Well, if they send someone to look, and it is an actual bad situation, then response time is delayed…
Of course, as soon as it is seen to be a false call, the person who did the call should be arrested as that’s illegal
Turns out, it’s relatively easy to convince the police to bring in a swat team to someone’s house, and the police are so chomping at the bit to get out the big boy toys that they don’t even question the validity of the call.
They might say it’s a hostage situation, or gunplay, whatever it takes to make action happen without any real question.
Hettyc_Tracyn@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
luciferofastora@feddit.org 1 day ago
Of course, as soon as it is seen to be a false call, the person who did the call should be arrested as that’s illegal
Proving that they weren’t genuinely concerned can be tough, and mistakenly calling the police (or emergency services in general) shouldn’t be punished or people will hesitate to call for help when they need it.
But you’re right: there should be some recourse to abuse, if not criminal then civil. Of course, a lawsuit is a lot of work and possibly money you would pay up front, and there’s no guarantee that you’d actually see much money if the perpetrator is a basement-dwelling neet whose meagre pocket money is immediately spent on Gacha games, trading cards or those weird plastic figures with oversized heads that some people go crazy over.
So maybe the state / police should instead pay compensation to the victim and, if it seems like a case of abuse, bring their own suit to potentially recover those damages from the caller. That would reduce the damage of mistakes, protect well-meaning callers from retribution and thus shift the cost for this security from the individual to the collective. It also allows an option to shift it back onto malicious individuals.
Of course, the police response could be more measured too, and the whole thing is contingent on the justice of the judicial system, but the latter part is true of any system and the former applies to many things the police do anyway.
rumba@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
it’s too easy to make an anonymous call, telecoms are shit
obre@slrpnk.net 23 hours ago
Conspiracy theory:
Tap for spoiler
it’s far from impossible to de-anonymize swatters, but they won’t go through the effort to do that, let alone prosecute the psychopaths who do this because it’s fun for the cops to cosplay as spec ops, everyone gets some fat overtime checks, and the event can be used for PR propaganda to say ‘we need this militarized platoon in case something actually does happen’
rumba@lemmy.zip 21 hours ago
It’s an interesting theory.
From what I understand, I worked in an adjacent field a decade ago, The de-anonymize is actually harder than it should be. a voip user gets service from a voip carrier who contracts service from a larger provider, who gets service from on the the biggest carriers. Noone in that chain wants to be responsible for the people below them. There is an unreasonable amount of trust on many carriers to let the clients choose their own ANI. The systems are not designed with accountability anymore. They’re all just a hodgepodge, and the smallest 2 levels of carriers get to charge a premium to let people stay untrackable (like cold calls)
Hettyc_Tracyn@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
True
Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 1 day ago
If someone kept giving you fancy expensive toys but you were only allowed to use them on official business matters …
atrielienz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I didn’t watch the video (I never do, I want to read). So I assumed there was a warrant, when in fact there does not appear to have been time for that.
Police received a report of an active shooter with one shooting casualty. That is what prompted the response and that’s all I wanted to know.
The fact that the response happened isn’t something I personally think should be left up to the police (they shouldn’t be allowed to decide which calls are valid). The fact that this was obviously an overreaction on the part of the police (that so many cops showed up) is still ridiculous in my view.
What I really want is for there to be an investigation into who made the report and preferably for the book to be thrown at them.
I don’t disagree with you that this was a ridiculous display of force. But your answer didn’t answer my question.
DrMorose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
For exigent circumstances like an active shooter or hostage situation they do not need a warrant to roll up. That is what makes these kind of issues so concerning. SWATTING has been going on since streaming became more main stay for any reason or no reason at all. Anyone can do it and repercussions on the caller are almost none existent so it is seen as a “fun” way to cause mayhem.