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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a source for that, or is this opinion?

I’m also not so worried about SWATting being possible - I want a ratio of times where the extreme response was warranted versus unwarranted.

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I don't have a ratio, but certainly was an increasing problem pre pandemic.

> By 2019, there were an estimated 1,000 swatting incidents domestically each yeay

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-formed-national-dat...

Sources don’t change what is/isn’t opinion, and you can want that ratio but that information isn’t currently available. It is however a fact that it’s on the rise and enough of an issue that the FBI has started a database of fake SWAT calls, as linked by another reply. It is also fact that between text-to-voice MLMs, phone spoofing, and IP-masking services that it’s becoming increasingly harder to ID wrongdoers. One could say my distain of a violent pseudo-militarized force who asymmetrically apply the law depending on who’s a “blueblood” is an opinion, but I feel that is both obvious as an opinion and a well-supported stance given the rise in police-on-innocent violence.

It seems to me that that would be very difficult to determine in retrospect.

In any case, I think we can agree that militarized police breaching through a door and going in with guns drawn like they're going to assassinate Bin Laden all due to a phone call is dumb and shouldn't happen

They should send a drone to look into the window, or turn one of the dozen devices in each room into a microphone, or perform any kind of other investigation first before they do that.

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