> "He went out the house with a gun, because he heard someone was on his property," Fitch explained. "He sees all these cops around him, and they ask if he is Mark Herring, 'put your hands up,' so he tosses the gun away from him to show he's not a threat, and [put his] hands up."

If not a SWAT team, a large armed response.

What do you propose as an alternative? They can’t send unarmed cops to respond to reports of gun violence, and it wouldn’t be responsible to simply send one cop.

By all accounts, the police responded appropriately and de-escalating the situation when the man came outside with a gun.

I don’t understand what people want to be different about this situation, other than for the police to become clairvoyant so they can know when reports are false before they get there.

> By all accounts, the police responded appropriately and de-escalating the situation when the man came outside with a gun.

Whose accounts would those be of? Is there a video available for review?

The original Minneapolis PD's report on George Floyd was the only official account of the events prior to the medical examiner's report, and was specifically written to be as detail-free as legally possible.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36179698/minneapolis-...

> it wouldn’t be responsible to simply send one cop

Does that even happen in the USA? I'm in the UK, and I can't remember the last time I saw a solitary cop - they patrol in pairs here.

I've heard serving UK police officers elsewhere online say that their department's standard response to reports of hostage situations is to send one officer to drive past the premises in either an unmarked car or their personal car* to see if the report checks out.

In general, cuts to the police have made single crewing a lot more common.

*With the exception of dog handlers, British police aren't allowed to drive home in their patrol cars.

For low priority stuff it's common enough I'd say it's the standard.

>What do you propose as an alternative

Send the drones ahead. Flying, walking, tracked, wheeling.

Like that wouldn’t cause a heart attack?

Why send the officers at all and risk their lifes, can't we just install weapons on the drones? Oh yea we probably can. dramatic evil music starts

>What do you propose as an alternative?

From the police that regularly chokes people, shots unarmed men, women, and even kids, and likes to play with military gear, and are trigger happy?

Probably one can't expect much of them, anyway.

A competent police would have set up some kind of barricade to stand behind, call for the person to come out, try to watch the house from afar to see what's going on, and in any case, not have several people stand with drawn weapons aiming at a person...

Yes, when there's a report that a gunman has already shot someone, the police should respond by... hiding.

Of course not, they should respond Hollywood-style, so that they create chaos and even more people get a chance to be shot, Mexican Standoff style.

After all if "a gunman has already shot someone", the police can obviously bring that person back to life by charging into the scene guns ablazing...

And, as many SWATing cases have shown us, "when there's a report that a gunman has already shot someone" it's necessarily true!

/s

i dunno but "swatting" seems like a decidedly american thing so how come its not a problem in other countries?

What happens in your country when the police receive an anonymous phone call about a violent crime in progress at a residence?

Not by sending a SWAT team....

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Belgium/Un...

Here you can see we have more crime per 1000 then America. But we have significant less gun crimes and/or violent crimes then US. Also violent crime with murder and murder crime. 1 more trivia item is that we actually have more police officers per capita then America.

Not sure what to conclude. Gun restrictions seem not to curb crime but seems to curb violent crimes and murders. Or maybe we are just less violent :) I'm not sure.

But what I can conclude is that our Police doesn't have to go many times to violent crime scenes and when they go the chance someone is armed with a gun even less likely....

Not really what I asked. If the police get a report of an ongoing violent crime, do they respond? If they respond, do they send more than one or two officers? Are those officers armed?

If the answer to all of those questions is "yes", then congratulations, you have exactly the same situation as this case in Tennessee. (If the answer to any is "no", ...?)

"1 more trivia item is that we actually have more police officers per capita then America."

50% more. I'm impressed.

OTOH, that site shows The Netherlands as having ~155 police officers total. I guess they're not counting the 24,000 "peace officers".

New Zealand has 5 total (0.1 / 100,000).

Best I can tell, violent crime has an extremely high correlation with poverty and/or corruption, and little to no correlation with gun restrictions. The presence of extreme outliers is telling. For example, Iceland, Switzerland, Austria, and Norway have high gun ownership rates and relatively relaxed gun regulation, but low violent crime. Venezuela, Mexico, China, and Vietnam have strong firearms restrictions and terrible violent crime rates.

While you're probably right that poverty is part of the problem, counting raw number of firearms is misleading.

Norway is mostly hunting rifles for example. Very few handguns.

Policing is also different. Police is usually not carrying guns, but the moment a gun is reported it causes a massive response. As a criminal, bringing a gun massively increases your risk, as without one you're unlikely to run into anyone with a lethal weapon. It also causes a risk of a far longer sentence.

> the moment a gun is reported it causes a massive response. As a criminal, bringing a gun massively increases your risk, as without one you're unlikely to run into anyone with a lethal weapon. It also causes a risk of a far longer sentence.

That's exactly the same in the US, btw. Bringing a gun causes the tactical team to come in rather than the normal cops, and it aggravates the criminal's sentence.

> Bringing a gun causes the tactical team to come in rather than the normal cops

Missing the point, which is that this is a meaningful escalation in Norway where regular cops do not carry guns in most instances. It's a far less meaningful escalation when you're facing armed police either way.

The point both with that and the sentencing is that it creates a sharp escalation from a low risk base.

Escalation only works as a deterrence from negative behaviours if the lowest risk alternative is actually seen as low risk.

Nothing about this story about Iceland's high rate of gun ownership and low rate of violence says "relaxed gun regulation" to me: https://globalnews.ca/news/4236365/iceland-gun-control-viole...

Very few countries can compete with the US on the ease with which one can buy a firearm, so if that is your standard, sure. But compared to most of the world, that process is pretty damn relaxed, and gun ownership rates are pretty high as a result. And in some selected ways, those countries are even more relaxed: silencers can be purchased over the counter without a permit, and there is no regulatory distinction between short barrel and long barrel rifles. And in some (albeit regulated) cases even modern full-auto rifles can be owned, which isn't even possible in the US...where the newest full auto gun that a civilian can buy was made in 1986 and likely costs >$25k.

Here in the UK the police attend. They're armed with tasers only (and some don't have those). They're trained to deescalate violence. If they assess the situation is bad enough they can call in armed backup but it's rarely needed.

For whatever reason I very rarely hear about swat-like behavior from the Norwegian police, and it is not because media leave them alone.

I hear about unnecessary use of force while detaining someone, a few standoffs against armed opponents, a few car chases but nothing like swatting.

There was no “swat like behavior”. There was no unnecessary use of force. At least that’s my reading.

Depends. Would it be Thursday between 09:00 and 16:00? If so they'd have someone here in 25 minutes. If not, it'd take something like an hour until someone turned up and asked if I wanted to make a report.

Here in germany it depends... if the dispatcher has serious doubts regarding the validity of the call he might simply tell the kid on the phone to "f... off", if there is something sounding valid you might -depending on the region- get either a "visit" from local police or directly from the SEK (the german version of SWAT). But... the SEK has a relative good track record on capturing the subjected fellons alive.

You're asking this on an American-centric forum, secure in the knowledge most Americans aren't paying attention to issues with the police in other countries.

no i'm responding to someone acting like "there is no other way to handle this" who's clearly not considered that other countries handle it rather differently

The person saying there was no way to handle it differently was talking about the specific case in this article where we know the details and can consider each of the police's actions logically using common sense.

We’re clear here that that was just what the kid said, all made up right? And no one was actually killed prior to the swat showing up. The article was written pretty confusingly.. anyway sounded to me like the guy was literally just sitting around and happened to have a gun, as you probably would in a rural area, and went into fight or flight once the neighbor told him he was surrounded by armed cops

But I would think - depending on whether prank reports like this are relatively common, as a % of all SWAT calls made legitimate or illegitimate - it’d be better to check out the scene, maybe even knock first if the situation allows it, as a default, to determine any chance that they were just being sent on a wild goose chase by some bored gamers. I guess cases with quote-unquote hostages would preclude that kind of luxury though, dunno

It sounds like the police did a fairly rational thing here. They went to the house in a large group, they asked for the person, told him to out down his weapon, and didn’t shoot him. That sounds like a reasonable response, even though it ended in tragedy.

The only people responsible for this were the people who called the police with a false report. That is the crime.

I think cops do a lot of bad shit and need to be held accountable, but this sounds like they did the right thing.