The term "swatting" is derived from the acronym SWAT because originally, that was the goal, to get police to respond to targets with SWAT teams/tactics/gear.
The point remains, filling the street with police in response to an anonymous tip should not be the police's first response. A single car should suffice.
The simple fact is that the person who made this fake distress call intended to cause mayhem, predictably succeeded, and that mayhem killed someone. People who call in fake SWAT calls are culpable for homicide.
We're discussing how to make this tactic less effective.
Because there is something disproportionate about sending multiple cars to respond to some guy just sitting in his house who didn't want to give up a twitter handle.
Also, I see nothing in the article about Herring being armed in general and especially nothing about him being armed during the encounter.
The fact of the matter is that the police had no clue as to the truth of the situation and responded based on nothing but a random phone call. That does have to stop.
Mark Herring was the man who was swatted and died. He was swatted because he did not want to give up the @tennessee twitter handle. He was not armed and was even attempting to comply with police.
But the problem is that the first time somebody gets killed or harmed because the authorities took any amount of time to confirm the necessity of the response, you'll have people then asking why SWAT wasn't deployed to start with.
As with most things, the problem is people.