Police are now trained to treat EVERY situation as potentially violent, no matter how innocuous or factually safe. They assume everyone they interact with is a lethal threat.
> I think the real solution is that SWAT teams need to be especially trained on the fact that swatting is a thing, and to try to recognize when they're in a swatting incident.
That would require humility, which police don't have, because again they are trained to immediately escalate and use violence to control every situation.
The rest of the civilized world has decided that this isn't a good way to live. But here in America we want to be 100% certain George III isn't coming back, and if the cost of that is unarmed people occasionally murdered by the people assigned to protect them, that's just the way it is.
No they don’t, the vast majority (99%?) of police interactions with the public are non-violent. I spoke with a cop in my city who told me that he did some training where 14 out of 15 training scenarios were ‘violent encounters’. The man was a career officer with 25+ years and he said almost every interaction he has with the public is non-violent. Violent encounters happen, but cops are trained like every interaction is going to turn violent.
Re: on average every American owns a gun
Something like 50% of the guns are owned by 3% of Americans or some ridiculous number. Roughly 1 in 3 adult Americans own guns.
Other countries don't arm every cop all the time, so every encounter isn't a potential standoff. We face every cop knowing that he is jumpy and checking your every move.
That is factually incorrect. 4 in 10 Americans (at most) own guns. Few of them carry them around.
Dangerous for cops or for people? A gang of SWAT cops overreacted to an incident in my town and got scared to the point of shooting 30 rounds from their rifles in an apartment hallway. The bullets went through the walls of 5 apartments, none of which were the one they were responding to.
> potentially unequipped to handle an actual violent situation
Have you seen a cop lately? Like a regular cop on patrol in a cruiser? They are equipped to handle an actual fucking foreign invasion. And they act accordingly. Aside from running into someone armed with a grenade launched, a regular cop in the US is fully equipped to handle 99% of all violent situations.
The alternative is that police come into a scenario potentially unequipped to handle an actual violent situation.
I think the real solution is that SWAT teams need to be especially trained on the fact that swatting is a thing, and to try to recognize when they're in a swatting incident.