In some ways have these types of teams/units could be useful, as it could allow more 'aggressive' tactics to be standard operating procedure (SOP) for only certain officers allowing others to be trained for other things.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/am...
* http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/06/29/many-countries-po...
It's like in the UK where most officers are unarmed, and only a select few are trained for firearms:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialist_Firearms_Command
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_unit
In Germany, where all (?) officers are armed:
* https://www.dw.com/en/why-german-police-officers-rarely-reac...
* https://www.dw.com/en/when-are-german-police-allowed-to-use-...
Perhaps putting all the "warriors" into special units that are only deployed in certain circumstances could allow for the beat cops to have different mentality:
Of the agencies the article mentioned, each of them did seem to have their own mission and set of security issues to address. Why would it be necessary to shift management of that to a seperate organisation? Standization is obviously very virtuous, but it’s usually at odds with specialization which seems like it would be required in some of these situations.
Anybody who’s worked in a large organisation knows the pain of one size fits all solutions handed down from executive management. It’s the same in the government, only orders of magnitude worse. For instance the army is obsessed with standization in its procurement pipelines. Any time it buys anything it wants to buy one thing that works for absolutely everybody (this is honestly their most important concern when it comes to procurement), and all of the people that end up using that equipment hate it. You always end up with a one size fits nobody solution.
Here's my reasoning: at the Federal level, the US is large country (4th geographically and 3rd by population) and the federal agencies cover lots of different areas. Yes, you need different people with different skills to protect a spaceport, a train, a nuke on a truck, etc. OK but what about Amtrack what's so special about trains? Well, the article had the example of the Amtrack team training on a special ladder for getting inside of a train. Just think of the Coast Guard teams that intercept narco submarines, sometimes by jumping on the sub, banging on the hatch, and pointing their guns (maybe that was the military side of the CG, not sure) [1].
So the idea that each specialized agencies has specialized teams with specialized skills doesn't seem too far-fetched. The fact that there is a federal facility to centralize and standardize the training is actually a good thing. Give everyone a solid basic training, and then local training in their agency's special conditions, and that seems like an effecient way to handle the requirements.
As for why the US needs such SWAT teams all over the place, I think could be more debatable, but the rise of terrorism, however much overplayed is real (Oklahoma, 9/11, Paris, Paris again, etc.). As much as I think the Patriot act was a power grab and right-wing gift to the military-industrial complex, you also can't do nothing. Like I said, the US is a huge country, has lots of exposure and targets, and has made more than a few enemies (I wish it wouldn't).
And I really like the idea in the US that the military is not deployed against civilians, yet the federal governement needs some way to protect its facilities and activities (and policies, for example school desegregation). So federal agency police forces with appropriate military-style training seems to be the next best solution.
I agree that universities, school districts, and local police forces with SWAT equipment is really crossing the line. But that really is a separate issue, and looking at federal responsibilities and spheres of action, I think it does make sense.
Of course this mostly stands out in the federal government, which is almost certainly wasting money by maintaining so many separate law enforcement agencies, especially when a certain degree of standardization is in place in that most federal law enforcement officers (but not all) train at FLETC. This makes you question whey there are a million separate agencies instead of one large one.
And for the most part the answer isn't really a good one... just an agglomeration of history, with the most significant part being a result of the Inspectors General Act which basically created the situation that every executive branch agency has its own internal law enforcement organization.
For example, given that the Federal Protective Service exists, one wonders about the necessity of so many executive branch agencies having their own law enforcement unit to protect their facilities. But then one wonders why the Federal Protective Service exists when there is some historical justification for assigning that duty to the Secret Service. And so on.
Look at it this way: a similar controversy has existed at a local level over university and school district police departments acquiring ex-military equipment and establishing tactical units. Once again it's probably a lower risk than the municipal police department, but it does say something about the state of militarization. And then one can wonder why it is typical in many areas for universities and school districts to have their own police departments, which often face funding, training, and retention challenges compared to the municipal departments... Around here the university police departments have a reputation as a mill that pays for people to attend the academy, after which they spend their mandatory six months and then immediately transfer to a municipal agency with better pay. As you can imagine this does wonders for the quality of the workforce in the university departments.
More broadly, this whole thing also touches on the uneven training and staffing standards for US law enforcement agencies, which seems to result in good part from both the sheer number of such agencies and the various peculiarity of the state laws under which they obtain their authority (e.g. consider states that do and do not commission security police). This should be less of a problem with federal agencies due to the de facto standards established by FLETC, but we've seen in e.g. Portland that the inconsistent policies of federal agencies with regard to oversight, use of force, etc. can very much be wielded against the citizenry.