A man has been swatted 47 times for making a joke about Norm Macdonald

Worst case, once they find the first one was a 'swatting', they should really temper the response on future calls.

this is pretty much not a thing in any country with a properly working state of law

it's absurd to a point you have to wonder if it wasn't one of the police officers themselves or someone related to them which called in anonymous

Nobody wants to be on the hook for ignoring an active shooter.

Here in Europe you can call 112 even without a SIM card. This is done because during a crash etc the SIM card may get dislodged.

- "A judge also ordered Mr Tomlinson to pay the anonymous blogger behind the website $23,700 in legal fees."

In the US, you don't pay the opposing party's legal bills when you lose, unless you did something egregious.

[late edit]: I believe the relevant filing on the SFTC page is "ORDER GRANTING PETITIONER JOHN DOE 1'S PETITION TO QUASH SUBPOENA TO CLOUDFLARE, INC. ISSUED FOR CASE PENDING IN FOREIGN JURISDICTION PURSUANT TO CCP SEC.2029.600 AND REQUEST FOR SANCTIONS". (I'm not able to link to it).

To my understanding: it looks like the operator of the website didn't do anything actionable (as far the plaintiff could demonstrate), and it was (the court says) invalid for the plaintiff to try to unmask them. They could have tried to unmask individual users of the website, and it reads to me like the court might have agreed to compel the operator to do that. But it was sanctionable to go after the operator, on (to my reading) a speculative theory that they might have been involved with the posted content. As the court says, you can't do that: you need evidence specific to the person you are trying to deanonymize.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/uvalde-shooting-police-...

Maybe this is why the police tried to move quickly?

Here's a Google result. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-waco-raid-at-25-enough-wit...

Worth keeping in mind these guys were a nutty cult and not entirely trustworthy.

Sure, but "right now" is a matter of perspective. There just is not a great answer to hostages being taken by armed & violent criminals. At a certain point you either need to take the initiative, or you're just responding to an opponents initiative. The best case in a situation where the criminals don't give up is an indefinite and expensive situation where dozens of highly paid people stand by feeding pizza to terrorists with a Twitter/Cnn/Facebook simulcast. Someone has to make a move at some point.

That said, I do agree with you in principle. If you can get as much information as possible while building rapport, thats ideal. Unfortunately, this isn't always an option and it is very unlikely there will be a good outcome as both parties have diametrically opposed incentives. As you stall for time and gain reinforcements the bargaining power of your side goes up, forcing a more aggressive posture from the other party. That's sort of the Nash equilibrium here, a good outcome is probably an on the ground plea deal with limited violent exchange. Not agreeing violence is the answer but not every hostage taker is John Gruber or the Money Heist crew.

Edit: I think this was kind of the rationale on 9/11. Most hostage situations on planes were resolved without huge casualties[1] and then all of a sudden non-rational actors kamikaze the planes, not only killing themselves and the hostages, but using the plane as a weapon. There are a lot of versions of this happening that substantiate taking action. I'm glad I'll likely never have to call the shots on something like this.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting

Put a big sign on all your doors and windows saying "hi police, you've been pranked by some teenager"

It would be nice if we didn't cede the internet to that metaphorical crazy guy who lurks outside the gas station holding a crowbar and muttering to himself

And if the people calling in fake threats are doing so over hacked VOIP? It's not really like the old days where a phone meant you were somewhere in particular.

The particular elephant in the room is it is the cops get called to hundreds of locations (per department) per year that are actual violent confrontations, with domestic abuse being the most common type. That huge numbers of Americans are armed doesn't help the situation any.

In reality, cops are just another gang who have permission to do whatever violence they want and will get whatever budget they want and have zero incentives to perform their jobs well.

I’ve heard of people and dogs being killed on the first swatting, but never on the 20+.

The way to make it make sense: there is a large group of people out there who essentially, have failed to launch. They are unemployed or have deadend jobs. They watch tons of internet porn but may have never had sexual intercourse with a woman. They have few or zero real life friends. They are obese or feeble-bodied. They have no real life skills or vital energy. The one way they can feel alive, like a "player character," is by hitting someone, but not in a boxing gym (see above), on the Internet.

The Norm Macdonald tweet isn't "triggering," they've already been triggered and are looking for their next victim. The Norm Macdonald Tweet is like raising your hand and saying "it's me."

This is not to defend the terrible things being done to this guy, but if he just went dark people would lose interest/age out of fucking with him. What gives a lolcow longevity and notability is their continuance to post weird stuff and actively engage with their bullies.

Yes. Each SWAT call is just an excuse to play soldier, the chance they never got because they couldn’t pass the ASVAB to become real soldiers.

Competent police departments maintain a list of common swatting targets. Any time an address on that list gets called in, they have a number to call to check before sending armed officers. Four dozen times is beyond incompetence.

Obviously, the same officers have been to his house 47 times. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool me 47 times I'm mentally challenged....

The police have long discriminated against anyone with too high an IQ: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/jordan-v...

Meanwhile, the FAA is currently looking for applicants with "Severe intellectual disability" as you can see from: https://www.faa.gov/pwdp

This older case has also been going around lately - https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4542755/brigida-v-unite... - in which people cheated on a biographical test that 90% of people were expected to fail in order to pull in fellow organization members.

So I think the real answer is that many of our public agencies have been selecting against competence for quite some time now.

On slightly unrelated note, i found court documents related to the swatter "Torswats" (though pages are plastered with "unofficial") and shit is crazy to say the least, especially on materials found by detectives and cops. Such material are messages from Torswats and cops handpicked his diatribes against jews, government officials, homosexuals, black people and ukrainians.

I can just imagine.. guy gets swatted, then the cops stop coming, then he gets attacked for real ..

And at the same time, the officers responding have a right to protect themselves, which means treating it as credible.

Of course the middle ground is they respond as if real, except they just talk to the guy.

The problem 100% is the swatters. They should get decades in jail for repeated calls like this. And yes the swatters are harassing the guy, regardless of the police issue, any other stance is absurd.

And yes, the police should be working with the victim.

I agree that he’s being terrorised by the police. The police should face consequences for allowing themselves to be used like this.

I don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail.

The nice thing is that they get more and more familiar with the place and so can be more and more efficient in case that man really gets in trouble one day

- Inflated incidence response, probably help for asking more budget

- "real-life situation" field training

In any case, I wouldn't say the terrorism comes directly from the police, but from the stalkers. The police might benefit from the situation, however.

He's absolutely being harassed by swatters. They call the police to get him swatted. Not to mention that on top of swatting, there is impersonation going on AND they are targeting others as well - like his parents.

He's ALSO being terrorized by the police, who are more inclined to cosplay with guns and make people fear than to actually do anything about their broken system or be held accountable at all. They absolutely cannot play ignorance - the are basically in an alliance with the swatters. Swatter calls it in, they wink and nod and follow through.

>He says they have stalked and impersonated him, defaced his home, and continue to send a daily avalanche of abusive phone calls, voicemail messages and emails.

The teenager needs to made an example of, and his customers should be tracked down and charged as well. This is highly anti-social behavior.

All you need is a name, and if you want a bit more targeted search the municipality of the home.

I just recently searched for my home purchase information online, because it would've taken me longer to dig up the closing documents. It took me 2 minutes.

Even if they know it's not legit, much safer to show up anyway, career-wise at least.

Here we have an armed offenders squad.

A mostly bizarre experience - not particularly horrible - but neither did I fully understand the risk at the time.

I haven't had any hideous dealings with the police here in Christchurch - it's a small world so perhaps they are a bit more human? I certainly have lots of friends with bad stories - but often pretty damn biased stories!

1. Stop using pseudo swat forces for everything, especially as first responders. As we’ve seen with Uvalde, when the rubber meets the road they’re as useful as screen doors on submarines anyway.

2. If an address is a known swatting victim, try to call them back, and have a uniformed officer at the door rather than enter guns blazing.

But PDs have little incentive to fix the issue, I’m sure it looks good on the stats annd serves to justify their swat and it lets them play with their toys.