I know this is a stale take at this point, but seems like part of the problem is the eagerness of US police agencies to respond with full SWAT units on the basis of a single phone call
- 911, what is your emergency?
- Help me oh god! ... My husband he's going crazy he got a shotgun and is threatening to shoot my kids he...
- [garble garble]
- [Distant voice of a man] "get the fuck off that phone"
- [Loud bang]
- [Line clicks and goes silent]
Though I doubt fake swatting calls are so well produced.
edit: In this situation, whether real or not, obviously the police shouldn't murder people. If this was real, they should first exhaust their non-lethal options for keeping the crazy husband from murdering children. If it's a fake swatting call or the wrong address, they should discover that and especially not murder people. But in response to the parent's point about the police being eager to rush over from a single phone call, this seems like a 20 second phone call where they have no ethical choice but to rush over. How they behave when they arrive is a different topic from what I'm responding to.
One of the cops that responded tried to blame me.
The closest I've ever been to being arrested was when I had to call the cops because I got robbed while at work.
They had footage of another person entering the store and then sprinting out, but the 17 year old nerdy kid was a much easier target.
Never again.
Is this one of those fabled edge compute use cases?
In the end it's a really crappy situation for everyone. Police have to be super alert and are likely jumpy because they expect to be shot dead if they aren't the first to pull the trigger.
Personally I don't really blame the police. Rather I blame the phone industry for giving these callers way too much anonymity. It should be trivial to trace a 911 call to a real paying phone customer. That would make swatting a lot less attractive (assuming it carried a very heavy punishment too).
In the Breonna Taylor incident [0], their eyes weren't closed, but they may as well have been:
> Police then fired 32 rounds into the apartment... Cosgrove fired 16 shots from the doorway area... Hankison fired 10 times from outside through a sliding glass door and bedroom window, both of which were covered by blinds or curtains... The officers' shots hit objects in the living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway, bathroom, and both bedrooms.
Now, granted that situation was out of the norm because an occupant of the apartment fired a shot first, since he thought they were being burgled and the police neglected to announce their presence. But that's exactly the kind of situation that could happen in a SWAT raid. Most victims of SWATTing don't expect police to show up to their door, so if they're someone who owns a firearm and they hear a loud bang at the door, they may quite rightfully fire a shot at it in self defense, just like happened in the Taylor residence.
The main lesson there is that it's up to police to properly announce themselves (no-knock raids should never be used in response to an emergency distress call such as the kind that triggers a SWATTing). But even if they announce themselves and receive fire in return, I'd argue they should at least make sure they've sighted a target before they pull the trigger, rather than indiscriminately shooting a volley of bullets through a window like they're some kind of gangster doing a drive by.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Breonna_Taylor#Shoo...
This reads an assasination attempt by a drug cartel. Which part of this is 'trained proffeshionals'? Which part is reasonable use of force, or restrain to make sure you don't kill rand9m innocent people nearby?
Their job has risks, they can't just starting shooting first and asking questions because of fear.
If the idea is to demonstrate that police work isn't as dangerous as many people think, the fact that police aren't killed on the job as often as grubhub drivers or crossing guards or garbage collectors should make that clear enough. For at least the first two years of the pandemic the number one killer of police was covid. Typically most police die on the job in car accidents. Police are called on to encounter dangerous or uncertain situations, but they are also (supposed to be) trained for exactly that. That's the job. Ideally, none of them would die on the job and they wouldn't kill anyone either.
The USA is the country that defines any adult male died in a drone strike as a terrorist. If the same criteria is applied to the police, the official number would have nothing to do with the real number.
they are not even in the top 20 most dangerous jobs in america.
But that's why training of police is so important, and we as a society need to hold them to an incredibly high standard. But I think it's silly to tell police they shouldn't be jumpy because their occupation is safer than logging/fishing/piloting/roofing/etc.
I agree they should be trained better and held to a high standard but they simply are not.
I'm pretty sure gangsters and drug dealers are the most likely to be shot than any other occupation in the US as they make up the bulk of firearm deaths after accounting for suicides.
[1] https://neuhoffmediaspringfield.com/2021/03/24/study-jobs-yo...
[1] https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
so do we have enough information to determine? or do we need to push for that first.
[0] https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/statistics/law-en... [1] https://everytownresearch.org/report/guns-and-violence-again... [2] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/mar/15/joe-biden/...
From your source 6 cops died in 2022 due to disorder/disturbance (domestic disturbance, civil disorder, etc.) - so 6 at most. So I don't think it's reasonable to think of that as a "big cause" of police deaths. Also, and this is a personal thing that annoys me, innocent people being shot/killed by police is strictly worse than police being shot/killed. Police are knowingly taking these risks, they're compensated for them, and they are wearing protective equipment. I'd rather a police officer be shot in a domestic dispute than a guy getting shot in a swatting incident.
SWAT does not get called in to every domestic violence call.
The one in discussion isn't a welfare check or noise complaint, it's an angry man with a shotgun in a near-hostage situation. He's already angry, and now threatened by being outnumbered, and knows the night will end with him in jail. Desperation++. You've escalated the situation and increased risk to everyone. This is America, not Japan. When the SWAT team gets involved, it's a disruption tactic to deny him time to think or act.
> I'd rather a police officer be shot in a domestic dispute than a guy getting shot in a swatting incident.
"We won't have your back if you fuck up, and we'll leave you for dead either way" is not a selling point for any career. This one isn't exactly popular to begin with. Without the hero worship, there is little incentive to go into public service. The money is better in the private sector. Ask me how I know.
Firefighters and EMTs don't have to deal with this shit, so nobody has anything bad to say about them. We forgive their mistakes, even when people die.
https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-...
I think it's also a matter of urban gangsta warfare going on since time immemorial. The organized crime is rampant, and while the races change, the adversaries stay more or less the same. Since the 80s or so, you've had Crips and Bloods and everyone in between, with all their rap-video braggadoccio, ready to have a showdown with police at the drop of a hat. Ice-T, 2Pac, NWA, the flames have been stoked, and I mean, I guess it's not their fault, because it takes two to tango. The police have geared up and gotten ever-more militarized and hostile to ordinary citizens, wielding technology to match. So there's been an escalation.
And that's why we have #BlackLivesMatter today. Not because cops are inherently evil and shooting innocents on purpose, but because both sides have been warring for decades, and that makes for itchy trigger fingers.
So I think if pranksters are misusing SWAT teams for hoaxes and weaponizing them against their Fortnite adversaries, then perhaps it's a wake-up call to have a ceasefire, a disarmament, and both sides (or all sides) to stand down and rethink why we're all here.
"If just the police isn't good enough, we find ourselves further down an unpleasant spiral than we thought we were".
I also agree with the person to whom you're replying though.
"The police" don't show up to calls with reinforced vehicles, ballistic helmets, vests, and shields, and an arsenal of assault weapons to deal with extensive threats. At best, beat cops have an anti-stab vest, a 9mm, a flashlight, and their choice of a shotgun or AR-15 in the car. It takes nothing to gun down a pair of cops.
We expect too much of law enforcement in these situations IMO. The military has intelligence units and recon teams to provide actionable advice. The cops are working with an anonymous call, unknown entities and unknown locations; they have to figure everything out ad-hoc in an urban warfare scenario. It's chaos. Imagine being told you have 5 minutes to introduce a change to a production distributed environment you've never even seen, and either you or an innocent civilian are summarily executed at random for each error you make. Those are the stakes they're working with, and they're nowhere near as smart as you.
Mistakes get made, which is on them, but calling them in as a prank is monstrous for everybody involved. It's just fucking evil.
Oh, and even after the shooter had been taken into custody the sheriff still denied access to the scene to emergency medical personnel.
There can't be an excuse for that degree of malicious incompetence but the courts gave them one anyway.
There's a disruption? They show up and un-disrupt it.
And can't law enforcement map that to a physical address within a light speed equivalent amount of time?
Unless a swatter is "the phone call came from inside the house"-ing, it should have been easy to filter out for maybe, conservatively, the last two decades.
To make the above situation even trickier, let's say the homeowners had a landline for years, but just recently switched to a VoIP gateway. Their VoIP gateway operator advertised a feature that their outgoing caller ID will make it look like they're calling from their old number. This is a real and desirable feature for lots of people. I'd rather not have police disregard all calls from VoIP gateways.
But to GP's point, of course what we really need is a genuine verifiable caller ID. Or at least some sort of verification that's instantly available to 911 operators. In this case, the VoIP provider should be able to assert that the call really is coming from that address in a way no one else can spoof.
Similar with prepaid credit cards if memory serves.
Flipside would be: don't use a burner phone/SIM to call 911 - or at least have an alternative method of verifying location / address.
Lol, a wild meme appears.
Also the police aren't required to enforce the law
Q: Are the police required to protect you as a specific individual in the United States?
A: No, the police are not required to protect you as an individual in the United States.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columb...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonza...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maksim_Gelman_stabbing_spree...
And just yesterday the coward that hid outside Parkland High while a mass murder occurred was acquitted: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/6/29/us-officer-foun...
re: Your edit changing ‘liability’ to ‘being berated in the media’
George Floyd was murdered by cops in my city 3 years ago and the entire world heard his name.
A little condescending is OK when someone is posting authoritatively and they’re totally incorrect.
Cops aren't liable for shit.
We have real evidence of cops doing fuck all to "save the lives of children" or take "a clear imminent threat to life seriously" just last year in response to a much more credible threat in Uvalde.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonza...
If not there is your problem. Fix the telecom network and prevent all spoofing of numbers.
Would solve lots of other things too
They're going to wait until the shooter has shot all of the children at least once and run out of bullets before going in.
It's pretty well known that the police have no responsibility to help in a dangerous situation, only to arrest people once the situation has ended
Here in the UK the police would rush there without guns. There would be an armed response team to back them up, but only once the threat was confirmed. Maybe the UK just has braver police.
Bit of a smug take coming from a place with fewer guns than people.
In the US? Decades behind bars at least, life if you're in a "three strikes" jurisdiction - that's a massive incentive to shoot the cop and attempt to escape when you got nothing to lose anyway.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-jobs-in-america-bl...
With normal logic: If not everyone is at the mercy of eachother not popping heads for lolz we don't need to arm the police as heavily, and we can hire people that are good at deescalation rather than shooting back.
Ready to endanger the life of children.
There's really no nice way to put this. This phenomenon does not exist in any other country in the world which is not a completely failed state.
I think this is just a symptom of having so many weapons around, getting calls about dangerous gun owners is routine and resorting to swat is more "routine" than anywhere else.
ie Please press 4 if you think they have a weapon.
Of course totalitarians want to solve it by making sure no one can make an anonymous phone call.
This isn't the state proactively keeping tabs on its citizens, it's asking for traceability when somebody initiates an action that might put lives at risk.
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Welcome to hell.
Now SWAT teams are used to serve warrants in residential neighborhoods.
It’s like asking the fire department not to show up every time someone pulls a fire alarm in a building. Even if it’s some misbehaving kid who loves pulling the fire alarm, they still have to show up because if they ignore it even once and it happens to be a real fire then people will die.
The alternative is that police come into a scenario potentially unequipped to handle an actual violent situation.
I think the real solution is that SWAT teams need to be especially trained on the fact that swatting is a thing, and to try to recognize when they're in a swatting incident.
Police are now trained to treat EVERY situation as potentially violent, no matter how innocuous or factually safe. They assume everyone they interact with is a lethal threat.
> I think the real solution is that SWAT teams need to be especially trained on the fact that swatting is a thing, and to try to recognize when they're in a swatting incident.
That would require humility, which police don't have, because again they are trained to immediately escalate and use violence to control every situation.
The rest of the civilized world has decided that this isn't a good way to live. But here in America we want to be 100% certain George III isn't coming back, and if the cost of that is unarmed people occasionally murdered by the people assigned to protect them, that's just the way it is.
No they don’t, the vast majority (99%?) of police interactions with the public are non-violent. I spoke with a cop in my city who told me that was at a new officer training where 13 out of 15 training scenarios were ‘violent encounters’. The man was a career officer with 25+ years and he said almost every interaction he has with the public is non-violent, and that training cops to expect every encounter to go sideways is creating expectations that don’t match reality. Violent encounters happen, but cops are trained like every interaction is going to turn violent.
Re: on average every American owns a gun
Something like 50% of the guns are owned by 3% of Americans or some ridiculous number. Roughly 1 in 3 adult Americans own guns.
Personally I agree with you that we would be better off without having more guns than people in this country, but reality is reality.
Other countries don't arm every cop all the time, so every encounter isn't a potential standoff. We face every cop knowing that he is jumpy and checking your every move.
That is factually incorrect. 4 in 10 Americans (at most) own guns. Few of them carry them around.
Dangerous for cops or for people? A gang of SWAT cops overreacted to an incident in my town and got scared to the point of shooting 30 rounds from their rifles in an apartment hallway. The bullets went through the walls of 5 apartments, none of which were the one they were responding to.
> potentially unequipped to handle an actual violent situation
Have you seen a cop lately? Like a regular cop on patrol in a cruiser? They are equipped to handle an actual fucking foreign invasion. And they act accordingly. Aside from running into someone armed with a grenade launched, a regular cop in the US is fully equipped to handle 99% of all violent situations.
But yeah, we need to rethink certain police protocols as well...
If the police can be used to commit a crime akin to murder, maybe it's not the criminal we should be worried about so much as the police.
No it doesn't miss any point entirey.
I said
> But yeah, we need to rethink certain police protocols as well...