...Wendy Koslicki Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically test common explanations for the growth of police militarization and to determine whether federal funding, such as Byrne grants, had a significant effect on the growth and normalization of SWAT teams. Design/methodology/approach...

... functions in American police departments. First, militarization depoliticized policing by enabling police chiefs to wrest control from local politicians over their administrative functions of hiring, firing, promotion, assignment, and discipline so that they could properly manage their own organizations...