How come there is no protocol to ensure authenticity of such claims?
You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage situation, that would render the concept worthless.
Though at this point one can easily wonder whether SWAT rapid response is such a good idea, it would be interesting to compile SWAT emergency response actions, see if the emergency response was actually necessary (versus sending a beat cop ringing the door or whatever) and weigh that against swatting abuse.
SWAT teams were initially designed to de-escalate already violent situations, not bring overwhelming violence to a peaceful situation. Sure, overwhelming violence may in many times be needed. In many times, however, it is not.
This is why we recon before we act. Unless it's an active shooter situation (the responding officers can hear gunfire and/or explosions), then it's not evidently clear that there is a violent situation that needs de-escalating.
We've seriously lost our way with SWAT. I used to say we need better training, but I'm not so sure that dismantling the moniker "SWAT" and establishing some new brand name and certification system isn't required. SWAT just means "Rambo" to too many people, laymen and LE alike.
No, SWAT teams were initially designed to end already violent situations (armed robberies, riots, hostage situations, …), however they were designed to be called in after threat assessment and tentative deescalation (by regular police units or negotiators)
> We've seriously lost our way with SWAT.
I couldn't agree more.
SWAT teams were never designed for "first response" but for "overwhelming response", they're police's special ops/SMU, but nowadays they're just a cowboy unit being sent on any trouble without any sort of situational awareness or threat assessment, better training of the SWAT units would be unlikely to help. Not to mention with the militarisation of US police (hands-me-down army and the like) having a "SWAT team" and using it for any and every thing has become a mark of rank/pride for every fucking podunk town sheriff or police office.
Back in 2014 there were ~80000 SWAT actions per year in the US, and only about 7% even remotely had anything to do with the original purpose of SWAT teams (hostage situations, barricades, significant armed robbery, …): https://www.aclu.org/blog/another-day-another-124-violent-sw...
Yes, that's part of their job. But surveillance is also part of their job -- which doesn't involve violence at all. They should be adept at performing normal policing activities in unusual environments, like hanging from the side of a building, or in an NBC environment. The point is that there just isn't a "weapons" part of SWAT; there's also a "Tactics" side. And tactics is a lot more than no-knock raids.
SWAT teams are not supposed to be shock troops, some half-assed version of Delta or DEVGRU. They're supposed to be expert in various policing activities that require unusual weapons or tactics.
As an aside, there are a lot of soldiers returning from overseas with tons of counter-insurgency training. A vast majority of this training is not applicable to domestic police work. But I'll bet you twenty bucks it ends up being part of it anyway, whether we need it or not.
That's a really bad thing for all involved.
And was there an actual emergency? The fire department also has emergency response teams, but if there's no fire, the water cannon doesn't come out.
In various other countries half of the swat company would be in prison after this.
That's why I think terrorism isn't nearly as big a problem as people claim it to be. It's relatively simple to create bombs; a malicious actor could first bomb a lot of places already, but also send bomb threats for weeks on end until nobody believes them anymore, then do the real thing.
So IMO, either terrorism isn't that big a deal, OR, all of the security measures and secret services are actually working and defusing (ha) the situations before they can act; the only recent terrorist attacks were ad-hoc things (grabbing a truck and driving through people) or from unexpected angles (the occasional school shooting).
I think part of the reason we're not seeing that is that a large proportion of the attacks we see are not the work of terrorist "masterminds" pulling strings, but mentally unhinged people who decide tying their murder-suicide to a political cause makes it "mean something". Because it'd be easy to multiply the fear in various ways if they were planning this out properly.
Officers reportedly ignored his father, Tom, and his cousin telling
them there was no hostage situation and that the so-called hostage taker
was actually asleep.> You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage
In the context of having just a random phone call to go on, with no other sign that anything may be wrong, yes: you absolutely need to have a bloke ringing the door and asking. If you don't want to send a bloke to check on the situation, there are plenty of equivalent measures available - especially if you're a militarized police force. You can send probes, you can use thermal imaging, you can ring the phones in the house, you can even use a megaphone.
It's clear that storming in and shooting anything that moves without even so much as a thought wasted on assessing whether the individual is a danger shows a blatant disregard for human life, even the lives of hostages.
"can't" by virtue of "didn't"? That's not sound logic. It makes no sense to even send in a SWAT team when a situation is not first assessed. And for that, you have to communicate.
No can't by the virtue of can't, the entire idea is a rapid response to a possible threat.
What you can do is scrap the entire concept, but don't pretend to keep it and make it completely useless by removing the one idea at the root of it.
For example, heat cameras could be used to make a map of the room and the situation in it.