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Comment by scoggs | Hacker News Reader

I've thought similarly about people who are feeling the threat of being swatted informing local authorities of the possibility but that presents another problem. The police aren't going to 100% trust people calling in to say, "Hey, if anybody calls you to say I'm doing something illegal I am calling you to tell you right now that I'd never do anything like that!" and it makes me feel that forewarning them might pose more problem than not. The entire situation is sticky and grimy and I agree with Krebs that the punishment for causing a swatting incident needs to be a felony in all 50 states.

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If you go to the station and give your id, make a statement and they verify where you live and who you are?

Do they really have a process in place to check if addresses are on a 'do not SWAT list' before sending in the cops? How is such a list maintained and verified? Who approves changes to it? How long do addresses stay on it and what's the process for removing them?

There is no such thing as a 'do not SWAT' list, and there is no such process in place.

The hope isn't that they never show up at all, it's that that show up aware it's possible that the accused people are actually the victims and they need to be careful not to over react.

Whether the warning pays off is still mostly unknown ground.

Yes you might be surprised but the police keep notes/tabs on the community. If you call something in or otherwise inform them you will be in the system which would alert them.

In the heat of the moment (police suddenly getting a dispatch for a murder / hostage situation at a local residence) I hardly believe anyone involved is going to have the time to thumb through notes like that. Maybe in a really small rural community but I can't imagine there would be much chance of things going properly in any sort of larger municipality or city.

The dispatcher will type in your address into their computer and will immediately see and read these notes.

Are these notes available as part of a freedom of information act request? Because one should be able to have written verifications these notes exist for when the inevitable breakdown in communication occurs and the note is not passed along to first responders on the scene.

I would assume so.

Of course various dispatchers will be running different software so this may not be universally supported, but these notes are a pretty basic feature.

Indeed, seems plausible the police keep tabs on individuals in the community (yay for the privacy implications there) but the point of the gp is the cops have a disincentive to take X citizen's statement "Hey, I'm doing nothing but someone might swat me" since that's what a criminal would say. ("There is no 'do not Swatt' list" is a great tl;dr;)

I mean, if there was a special thing someone could do before hand to keep the cops from showing, guns blazing, when they thought it was appropriate, nearly everyone would do it and that would be a problem if such a response was appropriate.

So there's really only approach - make cops dial back on the use of deadly as their default. That's the only thing, there's no way to get a special "no don't shoot" card for random in random suburb, much as people might want it. Well, unless you are a neighborhood with money, then it's different.

Edit: And don't think the cops would cough-up their notes on house X for the same reason. Obviously, if the cops even admit they are keeping those notes, of course they become subject to all sort of controversies. Whether they're constitutional would come into question, etc.

> There is no such thing as a 'do not SWAT' list

Well, to be fair, most of the world is a 'do not SWAT' list. I know that's not the point you were making, but let's keep things in perspective.

They really aren't though. Anyone who knows your address could swat you anytime, and the reason most people are safe is merely not being an interesting target for those people unstable enough to do it.

Well, they're not allowed to operate outside the US.

(I mean, it would probably cause an international incident and such)

That would definitely be more ideal than a simple phone call but I still can't imagine a police officer / police department finding it anything more than odd which would set off all sorts of red flags.

I fear going to the police preemptively would make the situation far worse, as it so often does.

Do you have any citations for this claim?

Brian Krebs did just this, visiting the local police to inform them of the potential for a swatting attack.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-fo...

Then when he was later SWATted:

"One of the officers asked if it was okay to enter my house, and I said sure. Then an officer who was dressed more like a supervisor approached me and asked if I was the guy who had filed a police report about this eventuality about six months earlier."

For all we know it could have saved his life.

From the krebsonsecurity link, it appears that Krebs was first confronted by officers with firearms drawn and handcuffed before meeting with the supervisor.

Right. The point is that someone who appeared to be a supervisor, in other words in charge of the swat team, was apparently already aware of the chance that this was a case of swatting. Going into the situation, that knowledge likely made the swat team's approach more professional and safe, thereby possibly saving Krebs' life.

Yes, agreed. Just because he was handcuffed for a period doesn't mean they weren't trying to be careful and already under the impression it would be a false alarm. That doesn't mean they let their guard down and don't take it seriously, which depending on the reason they are there may mean securing the area and people in it.

"For all we know it could have saved his life."

It says something pretty sad about American society that your assumption is that calling the Police will result in them murdering an innocent person.

Says quite a lot more about American police, I'd say.

It's hyperbole. Millions of citizens interact with police on a daily basis and don't get shot. That obviously doesn't excuse the cases where it occurs, but it's not like this happens on a significant number of calls.

Once we define what kind of encounters to sample, specifically encounters involving police breaking into your home, it's no longer a ratio of 1:1000000+ that you will have a bad encounter.

If I were told the chances of me dying from jumping off a cliff were 1:1000, I still wouldn't jump that cliff.

Well, what it says is definitely not great, but in this specific case it's probably a bit less about the police overreaction and a bit more about the prevalence of guns and how to safely proceed when notified about extremely volatile and dangerous situations, such as a hostage situation with an armed individual that is exhibiting signs of mental instability (whether true or not).

How the police respond may be weighted too much towards a specific action, but it's important to consider this is the actual reason that SWAT teams exist.

I would definitely be interested in knowing how situations like this are handled in other countries, and the success rates involved. My suspicion is that in countries without the equivalent of SWAT some scenarios don't have an adequate response, while others that we use SWAT somewhat inappropriately for that are handled better. I suspect a less military approach is better overall, but an entire lack of that option isn't beneficial either. I don't think it's hard to argue that there's far too much police militarization in the U.S. right now.

I think you just proved his point.

How insane is it that you have to pre-empt SWATing now?

The only reason this is even a problem is because (too) many people know that the police is so trigger-happy these days that all it takes is say something dangerous-sounding about someone else and there's a not insignificant chance that the police will murder them.

That's how out of control the "Serve and Protect" police has gotten in the US.

My claim was that I fear it, which is true, although I cannot provide a citation. I could certainly point to many instances of people preemptively calling police (i.e. not reporting a crime) and the police showing up and doing horrible things.

Considering the worst case scenario when being swatted is ending up dead, I think giving them a heads up about fraud risk is sensible.

Speaking to cops without a lawyer is a bad idea in many cases, but this doesn't appear to be one of them.

I see what you're saying, but I think it could stave off a lot if a cop visited your house, looked around, and verified that you're not Walter White. If the 911 call came in, I'd hope the local PD would be a bit more likely to think "isn't that the nice scoggs guy we visited last week and not the bomb maker the person on the phone is claiming?" I'm sure they'd still come and investigate, but hopefully not with guns blazing.

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