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Comment by usui | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately, the police seemingly have no idea who did it and acted based on a tip sent with an email.

I understand the need to take anonymous tips seriously, but I mean come on... an email? I hope there was more than that.

If I assume the counterfactual where someone's attempt to tip police was ignored and an incident results, the public will criticize the police undoubtedly. Still, at some point there needs to be a minimum for verifiable, trustworthy communication if such a tip results in swatting. If I effortlessly generate dozens of plausibly-sounding scenarios, tip off the police in intervals spaced far enough and automate it, when would the police start categorizing anonymous emails as noise?

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Of course an email is easy to fake, but you really have to put things in perspective: We, as internet regulars, hear of swatting quite often, but for your average police officer, this is probably an once-in-a-career type of event and therefore the threshold for believability is quite low.

Also, as you pointed out, if it turns out to be a real situation, it will look horrible if the police knew of it beforehand. Even more, a victim in a situation that requires a swat team might have a quite limited ability to communicate, lowering the reasonable threshold even more.

Lastly, there isn't really a measured response. If you think there might be an actual dangerous situation, sending a few normal officers to check it out is reckless at best and might actually make the situation worse, as the attacker is alerted of the impeding police response and the police doesn't have the ability to respond swiftly.

When I reported a person in my neighborhood for screaming about hurting people and herself for hours with open windows, I called the police (didn't find any email or something) and they wanted to know who I am, where I am and why I am there.

At some point I felt like they're not trusting me. Why do they trust an email?

They can gather more information from you. They can't gather more information from an email. It forces a decision based on exactly what the message said and no more - and they'd presumably want more information in order to ignore it. For a closer comparison you'd want to call from a payphone, make your report, then hang up.

I have no idea if this would actually work similarly but it is at least what people do in movies when they want to provoke a police response! And it does make sense.

If you committed that crime, the police would probably try to find you and stop you, not just give up on anonymous tips :) As you said, they're obligated to respond, as they have a monopoly on violence.

How many people do you know who would get a threatening email about imminent violence and play it off because it's likely a fake? Perhaps some the most zen among us! The rest of us would almost definitely want to (hire mercenaries to) take reasonable steps to stop it. A few hours of police time in exchange for preventing a potential terrorist event seems like a fair trade, anyway...

I get lots of spam emails threatening all sorts of things, according to my spam email, Scotland Yard, the FBI & Secret Service are all after me if I don't give them my personal information. So yeah if I got a threatening email about imminent violence, I would probably assume its some sort of weird spam email and ignore it.

Given the fact that the police ignores a lot of real crimes (like this false reporting crime will just be ignored) just the fact that they're obligated doesn't explain anything

> How many people do you know who would get a threatening email about imminent violence and play it off because it's likely a fake?

That would be every single popular political pundit on social media (if you're not a stickler for "email"), then every celebrity, etc, so a huge number of people

SWAT doesn't have a lot to do. So it's going to be exceptionally difficult to establish a working "graduated response" system within that department. In reality there should be two separate sources of information that suggest a SWAT response is necessary before they're dispatched, otherwise, standard police response to verify the information first.

> SWAT doesn't have a lot to do.

Dood, thats not remotely SWAT. This isnt even some kind of special police. This is german normal police. And usually they are pretty damn overwhelmed by everything because they are horrible undestaffed.

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