Contain and Callout: A Critical Investigation of SWAT Team Use of Force Reporting and the Limits of Institutional Statistics

ABSTRACT Police tactical units, commonly referred to as special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams, are the primary focus of the literature investigating police militarization in Canada. While the contemporary debate surrounds their proliferation and expansion, investigations into tactical unit use of force are notably absent from the existing literature. This work analyzes over 1100 tactical unit use of force incidents from seven large municipal police services in Ontario, Canada, between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2022. The findings illustrate widespread underreporting of use of force, discrepancies in force reporting, and how the proliferation of police militarization has outpaced mandated reporting frameworks. These issues in reporting suppress use of force statistics and demonstrate that tactical unit use of force and, by extension, the application of militarized technologies, cannot be accurately enumerated. These results are contextualized using critical approaches investigating the social and political construction of institutional statistics, suggesting these statistics maintain the state's existing governance strategies. This paper argues that the underreporting of use of force legitimizes police militarization, providing the state with evidence to justify its expansion and counter claims of its proliferation and potential for social harm.