FBI steps in amid rash of politically charged swattings A spate of high-profile swatting incidents in the US recently forced the FBI into action with its latest awareness campaign about the occasionally deadly practice. The feds issued guidance on how members of the public can protect themselves from swatting, describing the action of making hoax phone calls or emails reporting …
Many 911 calls are from people in serious risk of their lives. So what do you think should happen if they are told a family is held hostage at gun point? Knock politely on the door and listen to the gunshots of people getting killed?
A swat team going out is dangerous. I’d just call it what it is: Attempted murder or murder perpetrated by the person making the phone call.
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Except no, these aren't SWAT cops being rolled out. Often it's our equivalent of PC Plod given training on basic tactics and a rifle kicking in a door.
If the actual SWAT team was being deployed, a sharpshooter or any number of the fabulously expensive toys they're given by the federal government could easily be used to determine the situation before storming in.
There's not even really any excuse for a poorly funded Plod coming in hot: I have seen county police using personal-purchase IR scopes taken off their personal hunting rifles to scope out a way to safely detain an armed subject more than once.
And they're not poorly paid at all, a fresh on the street copper for a town of 66k people gets 60k usd to start, and overtime abuse is rampant. Free car, government job, and a license to kill.
They're just modern knights sworn to an estate without actual combat experience lol.
A lot more police shoot at unarmed people than people shoot at them. They are apparently petrified for their lives almost continuously so shoot unarmed people through doors, pump the wrong apartments full of lead and kill the inhabitants in their beds. Amazing how much of the collateral damage is unarmed black people. I mean, the police routinely talk down you white shooters, it happens all the time no matter how violent they are. Apparently unarmed black people petrify the US police and white racists armed with AR-15s are little more than a menace.
"A lot more police shoot at unarmed people than people shoot at them."
"unarmed" is a post-facto determination. Watch enough bodycam footage of incidents and you will see how a situation goes from mild to extreme pucker in a second. I recall one where a woman wearing workout clothes but still needed to keep up the exercise to slim down produced a hand-canon from the waistband of her stretchy pants that was obscured due to her size. The police were having what seemed like a friendly chat with her when something triggered her and out came the gun. Officers are also not interested in a "fair" fight. They don't assume that the person they're having an issue with IS unarmed and aren't going to limit themselves to fisticuffs if the wacko wants to throw down. A guy I worked with was 6'5", built like a (US) football quarterback and was a karate black belt. His wife sent him to summer camp each year to have tiny Japanese masters older than Salomon kick his ass for a week and send him home with a full set of lumps. She opined it was a good builder of humility. It also illustrates that looks can deceive. On the flip side you have wild-eyed crazies you can spot immediately that are deep into the contents of the plastic bag that's sticking from their pocket.
The contention that black people are disproportionately targeted by police (in a shooting sense) is nonsense. Caucasians are more often shot. That's not to say there aren't situations where the officer made a serious error, but more often that's not the case.
In Switzerland, the gun is owned by the state, and is supposed to come out when the Russians or the Germans or the Americans have the great idea to start an invasion. Other times it is locked in a cupboard and it doesn’t even come out for an armed burglar. Different culture altogether.
Now a difference to the UK for example is that an armed response unit will turn up in huge numbers, totally armed and protected, extremely well trained, and every criminal in the UK knows that they come out in handcuffs. You’d have to be extremely stupid to try to fight your way out. Nobody does that.
They've already got the important parts - ICE has (so far, we'll see when the courts have their final say) been allowed to grab people off the street while wearing masks, wearing plainclothes, not showing ID, warrant or other paperwork to either the person being arrested or bystanders questioning whether they are law enforcement - and threatening those bystanders with prosecution for merely questioning them. The person they grab is not allowed access to a lawyer, notify family, and get disappeared somewhere where they never gain those rights for an indefinite "detention" period in a foreign black hole prison in a country they have no connection to and may never have even visited previously.
Sounds worse than the Stasi, actually...
Sending large numbers of heavily armed police, who will be super pumped up on adrenaline, in response to an emergency call is an excessive and dangerous idea. Mistakes will, and often are, made that result in completely innocent people being killed, injured or utterly terrified.
It's a response which is often totally out of proportion.
"It's a response which is often totally out of proportion."
Did you listen to the call to 911? Some of them are quite convincing that there's a very serious incident going on and that gets relayed to the officers. Shots fired, yelling, maybe a bit of "they always fight a lot". Oh, there's some kids that live there.
When the police show up and the person is not cooperative, it looks exactly like what was reported on the call except everything is quiet which could mean dying victims in urgent need of medical aid. There's no telling. Look at what happened with the wife of the bassist for Wheezer who must have been completely spun to not realize there was a incident going on with police helicopter(s), yard to yard searches, sirens, etc. It's reported she took a shot towards officers while outside the house rather than locking all the doors and hunkering down. She called 911 and it's sounds odd that she wouldn't have been told the police are all over the neighborhood and she should take cover inside. She was shot as she presented an immediate danger and that was whether she fired the gun or not. The police are on the recording telling her numerous times to put the gun down. Fully uniformed officers. (I have to admit I didn't listen to everything that has been released thus far so I'm wondering if they did identify themselves as police. If she was looking right at them and they were in view and in uniform, it wouldn't matter) Part of the job of the police is to go in harm's way. It's not part of the job to be a range target and not make it home after their shift.
"It's a similar story in the UK, which also lacks a specific swatting law, "
Maybe because we tend not to send a couple of armoured personal carriers, full of heavily armed jocks in full military gear to an address when there are reports of someone downloading a Disney movie torrent.
Given that US law enforcement has a very long and bad track record of getting the wrong house, I would not trust them to do ANYTHING.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZjpIXxBGaM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMYiDCKWRXs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2dWdAPFYRU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3vjDWOJEsc
When you give an ego a gun and qualified immunity it never ends well.
"Perhaps a quick call to the neighbours asking if they heard any ruckus.
If the call doesn't come from the same area, treat with caution."
There's no way to tell these days if the call is coming from a particular place. Perhaps there are some emergency call centers that do a map of what cell tower a call is coming from, but that's not definitive and I've never seen that. In the days of landlines, it might have been possible to pull up the phone number of the house next door, but those days are long gone. The small town I live in hasn't had landline service for a while now.
There are also people that will call a family member of friend during an emergency and that person will call to report the issue. Yeah, bonkers, but there ya go.
"Between swatting and wrong house raids,"
Those are very different issues. The first is somebody calling in a serious situation that requires immediate and possible comprehensive response. The latter is cops and judges being lackadaisical about doing their jobs correctly. Yes, the person in question had lived at the address, but moved 6 months prior or it's a difference between EAST Main St and WEST Main St and no detective work was done to verify the correct property. With things such as Google Maps, they don't even need to drive by and take a photo, it's been done. With satnav properly programmed, they will go to the correct house. I've run into the issue of there being an East and West section of the street and double checking to be sure I have it correct. If the last verified intelligence about somebody was more than a day or two past, a judge should send the request for a warrant back unsigned and tell them to work a little harder before trying again.
I knew someone in Germany who played his music so loud that he called the police. Police knocked on the door but they figured out the music was too loud to hear them. So they decided to do a welfare check in case the guy was lying on the ground with a heart attack.
So they kicked the door in - always good fun - went to the living room, guy was sitting in a chair without even noticing the door or the police, turned the music off, and said “looks like you’re ok, goodbye”. He didn’t play music that loud afterwards after repairing the door.
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