You shouldn't be able to make an anonymous phone call and have the police bust down someone else's door guns drawn.
An unverified phone call alone should not amount to probable cause. That's not civilization.
To your point though - the fact that the swatting has resulted in innocent deaths is evidence that law enforcement is too aggressive.
There's like so many steps along the way where you can make an assessment of the situation before going FULL SWAT-raid. Mother in a night gown opening the door, yawning? Probably not a threat.
I'm not saying I want the job handling these situations or that it's easy, but "well, someone called, let's send in the Wet Ops team!" can't be the only answer, either! There's even videos of cops handling this super calm and professionally, basically how I described it above. So it's not impossible.
This is because in your country it is exceedingly unlikely the cops will receive a barrage of high powered assault rifle fire after knocking. The militarization of police in the US is a complicated problem that ultimately stems from our proliferation of guns which turn every interaction cops have into a potentially deadly one.
The US cops have talked about escalating risks for years but US cops haven't faced actual escalating dangers. One can track the actual danger faced by police and it has been declining.
The problem is the average citizen gets their information from TV dramas where cops indeed constantly face dangers.
headline: "Once again: police work is NOT getting more dangerous"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/10/02/...
I haven't seen many cop series lately but my impression is most police actors in hollywood don't dress up like John Rambo in fighting in the jungle.
https://www.journal-news.com/news/local/local-police-boost-a...
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/crime--law/police-ex...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/15/local-...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/09/police...
In part, this is driven by programs (as mentioned in the USA today article) where the local police forces can get the equipment itself at no cost (they only pay the maintenance, cost of shipping the equipment, and cost of storing the equipment, or any other local accommodations; all of which are a bargain compared to its actual cost)
The question is whether this level of danger is a sufficient to justify police tactics that severely endanger civilians such as no-knock raids - factors that make "SWATing" so dangerous for the average person.
The further factor here is that the false belief that there's an armed camp ready to attack cops instantly with automatic rifles can give one the distorted impression that no-knock and related tactics will save lives.
However, the reality is there are few people ready to knowingly engage the cops (since even if you win, you lose against the authorities) but there citizens who have guns ready for persons known who might be breaking into their home and so SWAT tactics can be as likely to draw fire and casualties as to avoid them in the real world. And kill innocent of course.
I would never be an advocate for the kind of no-knock raids the article is describing. I'm not addressing that by contesting the use of those statistics. My point is more that _any_ risk of getting shot in the line of duty changes the entire playing field. Just because it's declining doesn't mean that it's insignificant. That being said, as said before I'm not advocating for the kind of overwhelmingly violent responses that SWATting describes.
I don't have an opinion on that, having not looked at the data, but it is entirely plausible.
stoking the fears of the average citizen to be fearful of cops likely increases their risk of death on the job which is all this does.
SWATting and police militarization seems to have started after the September 11, 2001 attack in New York.
Regardless of your opinion on the issue, it's pretty clear that "gun ownership" and "police kicking down doors" don't correlate.
I own guns, as my father did before me and his father before him. All my brothers own guns. We're sportsmen, hunting is a popular recreation where we live.
Of all the guns in my family, not one has ever hurt a human being. Not a single incident, over many decades and who knows how many shots fired.
I have many friends with the same situation-- I don't know of anyone who has ever shot another human being. Not a single one.
The problem is the dramatic drop in respect for other people and their lives. Some people have lost respect, they are dangerous. It's not the gun's fault.
In 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000 crashes, 30,296 deadly, killing 32,999, and injuring 2,239,000.
There are a roughly similar amount of fatalities related to guns, though more than 50% of those are suicides.
I'd suggest... you know... following the rule of law.
Basically, the whole presumption of innocence thing.
A call is a great reason to respond... with inquiry.
Guns ready sure IN the event and inquiry leads to life and death situation... but that should be after the fact of an inquiry: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It's not up to me to find solutions that don't violate peoples rights. It's up to the people wanting solutions. Just because you have a problem doesn't put you above the law.
Same goes for everyone under the concept of rule of law. As someone who is dealing with a US Naturalization, the rule of law as a concept is drilled in hard. Shame people born with the right don't understand it.
Exactly! Especially since law enforcement has (successfully!) argued that they have no legal duty to serve and protect you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maksim_Gelman_stabbing_spree#L...
You can't have your cake and eat it too!
If you don't have an obligation to protect, you don't have immunity when you shoot at anyone who is not shooting at you.
IANAL. My understanding is police have a duty to the public at large, not to an individual person outside of a special relationship (i.e. witness protection). If the police did have a duty to individuals, the state would be unable to allocate police resources to best serve the public. Essentially, individual priorities would DDOS police resources. In the case you reference:
> a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen. [...] A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order. [...] Publicly furnished police protection may accrue to the personal benefit of individual citizens, but at all times the needs and interests of the community at large predominate.
A fatal SWATing recently should have raised so many red flags - caller was from an overseas number, described the house as two story when it was one, gave the wrong house color, and said that they could see things through the window from the street (when there were no windows visible from the street).
Furthermore, why do police feel obligated to respond to a phonecall that could be fake but not to a tweet, email, IM, etc?
The system is broken, phones that can call cops should have strict provenance standards.
If you're sending cops with guns to someone's house at 3am you should be required to prove your identity.
"Is something on fire?" "Is someone injured?" "I'm sorry, 911 is for emergencies only, not personal therapy"
For the moment, replace "swatting" with bona fide criminals behind the door. If the swat teams ended up killing some of those criminals that wouldn't be evidence of over-aggression on the part of law enforcement.
Since you posit that "gun drawn" is the reasonable response to swatting, then the same logic applies. You're obligated to continue wearing your devil mask for that sentence, so you have to explicitly argue why that isn't the case. :)
Yes, it would. Our police are not, as the saying goes, "judge, jury, and executioner." Those "bona fide criminals behind the door" are only accused of a crime and are entitled to a vigorous defense and day in court. They are definitely not to simply be gunned down in response to the arrival of the police.
Yes, if those people happen to do something threatening that requires lethal response--like shooting at the responding officers--then the officers are entitled to defend themselves. But police officers simply happening to show up where criminal activity is occurring does not give those officers license to "kill some of those criminals." That is over-aggression on the part of law enforcement and, sadly enough, is one of the major problems we're dealing with in Seattle in relation to our police, petty crime, the ways our police force have reacted in the past, and how to balance the competing needs.
The solution is to take these reports seriously, but with a grain of salt. i.e. don't just shoot a guy that walks out of his house while confused.
I understand police in the US has to adapt to the assumption that everyone has a gun, but even when you suspect a hostage situation what's the problem with politely knocking and waiting if you get a friendly response?
That might be a big part of the 'root cause' of this issue.
The United States has had a high level of gun ownership for several hundred years. The police response of "respond to anonymous tip by kicking down the door and opening fire" seems to be a mostly post-9/11 thing.
I suspect that the root causes are multifold:
(1) No-knock warrants became legal in 1995 to prevent the "destruction of evidence" during drug busts.
(2) Americans got really paranoid after 9/11, and more tolerant of this sort of police activity.
(3) Increasingly harsh prison conditions and unfair sentencing encourages suspects to fight back, rather than comply with law enforcement.
(4) We have a number of well-funded and well-trained paramilitary criminal organizations in the United States, thanks largely to the War on Drugs and decades of poorly-thought-out immigration policy.
Modern semi-automatic (double-action) revolvers were commonplace as of 1900.
Both of the above fired highly lethal ammunition, with rates of fire and reload not that far from modern semi-automatics, which were themselves common by the 1920s.
At which time you could mail-order a machine gun to your front door, which is So Not Even Remotely Close To Legal today.
Body armor suitable for police wouldn't become commonplace until the 2000s.
Ergo, for 130+ years, the police faced a populace armed with high-capacity assault weapons. And for most of that time, they did so with six-shot .38 revolvers and no bulletproof vests.
And only in the past twenty-odd years has kicking in doors with guns blazing become, somehow, necessary.
So, no, gun ownership, even of high-powered, high-capacity assault weapons, doesn't correlate at all to police violence.
In contrast to this, in the US, there appears to be practically no accountability for the police: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2019/07/18/cop-who-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SThUJTApA5I
In this case, they smelled smoke coming from the unit, which is why the fire department broke down the door, and the officers didn't go in expecting to get shot at.
It's easy to fault the police when they respond with guns drawn, but at the same time it's often impossible for them to know what they're about to walk into.
I'm not saying being a police officer is an easy job, but isn't that what they signed up for? "To protect and serve" (despite being legally challenged and rejected when actually taken to court where an officer refused to engage with shooters) seems to be their mantra, and they talk about putting their lives on the line for the public safety.
I fear the problem is the police are more interested in protecting themselves than protecting the public, at least in the United States.
Being a cop in an area like Japan, where you mostly drink tea and stand watch outside of the police box trying to fight boredom’s is one thing. Responding to a call in Baltimore is another.
Cops are cops they are not Seal team, they collect paycheck and want to come back home alive and undamaged, expecting anything else from them is unrealistic.
I once pulled over a few blocks from a friend's house, so I could call her and get a few final directions. A man from the house I had parked in front of instantly started talking ominously and yelling at me. I think that guy was a meth head crazed out of his mind. In the back of my mind was the possibility that he'd bring out a shotgun and start blazing away at me. (Yes, my friend didn't live in a great neighborhood.) The police here have to be prepared to deal with people like that.
I think friendly looking police androids are going to be quite helpful.
Surveillance is orthogonal to the use of authentication, although is a natural consequence of needing to keep tracking of billing records.
In a pre-adtech surveillance capitalism world, it was possible to physically enter a location and be known to some but not all.
An IFF system that's readable only to friends addresses much this need.
It's not super scalable (that's why numbers are spoofed instead) but for a couple calls it'd be no problem.
The problem isn’t that the police respond to a false alarm. The problem is that they sometimes shoot people when they do.
Maybe it works in military conflicts, but in civilian policing, it gets too many ~innocents killed.
911 call taker: “Thanks for your report. We’ll work on verifying this and might be able to get out there in 2-3 weeks.”
I don't think there can be any one-size-fits-all solution to this - each case must be assessed on its own merits.
Police: “Well, thanks for that. Have a nice day”...
Police don’t bust in and start opening fire, so your description of how this works is simply false, and removing their ability to respond to emergencies is absurd.
What's (relatively) new is that they've discovered they can summon their own personal army in the form of an increasingly militarized police force.