While swatting is a shit thing to do, I feel that police departments that treat these calls as legit without their own due diligence is a much bigger problem.
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
293 points (96.2% liked)
politics
19107 readers
3467 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
There needs to be a much more severe punishment for the person who makes the fake call, especially if anyone is hurt as a result of it.
There needs to be a decent charge/punishment absolutely, but harsher punishment will not stop this.
The monopoly of violence lies with the government and they need to treat that with much more tact and finesse than they currently do in the US. No knock raids, SWAT teams filled with former veterans trained to kill by the military are employed without hesitation, this is wrong. The responsibility lies with the government and law enforcement to be more careful and know what they are getting into before even considering employing deadly force.
I know a bunch of vets that swear that police rules of engagement are insane and they would have gotten in deep shit for acting in a fucking war zone the way cops do here.
This, if swat teams and police raids weren’t as violent and deadly as they are, swatting would cease to be a thing in the first place.
Shithead trolls would lose a tool to harass.
For one thing, opening fire on a civilian or other non-combatant that hasn't already fired live rounds at you will get your ass court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and imprisoned faster than you can say "Miranda rights"
And somehow that happens dozens of times per day in American police departments
Didn’t Biden make no-knock raids illegal?
If anyone dies it should be a 1st degree murder charge.
You know your country is fucked when your first thought is, "if someone dies when the cops show up at the home of someone completely innocent, then whomever called them should be charged with murder."
I mean, it should be true for any country. SWATting isn't a US only phenomenon.
I expect any country's SWAT team to be able to show up at an innocent person's house and NOT kill anyone. I guess I have high standards.
Yeah they should. But if while committing a crime you cause the death of someone, then that's murder.
Like if I'm robbing you and you get so scared you have a heart attack and die, I can say, "well I expect people to exercise more and keep in better shape so they don't have heart attacks. I guess I have high standards." I can say that, but I'm still getting charged with murder in most places, because if I didn't commit that crime you'd still be alive.
No, I understand the legal concept. My point is that police, and especially SWAT, should be trained well enough that the idea that anyone would be in danger if they were to show up at an innocent person's house would be so ridiculous that we wouldn't even be having this discussion. In the US, it takes about 650 hours of training to become a police officer on average, and 3000 to become a cosmetologist. That's fucked up.
Nobody said otherwise?
I guess I don't understand what we are talking about, sorry. This thread is in reply to:
I mean, it should be true for any country. SWATting isn't a US only phenomenon.
Which I know wasn't your comment, but I took that to mean that because it happens in other countries then the US isn't that fucked. My original comment didn't specify the US and was a benchmark that could be applied to all countries, so the reply sounded argumentative to me.
Maybe I was reading something into it that wasn't there? Sorry for being a dumbass!
I'm not confident you actually know what swatting is.
If no one dies, it should be attempted murder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule
In a lot of places if someone dies as a result of you committing a felony you catch a murder charge.
In Die Hard they got a call of terrorists and sent out one car to take a look. That sounds like a pretty good procedure.
Wait... what was Hans Gruber's plan if McClane didn't throw a chair out the window and shoot a bunch of rounds? He needed the FBI to shut off the power. If Carl just left then the FBI wouldn't show up and the power wouldn't have been cut and he wouldn't be able to open the vault.
I guess he could've called the cops himself later, but they made serious effort to make sure everything looked normal when Carl came in the building.
Gruber says right afterwards, that the police action was inevitable, but now they had to move up the timetable.
Don't know how long it would take to break into the safes and don't want the cops to arrive early.
I feel that police departments that treat these calls as legit without their own due diligence is a much bigger problem.
MTG is swatted so often that local cops check up w her security team before responding to calls.
Imagine having her as a neighbor. Cops AND gumba security bros all over the place every time she comes back to town. Miserable.
there's a slur I haven't heard in a while
I wanna know how she imports them from the mushroom kingdom, and how much does koopa rent them out for? It'd be neat to have little mushroom guys patrolling my property.
Isn't a big part of the problem how the police respond rather whether they decide to or not?
I am sure there are measures taken to ensure clebs and other prominent people don't have their doors broken down anymore.
Fuck the peasants though. The commoner is probably going to have their house seriously damaged and will still be arrested anyway. If they were doing anything illegal, like smoking weed, charges will be filed but eventually dropped but not after significant expense to the victim. Shit like that can happen, ya know?
For schools that get swatted, I could see this contributing to PTSD in kids in a big way as the MO for cops is to assume that the threat is actually mixed in with the rest of the kids. (That is assuming that an evacuation plan is even implemented.)
Obviously American cops are really bad about this, but how would European cops respond to a bomb threat?
I'm not whatabouting, I acknowledge US cops are the worst. I'm curious if this is a unique issue
The problem is that they don't have time in the situations that get called in to. The nature of the reported crimes demands immediate action.
If they hesitate in those situations it could end like Uvalde.
But surely there's a practical middle between "shoot first, ask later" and "sit and wait an hour"
“Okay everyone gather up, the plan is we wait around for 30 minutes and start shooting our guns into the air.”
Or how about make a call to the registered number at the address the threat was called in at… then send a car over to verify.
You can literally de- escalate in 60 seconds and verify in as much time as it takes to send swat in to fuck shit up.
But... they have all that swat gear and they want to use it! And fucking shit up is about 90% of policing nowadays.
Wtf is a registered number at an address?
They call, gunman sees caller ID, freaks out, shoots everyone.
If they don't, gunman lies. They send a cop over. Cop get shot, gunman freaks shoots everyone.
I think the more pressing issues are:
- Demilitarize the police. Sure they can have body armor. They don't need fucking assault weapons and armored personnel carriers though.
- Criminalize swatting. We already know that since the Dubya era that federal US has had their hands on all communication in the US. Find out who the swatter is and prosecute the twatwaffle
I think if you got a jumpy gunman scenario they're going to start shooting when the police come roaring into the neighbourhood. A call might lead to a hostage negotiation scenario which will more likely to have people surviving than a gunfight between a jumpy gunman and even more jumpy cops with some hostages in the room.
Sure there are scenarios where a call back probably wouldn't be a good idea, but the 9/11 operator has a description of the scenario, and I'd think for most of them a call back would be fine.
So, no sweat on the part of the police force then.
The problem is that they don’t have time in the situations that get called in to
Police can dick around for hours between receiving a call and taking any kind of action. Just ask the kids at Uvalde Elementary School.
The issue isn't about time, its about police training that dictates anything that makes them nervous is a target for gunfire. There is no sense of public preservation, its all just Cops-Against-The-World mentality. That's one big reason why cops will always, always, always shoot the family dog. There's simply no incentive to treat any animal as something other than a deadly weapon coming for their throats.
The same officers that spend thirty minutes dicking around outside playing one more round of Candy Crush on their phones will dome you through a window because you spooked them.
Oh yeah, there is a huge issue with that. But I maintain the issue is that the swatters are not being treated nearly as harshly as they should.
In a lot of ways, SWATing isn't a bug in the system but a feature. The ability to basically call in an airstrike on your neighbor creates a sense of terror that keeps people alienated of one another and absolutely horrified of what the local police might do to them.
"I swear we're not a cult. We are just trying to remove all opposition to our glorious leader."
— MAGA crew
Swatting (plural swattings)
1- ~~A motion or gesture that swats; a swat~~.
2- (US, slang) The action of making an illegitimate call to the police so as to have a SWAT team dispatched to a location.
That makes a lot more sense thank you.