re: #131 Dark_Falcon

“Why North Tonawanda, NY needs a SWAT team is beyond me”

Lackawana Six was a terror threat for the next town over. Add to that, the fact that Tonawanda is part of the greater Buffalo area.

But your larger point of why smaller towns/communities need SWAT is a good one - particularly because of the militarization of police forces nationally, and progressively arming those police departments with military surplus (whether its armored vehicles or heavier weapons). Some of that is due to the fact that there are school and mass shootings all over the country that don’t correlate with big cities (Aurora, Columbine, Binghamton, etc.) and you’ve got police departments getting DHS grants for upgrading equipment to deal with potential threats - and not just terrorism.