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Isn't it amazing how you can "SWAT" (from the looks of it that weren't special forces btw.) someone by knocking on the door, instead of blasting through it and charging in, ready to shoot anything that moves?
That's something you can do if you don't have to be afraid of shotguns and full-auto rifles when going into random people's houses.
Really hope they find the caller and bring him to court. I mean both streamer and police are the victims here.
At least it hasn't been a actual SEK unit (SWAT in Germany) they look more like normal patrol officers. But nevertheless it's unacceptable.
Swatting in Europe isn't really virulent as police agencies have safeguards against false calls. There was a case of high-profile swatting in the UK, cops softly banged the door and didn't brandish the guns so fast unlike in America.
How the fuck can Swatting be such a common thing in America. I have never heard about it in any other country.
(This is, of course, a rhetorical question. I know the answer is that American police is beyond incompetent.)
Edit: Oops, read comments below
Its not incompetence. Its by design. The more SWAT goes out, the more they're justified. SWAT teams exist to increase the spending of police. Those expenditures go to military contractors.
Its the same reason the US is ceaselessly involved in war since WW2. For money.
As others mentioned, this isn't America. Also, fraudulent calls to emergency services is a criminal offense, people who do this are usually charged and fined, or even given jail time. It's not like it's accepted or mainstream behavior, people just do stupid things and when combined with stupid cops it has led to tragic outcomes. In this video they seem to show up, which they HAVE to do, place the occupant in precautionary detainment, verify there is no crime underway, and release him. They would probably then take a statement, then the next thing would be to get a warrant for the call records and charge the dipshit that started the incident.
Did you even try to watch the clip? It's not even in the US! This is the scary part.
This is always felt really weird to me in general because on one hand you do have a lot of over aggressive police officers in the States but on the other hand you also have a lot of police officers who are like been through the drill and are just calm as fuck about it.
I feel like the immediate pucker factor would be nine times higher if you're in the States, but then it either goes to shit real fast or settles down real fast.
Microsoft CodeCop does not mess about but in fairness he was using identical names for local and global variables.
How is "someone called" enough evidence to enter peoples homes and arrest them?
These officers should lose their job,
To make more money for the weapons manufacturers.
SWAT teams didn't always exist. Many would argued they should not exist. But if they no longer exited, police would spend less money in military style equipment.
Police don't care if SWATing is harming people. They just need to keep their expenses high, and SWAT teams are great for that.
This is such an obviously dumb take its unbelievabe anyone would come up with it. Ofcourse the cops need to respond to a call of someone claiming to be assaulted/abused/murdered. There is no issue with this at all. The issue that CAN arise is that bad police training might lead to someone getting actually hurt in a raid like this. But thats an entirely different issue.
Ofcourse the cops need to respond
Yes, but then there's the matter of HOW they respond.
In the comments the victim said that the police said it were two emails they got. Not even a call.
So (not so) fun fact: Keffals, who was targeted by KiwiFarms for being trans (yes that's all) and got Swatted. She then went to stay with another streamer (EllenFromNowOn) in Northern Ireland. Just for information sake, Northern Ireland is still a bit rocky security wise, Police there still carry guns on the regular. So when she went there, Ellen called up the police and explained the situation to them (they had never heard of Swatting weirdly enough).
Sure enough, someone found her flat, posted her address (with a message referencing a Unionist Slogan, Ellen was from the Catholic Community), and sure enough, the police came. Instead of raiding her all guns blasing (which they normally would) they saw the warning, knocked on the door, saw nothing was wrong, called off the squaddies, and came in to basically make sure everything was okay.
Bare in mind, this was in Northern Ireland, a place where the Police still drive Armored cars and have regular riots, and they handled this better than the Police in London, Ontario.
Yeah the cops on this side of the pond are crazy, and their leadership staff tend to fall a lot further into the “complete psycho” side of the human spectrum.
Thanks for sharing that story though - the dichotomy is absolutely fucking wild, especially considering we’re talking about Northern Ireland.
How often does it end up saving peoples lives though?
I don't know - but I'm willing to get the instances where people were saved weren't calls from anonymous voip numbers.
Well, I guess if someone calls and says you have kidnapped a little girl and that they have seen you with a gun, the police can't take a chance that it's hoax. All phone numbers that call the police should be logged and if it turns out to be a hoax, traced, so people who make hoax calls can be arrested and prosecuted.
They are logged, but swatting people get around it. They are suspicious “looking” calls, but so are bomb threats.
Swatting is pretty much always a blocked number to a non-emergency line. If they are traced it is typically one of those free online voip services. It takes work and access to really get from A to B, which is why it only happens when there are awful results.
In the US at least, 911 gets special access and calling it will always get you to your local dispatch (unless you have voip with the wrong account address). Non-emergency is just a normal phone number. If someone wants to call from out of the area or hide their number, non-emergency is how they have to do it. This is suspicious because in a real situation like “I just shot my dad” or whatever they say, nobody is taking time to look up non-emergency.
If they enter his home, and there is no evidence of a crime, then what is the basis for the arrest?
One thing is to investigate the truth of a call, another is to act on it as if it's verbatim truth.
Usually swat teams break a lot of your shit, maybe kill a baby, and then leave without arresting you.
Don’t need to arrest the suspect if they’re dead taps forehead
Was he arrested? I don't see follow up. It only says he was handcuffed which would be standard until they know what's going on.
Microsoft really is getting worse.
Fucking hell