> "According to the FBI, each swatting incident costs emergency responders approximately $10,000." (from the article)
So $10k each, and 30+ times: Make him pay that $300k back.
So $10k each, and 30+ times: Make him pay that $300k back.
If it includes the salaries of the officers involved, by allocating the man-hours consumed by each response, then that number needs to be lowered.
I'll accept the fact that vehicles consume gallons per mile in gas, and that private residences have to repair busted down doors and damaged sheetrock, and maybe if some other expendables were used, if say some shots were fired and it cost 50 cents in bullets, but the officers would have been on the clock anyway (overtime or no), and the taxes are already budgeted for salaries.
Did the counties get sued by the swatted? If that's the source of the number, maybe he owes a large percentage of that, but then again, maybe the lawsuit has a point and how swat teams respond to prank calls should be changed?
But sometimes, accountability makes it worth the expense.
Every time first responders of any kind are deployed there is an inherent risk to their lives.
First responders have to drive fast to get to their destination quickly. SWAT teams are heavily armed and accidents do happen. Innocent bystanders could get shot, pets could get shot, other officers could get shot in a confusion. They might get called out on a prank call but end up finding a sovereign citizen freeman-on-the-land at home who hates the government and is willing to get into a firefight anyway.
All these things are potential liabilities on the department, not to mention the danger of having your entire SWAT force deployed to a prank call while there's a real incident on the far other side of town and not enough time to get there.
So yeah, we can argue about the cost as long as we want, but at the end of the day the primary cost on the minds of the police departments are these dangers, and the actual price tag quoted by them must take these into account.
Plus there might have call out off duty cops on overtime to cover and then there is the paperwork and reports which will have to be written up and analysed.
Plus there is the cost of damage to property, disruption to traffic and so on.
Plus the host of investigating the hoax
1. It costs 10 dollars an hour to keep a cop on active duty.
2. You need 10 cops to handle a specific region based on the fact that you receive 10 incidents a day.
3. You now get an additional 2 fake incidents a day but you don't know which of the 12 incidents are fake.
4. You therefore need cops to check out these incidents. You must hire them.
5. Your cost of operation goes up.
Lesson #1: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
http://nypost.com/2014/04/23/fbi-helping-to-find-call-of-dut...
Kid now is getting prosecuted with $100,000 in fines for his swatting attempt.
The caller could face multiple charges and may also
be required to foot the bill for Tuesday’s police
response, which is estimated at $100,000.http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...
+ punishment for exploiting the state