What would be an acceptable figure of those that aren’t immediately at risk of harming others being killed? What about injured? The media rightly tends to focus on killings, but what about unnecessary shootings or use of force that don’t result in death.

Currently that’s a non-zero number and we know that the man killed in this case was not a threat as well.

"There is no evidence to suggest that the officers did not honestly believe that Dorner was in the vehicle, nor is there evidence to suggest that the officers did not honestly believe they were being fired upon."

Unless the US police is worried about being shot by innoscent civilians that is no justification. And if they are then why on earth aren’t they doing a better job of verifying credible threat in these situations before they enter?

You say that, but... they do. How many hostage calls are real, vs. fake? Why don't police approach all cars they pull over with their guns drawn?

> How many hostage calls are real, vs. fake?

How do you propose verifying if a situation is real vs fake short of entering the premise prepared for a real situation?

For starters; he had to call a general, city line, to get the public (non-local, 10 digit) line for the dispatchers, so he could actually call the '911' (three digit) line.

From what I gather, The area code itself is a give-away.

If you say 'what about people who just moved, but haven't changed their number yet,' then I'd say that the dispatchers (should) be able to see if it was a honest 911 (three digit), or the public line (10 digit.)

Easily spoofed, and the phone company will laugh in your face if you ask them for the billing address of the person who called you at 10:37pm on Nov 12, 2018.

(I think this is tough in the general VoIP case because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency—which in my opinion are usually good things that are not primarily used to murder people. Even if VoIP operators verify some kind of information about subscribers' identities before allowing them to establish service, it's not completely clear what they should ideally report to 911 services in all cases because they'll presumably never be certain of the end-user's identity and location at a particular moment. And for other purposes, users of the phone network might want to reduce how much the phone companies know about their whereabouts.)

Yeah, I didn't say the information didn't exist, I'm saying the phone company makes it basically impossible to get, and certainly the most difficult for home customers.

because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency

I don't care. If you're calling me, I should be able to find out who's paying for the call, and the phone company knows this info. Sure, there's still an "over 9000 proxies" bug, but that's not the problem. The problem is robocallers and telemarketers, and I should be able to configure my line to block every call that originates from any portion of that billing entity. Heck, when I describe it that way it could be blockchain'd!

I meant statistically. Most cops don't approach a car with their guns drawn, because statistically most car stops don't end up with anyone getting shot. (Although some do.) How many hostage situations are actually a danger to anyone, vs. not?

Why the hell not? Swatting is a well-known phenomenon, and even if that weren't true, killing somebody without a single shred of direct evidence that the situation calls for that level of response is insane. We absolutely have to do better. Police cannot (responsibly) put themselves in completely unknown situations and then start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger.

It seems that police departments have started to respond to the threat of swatting with streamer whitelists and such. That's good. It's just a shame that someone apparently had to die for them to sit up and take this obvious problem seriously.

What I mean is, it's very easy to say that they can't put themselves in these completely unknown situations. Unfortunately that simply is the job of the response teams and often of local law enforcement. How do you verify quickly and accurately that a call is not a trap? How do you do so consistently -- that is, how do I know the NEXT call is NOT a trap? A streamer whitelist does no good if swatting can be done to anyone.

I don't mean to assume that there aren't already answers to these questions, but to say that they are being irresponsible when dispatching officers and teams is making light of the issues.

Are you implying that I said that? I said no such thing, anyway.

I will say, again, that "police cannot (responsibly) put themselves in completely unknown situations and then start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger."

Speaking of things I never said... I also didn't say streamer whitelists would completely fix this problem. It's a good start, and should help officers to go into these situations with more information. That makes everybody safer.

Overall you've put a lot of words in my mouth and you seem to be implying this false dichotomy in which officers either "aren't taking the call seriously" or are justified in pulling the trigger on someone with zero direct evidence that they're actually in any danger. That dichotomy is bullshit.

I'll admit I didn't think too much about the whitelists (I assume it's just a list of streamers kept somewhere, not people sending their names in if they're a streamer to be placed on the list). It is a good idea because streamers are most often targeted by swatters (citation needed), though it obviously can't solve the problem since not all people swatted are streamers. I apologize.

Pulling up your pants is not a reason to get shot. Other jurisdictions don’t seem to have the same problem of shooting people who have already surrendered.

EDIT: You are right, that was a poor example for this situation. I can't reply to you, but the only point I'm trying to make is that it is very easy to see this situation after the fact. But I would imagine it is next to impossible to verify some of these facts in real time with confidence.

Back in reality the police shot a man who already surrendered and was unarmed. This would be a war crime on a battlefield, but the police are held to a lower standard.

Even if there were a genuine hostage taker, shooting them on sight isn't the right thing to do. They usually succeed in talking them down.