What is your solution if police have to respond to the real crimes?
One anonymous source is enough to justify the police putting resources towards investigating. Knocking on doors, calling phones, etc. It shouldn't be enough for even a 4th amendment search, let alone going in with guns blazing.
Police did not go in "with guns blazing". No shots were fired.
The person who died of a heart attack came outside to greet the police with a gun in hand. The police de-escalated the situation without any shots fired on either side.
The police did not de-escalate the situation, they gave orders both impossible to comply with, and in my opinion unconstitutional (they had no probably cause with which they could seize the victim), with the implicit threat that they would shoot the victim if he did not comply.
I also saw this some in college after sports wins, where the local police turned peaceful, happy crowds into angry mobs by behaving aggressively. And then once they had people angry, that justified further escalation.
There are definitely emergency situations where knocking on neighbors' doors is not going to be fast enough.
First that shouldn't be considered probable cause without some supporting evidence, especially given the well established practice of swatting. Supporting evidence here might be as simple as proof (beyond what swatters could spoof) that the call came from the house they're busting down the door of... or peaking in the window. If the police can't establish that a crime is probably happening, they shouldn't be busting down doors, even if that means that they are possible failing to prevent a crime.
Second, busting down the door in response to a hostage situation isn't even a reasonable response, that's just asking for the hostage to be killed... the appropriate response there is to establish what is actually going on, and only then consider violent action, but almost always to try and talk the hostage taker out... in your typical hostage situation the hostage takers want something and the police have all the time in the world, unlike the hostage takers the police can take shifts and get sleep.
Think of this along the lines of the doctors "first, do no harm" principle but applied to rescuing hostages.
The police in sweden this morning freed a hostage this morning at the cost of 20 pizzas, and while I haven't seen how discussed publicly got the other hostage free and the two criminals (back) in custody. Talking really does work...
PS: While I'm at it, can I recommend "never split the difference" as a good book on negotiation, with a side of hostage negotiation stories.
Nobody busted down the doors here; in fact, in no US swatting fatality have the police ever busted doors down.
"First do no harm" is not a universal norm. It applies to medicine because so much of what happens in medicine is in some sense elective; there is an option not to intervene. No such option exists in distress call situations.
I don't think axiomatic reasoning is going to solve the problem of swatting. It's also noteworthy that, even in this case, it wasn't just the police who were tricked into intervening; the swatters got a strange man to break into the victim's house by spoofing messages on Grindr.
Certainly there have both been cases were US police busted doors in response to swatting, e.g. [1] and killed someone in response to swatting, e.g. [2]. Admittedly I'm not sure if they ever happened simultaneously, nor do I think that's relevant to any of the points I have made. The points I made were
- People have been killed while attempting to comply with police orders, which incidentally [2] is an example of (as well as an example of swatting).
- Busting doors during actual hostage situations would get people killed, not swatting. [3] is a particularly powerful example of that...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVkQ-yheOEE
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wichita-officer-who-kil...
[3] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/video-four-dead-in-p...
All of these situations are very difficult and very dangerous. I don't agree in emergency situations that the police should wait, and I don't agree that police should be militarized either. There are dangers in both situations, waiting too long and have multiple armed men in APC turn up on your doorstep to kick butt.
So if we decided that waiting is not an option which I think is an acceptable stance to take, what level of force should be used in these situations becomes the question. Especially in this example where a phone call turned into an innocent death.
I don't know what the answer is, but it very concerning that this is happening.
And how do you see that working exactly ? You're fixing the 1 in a billion edge case and breaking 99% of the real world interventions
"Sir are you stabbing your gf by any chance?"
"Hm nope, you must have the wrong number, is this a swatting aha ?"
"ok nevermind, have a good night sir"
The US police are extremely trigger happy. Since they are a 'protected class'.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/armed-police-swoop-on-hom...
The person who died came outside to greet the police with a gun in hand. The police de-escalated, but they continued to be cautious because they had received a call about a violent gun-related crime in progress.
Also, this is only one last straw in a long string of harassment tactics, those on their own should be enough to be sent to jail in my opinion. Releasing public information, tricking cash on delivery to the person's address, making false reporting of child abuse to security services about the person, coordinating to have strangers unknowingly perform home invasion at their house, etc.
There might be something to be said about a swat team response, but let's not get distracted by what is a much more common and growing type of crime.
https://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2015/08/swatting-uk-tr...
Other countries don't have loose guns policies like we do, which means that more incidents will require armed response.