In the United States, a SWAT team is a law enforcement unit which uses specialized or military equipment and tactics. First created in the 1960s to handle riot control or violent confrontations with criminals, the number and usage of SWAT teams increased in the 1980s and 1990s during the War on Drugs and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In the United States as of 2005, SWAT teams were deployed 50,000 times every year 80% of the time to serve search warrants, most for narcotics. SWAT teams are equipped with military-type hardware and trained to deploy against threats of terrorism, for crowd control, hostage taking, in situations beyond the capabilities of ordinary law enforcement, sometimes deemed "high-risk". Other countries have developed their own paramilitary police units which are described as or comparable to SWAT forces. SWAT units are equipped with automatic and specialized firearms, including submachine guns, assault rifles, riot shotguns, sniper rifles, riot guns, riot control agents, tear gas and stun grenades.

In addition, they may use specialized equipment including heavy body armor, ballistic shields, entry tools, armored vehicles and night vision devices, motion detectors for covertly determining the positions of hostages or hostage takers, inside enclosed structures. The United States National Tactical Officers Association definition of SWAT is: SWAT: A designated law enforcement team whose members are recruited, trained and assigned to resolve critical incidents involving a threat to public safety which would otherwise exceed the capabilities of traditional law enforcement first responders and/or investigative units. According to the Historical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, the term "SWAT" was used as an acronym for the "Special Weapons and Tactics" established as a 100-man specialized unit in 1964 by the Philadelphia Police Department in response to an alarming increase in bank robberies; the purpose of this unit was to react and decisively to bank robberies while they were in progress, by utilizing a large number of specially trained officers who had at their disposal a great amount of firepower.

The tactic worked and was soon to resolve other types of incidents involving armed criminals. Los Angeles Police Department Inspector Daryl Gates has said that he first envisioned "SWAT" as an acronym for "Special Weapons Attack Team" in 1967, but accepted "Special Weapons and Tactics" on the advice of his deputy chief, Edward M. Davis; the LAPD promoted. After the racially charged Watts riots in Los Angeles in August 1965, the LAPD began considering tactics it could use when faced with urban unrest, rioting, or widespread violence. Daryl Gates, who led the LAPD response to the riots, would write that police at the time didn't face a single mob, but rather "people attacking from all directions." New York University professor Christian Parenti has written that SWAT teams were conceived of as an "urban counterinsurgency bulwark."Another reason for the creation of SWAT teams was the fear of lone or barricaded gunmen who might outperform police in a shootout, as happened in Austin with Charles Whitman.

After the LAPD's establishment of its own SWAT team, many law enforcement agencies across the United States established their own specialized units under various names. Gates explained in his autobiography Chief: My Life in the LAPD that he neither developed SWAT tactics nor the associated and distinctive equipment. SWAT-type operations were conducted north of Los Angeles in the farming community of Delano, California on the border between Kern and Tulare Counties in the San Joaquin Valley. At the time, the United Farm Workers union led by César Chavez was staging numerous protests in Delano in a strike that would last over five years. Though the strike never turned violent, the Delano Police Department responded by forming ad-hoc SWAT-type units involving crowd and riot control, sniper skills and surveillance. Television news stations and print media carried live and delayed reportage of these events across the United States. Personnel from the LAPD, having seen these broadcasts, contacted Delano and inquired about the program.

One officer obtained permission to observe the Delano Police Department's special weapons and tactics units in action, afterwards, he took what he had learned back to Los Angeles, where his knowledge was used and expanded on to form the LAPD's own first SWAT unit. John Nelson was the officer who conceived the idea to form a specially trained and equipped unit in the LAPD, intended to respond to and manage critical situations involving shootings while minimizing police casualties. Inspector Gates approved this idea, he formed a small select group of volunteer officers; this first SWAT unit consisted of fifteen teams of four men each, making a total staff of sixty. These officers were given special status and benefits, were required to attend special monthly training sessions; the unit served as a security unit for police facilities during civil unrest. The LAPD SWAT units were organized as "D Platoon" in the Metro division. Early police powers and tactics used by SWAT teams were aided by legislation passed in 1967-8 with the help of Republican House representative Donald Santarelli.

The legislation was promoted within the context of fears over the Civil Rights Movement, race riots, the Black Panther Party, the emerging War on Drugs. The first significant deployment of the LAPD's SWAT unit was on December 9, 1969, in a four-hour confrontation with members

The 2007 Conference USA Baseball Tournament was the 2007 postseason college baseball championship of the NCAA Division I Conference USA, held at Clark-LeClair Stadium in Greenville, North Carolina from May 23–May 27, 2007. Rice won tournament for the second consecutive time and received Conference USA's automatic bid to the 2007 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament; the tournament consisted of eight teams, with two double-elimination brackets, a single-game final. Records listed are conference play only. SMU, UTEP did not field baseball teams. Marshall did not qualify for tournament play. Bold indicates the winner of the game. Italics indicate that the team was eliminated from the tournament

Bartho Smit was a South African writer, poet and director. He was a member of a group of influential Afrikaans writers of the 1960s, he wrote Moeder Hanna in 1959, an acclaimed drama about the Second Boer War. In 1962, he wrote the play Putsonderwater, but it could not be performed in South Africa because of its overly political message. Bartholomeus Jacobus Smit was born on 15 July 1924 in South Africa, he graduated from Standerton in 1949 with a bachelor's degree and in 1951 got a Master of Arts degree from the University of Pretoria. In 1949 he met actress Kita Redelinghuys and they married. From 1952 to 1957 they toured Paris and London as drama students under Jan Rabie, he immersed himself in philosophy while in Europe. His first publication was the story Outa Lukas, die natuurkind, published on 27 March 1941. In the forties he published poems in magazines such as The Sentinel and Huisgenoot. In 1949 the publisher Unie-Boekhandel debuted his first book of Mure: verse, he made his drama debut in 1955 with Moeder Hanna, but came to public acclaim in 1962 with his play Putsonderwater.

In 1978 he received the Hertzog Prize for drama for his body of work. In 1979 he won the Perskor Prize for Literature for Die Keiser. In 1960, he received the Encyclopædia Britannica Award for the English translation of Die verminktes, he died on 31 December 1986 from cancer. Mure: verse. Unie-Boekhandel, 1949 Moeder Hanna. Afrikaanse Persboekhandel, 1955 Don Juan onder die boere. Human & Rousseau, 1960 Die verminktes. Perskor, 1960 Putsonderwater: ’n toneelstuk in vier dele. Afrikaanse Persboekhandel, 1962 Die man met die lyk om sy nek: ’n moord-komedie. Afrikaanse Persboekhandel, 1967 Christine. Tafelberg, 1971 Die man met die alibi. Afrikaanse Persboekhandel, 1971 Bacchus in die Boland. Perskor, 1974 Die keisier: variasies op ’n sprokie van Hans Andersen. Perskor, 1977 Losgoed. Perskor, 1974 Bartho Smit on IMDb