The issues are twofold: First, I don’t think we’d disagree that a swat team is almost -never- an appropriate level of force. Second, anonymous phone calls are entirely insufficient evidence of an immediate emergency that would require that level of force.
So, if all you’re saying is: “The mere fact of a single anonymous phone call should not produce a response of indiscriminately applied overwhelming force”: yup, I agree.
If fixing that would be sufficient to make the swatting problem go away, then the problem is that I managed to underestimate the extent of the fucked-up-ness of the US police system. That wouldn’t be a huge surprise, all things considered.
(And, having now actually read the article, it really does seem as if a single anonymous phone call can have pretty much that effect. That seems really bad. But I guess I don’t know what sort of real incidents SWAT teams are used to deal with; perhaps, at least in some places, it’s justified. If so, the best answer might be to come down heavily enough on people who abuse that system to stop them doing it.)
The issues are twofold: First, I don’t think we’d disagree that a swat team is almost -never- an appropriate level of force. Second, anonymous phone calls are entirely insufficient evidence of an immediate emergency that would require that level of force.
So, if all you’re saying is: “The mere fact of a single anonymous phone call should not produce a response of indiscriminately applied overwhelming force”: yup, I agree.
If fixing that would be sufficient to make the swatting problem go away, then the problem is that I managed to underestimate the extent of the fucked-up-ness of the US police system. That wouldn’t be a huge surprise, all things considered.
(And, having now actually read the article, it really does seem as if a single anonymous phone call can have pretty much that effect. That seems really bad. But I guess I don’t know what sort of real incidents SWAT teams are used to deal with; perhaps, at least in some places, it’s justified. If so, the best answer might be to come down heavily enough on people who abuse that system to stop them doing it.)
To be fare, it’s a phone call that purports to be from the house being SWATed. It’s just really easy to spoof the phone system.