My husband and I had dinner with several local S.W.A.T. guys from different teams tonight, and we sorted through a lot of the misinformation going around. I will go over both side's false accusations and give a little background that may help put things in perspective.
St. Louis City has over 300,000 thousand residents, the surrounding county has over 1.3 million residents. St. Louis Metropolitan Police department has direct jurisdiction over the 300,000. St. Louis County Police Department has direct jurisdiction over the 1.3 million in the county. Also in St. Louis County there are 75 separate municipal police Departments that report to their elected Mayor. This is very unusual in the United States, and creates a unique structure of small Kingdoms and power struggles. Ferguson City P.D. is one of those small Kingdoms. Each small city P.D. typically has signed mutual aid agreements with the other small P.D., and a mutual aid Agreement with St. Louis County P.D. for services from the Crime Lab, and St. Louis County Tactical Operations when a large S.W.A.T. operation is needed. The County team gets called out around 230 times a year.
The large tactical teams, St. Louis City S.W.A.T., St. Louis County Tactical Operations, St. Charles County S.W.A.T, all have signed mutual aid agreements for increased manpower, and relief in long call outs such as, riots, hostage rescue, and barricaded subjects.
The last time a large mutual aid call went out was for the riot that occurred during the Guns & Roses concert. Many police officers were hurt, no one was killed.