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Comment by richbell | Hacker News Reader

> Do you actually think the police send a SWAT team to every single call?

I don't think that's what they're implying at all, given the context is about swatting.

They are more or less stating that the problem is overzealous responses from police, rather than police receiving a fake call for which a SWAT team would be an appropriate response.

Do police in other countries simply not have the capacity to deal with people in imminent danger? Their response to getting a call claiming that there's a crazy person in the house about to murder the caller is to knock politely and ask questions? Seems more like the police in other countries suck then.

> They are more or less stating that the problem is overzealous responses from police, rather than police receiving a fake call for which a SWAT team would be an appropriate response.

The problem is that swatting is enabled precisely because the police's response isn't appropriate. The fact that swatting is so prominent, let alone an issue in the first place, is a testament to that.

Police forces demonstrably: tend to be hyper-militarized, do not train or require de-escalation, do not face legal repercussions for unlawful actions, do not keep up-to-date with various trends and technology, etc. Going in guns-blazing isn't going to save anyone if you don't validate basic information like "is this the right house?" or "did this call purporting to be from someone in our city come from a random Google Voice or Skype number?" or "have we received fake calls from this address already?"

I can’t think of a single kind of situation requiring a police response where surprise escalation is a key component that will help solve that situation in favor of controlled investigation and a focus on de-escalation.

Active shooter probably.

Ironically the standard US response for an active shooter in a school appears to be to wait outside for a good while and see if things work out for themselves.

Which you'd think they'd verify be confirmed reports or actually, like, hearing gunshots.

> surprise escalation

surprise escalation into an unknown, unverified situation where the only basis for the use of deadly force is whether the police feel there is danger. Of course they are in fear for their lives because they are leaping into the unknown, unprepared.

We hear about the militarization of the police. I hate that term. They are playing soldier, not acting it. Having been in the military, if we had a situation and the time we would monitor a location and find out everything we could. Apparently that wasn't passed along to the police, only the guns were.

> Do police in other countries simply not have the capacity to deal with people in imminent danger?

Speaking from europe, we just don't have that here, at least not enough to have SWAT forces ready immediately.

I can't think of any times that it was a problem the SWAT team was not ready.

The equivilant to SWAT in Germany is run by state police. They are used in specific situations, and most of those are never covered by the press. Statiscally, they are have on average around one deployment per day.

The big difference is, those units in Europe are a professiobally trained force and part of a professionally trained police force. And not somw wannabe commandos recruited from ill-trained police officers run by departments too small to even exist in Europe.

> The equivilant to SWAT in Germany is run by state police.

Federal.

No?

SWAT ~= MEK, SEK

FBI HRT ~= GSG-9

The French also have multiple: GIGN from the Gendarmerie, GIPN and RAID from the Police National. The small police departments and sheriffs offices, the latter with elected sheriffs without any real training and qualification requirements, are an US thing.

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