In New Haven, Connecticut, Police Chief Nick Pastore was facing growing pressure to collect military gear from the Pentagon and to use his SWAT team in situations where he thought it was inappropriate. Pastore told the New York Times that outfitting cops in battle garb “feeds a mind-set that you’re not a police officer serving a community, you’re a soldier at war. I had some tough-guy cops in my department pushing for bigger and more hardware. They used to say, ‘It’s a war out there.’ They like SWAT because it’s an adventure.
