Dispelling Silly Movie SWAT Myths (Major Spoiler Alert!)

Ever wonder why the movies get it all wrong when it comes to SWAT? Well first… we don’t have a van with SWAT emblazoned on the side. We don’t travel around the city day and night in the proverbial SWAT van awaiting the famed SWAT call up. It would be intensely cramped, super sweaty, nasty hot and most importantly… very, very offensive to the olfactory senses. We also wouldn’t be able to see where we’re going which none of us like very much.

We don’t wear black baseball hats. We don’t turn the baseball hat around backwards when we’re ready for action. (I haven’t a clue where this came from.) In fact, we don’t even have baseball hats with the big letters SWAT affixed to the front. If we’re there on scene then you already have a pretty good idea of who we are. The police have already been there well before us. In fact… those are the guys that called us in the first place! So believe me, we don’t have to put up a billboard announcing that we’re SWAT… as much as that might satisfy some people’s imaginations.

We don’t silhouette ourselves against the skyline on the top of buildings. We don’t put up thirteen snipers aligned shoulder to shoulder along the top of these buildings (with hats on backwards). We also don’t all jump into position at the same moment. This is too much like the Rockettes on Broadway! (We do however have the Rockettes skirt outfits in our bags in the trunk.) We don’t have thirteen different models of rifles either (we also know how to hold and mount a sniper rifle to the shoulder). We don’t have shiny clothes or designer jumpsuit utilities. We don’t always wear balaclavas to hide our faces. We don’t care that a bad guy knows who we are. We’re going to have to show up in court to testify against them anyway… knuckleheads! Those balaclavas are for flashbang deployment in the case of fire so you don’t burn your little eyebrows off.

We don’t just have a web belt with a single canteen of water and nothing else on our person. Let’s see… no spare ammunition, no additional magazines, no lights, no tourniquets, no secondary pistol (we do not wear shoulder holsters which flop around either), no bolt cutters, no breaking tools, no radios etc. Nope… just one canteen of water is all we need folks. Apparently SWAT stuff makes you very thirsty.
We don’t load our rifles, shotguns or pistols just before we make entry while standing just outside the door. Generally… it’s a good idea to do all of this neat stuff well before you get moving on the scene. As an aside, why do the bad guys always re-chamber rounds again and again and cock the hammer again and again throughout the movie? At some point they would have re-chambered rounds to the point of a completely downloaded weapon!

We don’t run around with muzzles in the air covering each other’s heads. We don’t run around with our fingers on the trigger while covering each other’s heads. We don’t point a 1911 .45 auto pistol at the bad guys head with the hammer forward. The damn thing won’t work that way. It is always good to have a magazine seated in the M4 rifle. Even the bad guy probably knows that at most you could only have one round in the chamber. It is also a very good idea to have the scope mounted on the rifle pointed in the right direction. I can just imagine this conversation… Actor: “Hey, everything is really far away in this thing…” Director: “Don’t worry about it, that’s the way they come…” Actor: “Wow., really…?” Director: “Sure, far as I know…” Actor: (in a naively accepting tone) “Okay.”

When Investigators and Detectives and the scientific people (S.I.D.) personnel are on scene, we have long since finished our SWAT call-up and well before giving all these good folks the ‘all clear’ to come on scene. Therefore, when the Detectives are talking and solving the case, there are no SWAT guys moving back and forth and all around in the background of the scene doing more silly SWAT stuff.

You cannot jump through a window seven feet up from the floor, crash and roll and then come up with your trusty SWAT rifle at the ready! You would: 1.) Shatter your little legs. 2.) Shatter your little ankles and feet. 3.) Knock yourself out colder than a dead mackerel. 4.) Smash your little face in. 5.) Lose most of your equipment. 6.) Break your little arms. 7.) Break your little wrists. 8.) Break most of your fingers. 9.) Muss up your SWAT pompadour hairdo {the worst}. 10.) Break your trusty SWAT rifle or shotgun. 11.) Cut yourself to ribbons when you went through real glass. 12.) Piddle in your pants on the way to the ground when you know very precisely and with 100% assurance exactly what is about to happen to your little body.

Your gear weighs in at about 50 or more pounds over body weight. It would upend you like a lawn dart from the 1960’s. You cannot really run in it. You’d drown in deep bodies of water. You really can’t do backflips, forward barrel rolls or anything approximating the neat and nifty SWAT movie stuff. Rolling around in Olympic Gymnastic gyrations is all but impossible.

SWAT movie heroes seem to be able to pull all of this off in very high fashion so, why can’t the real SWAT dudes?

Some answers…

The movie SWAT heroes have vests filled with cotton balls and plastic thingies made to look like the real SWAT thingies on their vests. The rifles are rubber and light plastic. The pistols are rubber and light plastic. The window glass is movie prop sugar glass and not real. Movie SWAT heroes do take after take until they get it right. Movie SWAT heroes have trailers and water spritzer’s and makeup people and wardrobe people and hairdo people and personal assistants and catered meals and personal well… everything! If you put them in real gear for just 10 minutes they’d complain, fall, throw up and demand that their agent contact the director.

SWAT heroes always seem to get shot in the legs or arm. Don’t know why this is, but it is. Those shot in this manner seem to give up right then and there (they also scream quite a bit.) The guys I know and worked with would be really, really upset and come at you with everything they had if you shot them. Thirty SWAT officers get waxed by the terminator and yet they keep doing the same thing resulting in more guys getting waxed. Apparently no one on the movie SWAT team can figure out this salient point in a timely fashion. A pistol against a mini-gun firing 4,000 rounds a minute is generally not the best of tactical operations.

Rounds do not spark when hitting glass or car doors. In movies they use sparkling rounds from a paintball gun to achieve this from the prop guys standing off to the side. Also, why when the rounds do hit and spark on the car, are there no bullet strikes? Most police vehicles don’t roll over, upend and explode after a single hit from a bad guy’s shotgun round. Some do, but most don’t. Bad guy’s shotgun rounds do not exhibit a forty inch pattern from a one foot, stand-off distance. Again, some do but most don’t. Exotic weapons look cool on screen and fail miserably on the range and in the field. Don’t buy something just because the movies guys have it. Thirty movie SWAT officers shooting at one bad guy can’t seem to hit him. However, a single bad guy firing just five rounds will absolutely and positively hit twenty SWAT dudes. Not real.

To my knowledge LAPD SWAT has never really rappelled in an actual SWAT incident. We train for it but we’ve never used it. Fast roping might be more appropriate. If you’re on the line and get hung up and the bad guy is shooting at you needless to say it would be very bad. If the line separates, it would be bad. If you rappel below a point of entry, it would be bad. If the line is 150 feet long and the building is 1,200 feet high and you overshoot the end, it would be really bad. In essence, many things can go wrong but they don’t in the movies. Also, can’t the bad guys see the line dangling right outside the window? Oh yeah…most glass on buildings is structural and therefore pretty strong. If you think you can swing out and crash through the glass, roll and fire, you might be in fail mode. Most probably you’d accomplish a major face plant, pass out and fall to the end of the line followed by the ground! I know… shoot out the window right? Okay, remember, structural glass. Twelve rounds would result in twelve little holes and still the glass in place. Same fail mode – same face plant – same fall to the deck. Aren’t movies great?

Suction cups! Well let’s see… oil, dirt, water and god knows what covers the surfaces of 20 story buildings. We’ve climbed these things and they can be as slippery as a frog on an oiled skillet. Plus, at least three suction cups should be operational at all times. Still a major no-go. How about climbing up a single line hand over hand? First try this on a gymnastic climbing rope. That’s hard enough. Anything thinner without major knots would put out help calls on your hands and arms in three seconds. Again, no good. Movie bad guys also fly backwards great distances when shot. That’s because they are attached to a jerk cable which propels them (see: stunt department.) Simple physics disallows any of this from occurring in the real world.

Most SWAT guys aren’t overly muscled. They’re not overly handsome. They’re not overly young. Some are downright, well, fugly. Some are runners. Some are thinkers. Some are granddads. Most are older with experience and white hair and straight forward thought patterns. That’s why they are there. Experience.

Police Captains always seem to yell and rant in the movies. No one would listen to them in the real world if such were the case. Police Captains simply and calmly tell you what they want, though we still don’t listen to them. Movie officers are always throwing their badges on the Captain’s desk. This would get you days if anything and the end of a career if you just walked away. Let’s see… no pension, no deferred comp, no medical, no dental etc. Yeah right! Plus, the LAPD badge is rather valuable.

Now I don’t want to be a movie spoiler here although it might be too late. Entertainment is entertainment. So please don’t ask me (I know you’re going to anyway) if the movie SWAT is accurate. No it is not. I do not know of any SWAT movie that is accurate. Most of what we do would not translate to the big screen very well. It’s like watching paint dry. Very boring. So eat your Junior Mints and popcorn and slurp your soda as mayhem and disaster unfolds before you on the big screen replete with witty and pithy remarks in the face of impending doom. It’s all in good fun.

Greatest SWAT scene ever? Why the Blues Brothers of course!!!!! Hut…hut…hut….hut…hut!