams are deployed, the violence goes
down," said John Gnagey, who was a SWAT team member for 26 years in
the Champaign, Ill., police department.

McMahon said there is a clear distinction between Howard County
patrol officers' duties and those that should be handled by the SWAT
team."The threshold we use for authorizing the use of a SWAT team is:
Is there a heightened sense of danger in serving that search warrant
that the judge has authorized us to serve," McMahon said. "What's the
search warrant written for, what's the past history of those people
in the residence? All those things come into play."

High-risk situations that call for a SWAT team response include when
police face suspects with weapons or who have taken hostages, the chief said.

McMahon declined to discuss the specifics of the Elkridge raids.

According to the court documents filed in support of the "no-knock"
warrant, police said an informant told them that Hasenei's stepson,
Michael Smith Jr., who also lives in the neighborhood, and a friend
of Smith's might have been trying to sell an assault rifle the day
after the theft from the cruiser.

Police raided the residence where Smith lives with Hasenei's
mother-in-law, as well as the home of the friend.

No arrests had been made in the thefts from the police cruisers.

Hasenei said his wife, Phyllis, and their 12-year-old daughter,
Angel, are still rattled by the raid, which Phyllis said involved
about two dozen SWAT team members.

"They had their guns drawn, Angel and I were screaming," she
said."They had their black-on-black uniforms. All you could see were
their eyeballs."

Their 3-year-old Australian cattle dog, Noah, was shot after
retreating to Hasenei's bed.

Mike Hasenei questions whether officers thoroughly investigated
before securing a warrant.

"They would have found out that neither of us are violent criminals,
we don't have criminals records at all," Hasenei said. "I mind my own
business, I go to work, I make money, I come home, I take my family
out to dinner and stuff. That's the way it is with me."

2008 SWAT team deployment * Anne Arundel County: 147 responses

*Baltimore County: 153

*Howard County: 108, including 12 hostage situations.

*Maryland State Police: 106, including 38 with "no-knock" warrants.