Since they recorded 1000 swatting events in a year, I assume that most times swat is called their response is warranted - it gets tough to try to vet calls sent to a very fast response group

That depends entirely on how many "my husband is going crazy with a shotgun" calls they get, doesn't it?

I picked the above scenario because police calls for domestic disputes are incredibly common. This source[0] says they account for 15% to 50% of all police calls. Hundreds of women are murdered with guns by their intimate partners every year[1]. Also domestic violence calls are a big cause of police deaths though definitely not the #1 cause as Joe Biden erroneously claimed[2]. I was aiming to create a somewhat plausible 911 call, though having the wife shot while she was on the 911 call might have been a bit over the top.

[0] https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/statistics/law-en... [1] https://everytownresearch.org/report/guns-and-violence-again... [2] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/mar/15/joe-biden/...

The alternative to responding with SWAT isn't to do nothing, it's to respond with a less dangerous force (two/three/four officers in-uniform, knocking). We could easily default to non-SWAT unless there's very good evidence (i.e. not a single unconfirmed phone call) to believe SWAT is needed. The same way no-knock warrants should be almost never allowed.

From your source 6 cops died in 2022 due to disorder/disturbance (domestic disturbance, civil disorder, etc.) - so 6 at most. So I don't think it's reasonable to think of that as a "big cause" of police deaths. Also, and this is a personal thing that annoys me, innocent people being shot/killed by police is strictly worse than police being shot/killed. Police are knowingly taking these risks, they're compensated for them, and they are wearing protective equipment. I'd rather a police officer be shot in a domestic dispute than a guy getting shot in a swatting incident.

> The alternative to responding with SWAT isn't to do nothing, it's to respond with a less dangerous force (two/three/four officers in-uniform, knocking).

SWAT does not get called in to every domestic violence call.

The one in discussion isn't a welfare check or noise complaint, it's an angry man with a shotgun in a near-hostage situation. He's already angry, and now threatened by being outnumbered, and knows the night will end with him in jail. Desperation++. You've escalated the situation and increased risk to everyone. This is America, not Japan. When the SWAT team gets involved, it's a disruption tactic to deny him time to think or act.

> I'd rather a police officer be shot in a domestic dispute than a guy getting shot in a swatting incident.

"We won't have your back if you fuck up, and we'll leave you for dead either way" is not a selling point for any career. This one isn't exactly popular to begin with. Without the hero worship, there is little incentive to go into public service. The money is better in the private sector. Ask me how I know.

Firefighters and EMTs don't have to deal with this shit, so nobody has anything bad to say about them. We forgive their mistakes, even when people die.

Agree with all that!

Those cops should be pretty familiar with domestic violence situations then since they commit so much of it.

https://sites.temple.edu/klugman/2020/07/20/do-40-of-police-...

Funny because I would assume most times they are not warranted

so do we have enough information to determine? or do we need to push for that first.

Yes, I would be very interested in the denominator of "legit" SWAT raids, specifically limited to only those for which prank calls are a false positive, i.e. real, time-sensitive emergency distress calls, and not prearranged raids where the police have a warrant.

Is SWAT really needed for that though? Is not "the police" enough?

Normally it would be, but unfortunately in a country where small portion of the population literally stockpile powerful guns permitted by law, I would, as a responding LEO, want to be prepared for the worst..

It's not merely a matter of stockpiled firearms, because, well, you know how it goes: "guns don't kill people".

I think it's also a matter of urban gangsta warfare going on since time immemorial. The organized crime is rampant, and while the races change, the adversaries stay more or less the same. Since the 80s or so, you've had Crips and Bloods and everyone in between, with all their rap-video braggadoccio, ready to have a showdown with police at the drop of a hat. Ice-T, 2Pac, NWA, the flames have been stoked, and I mean, I guess it's not their fault, because it takes two to tango. The police have geared up and gotten ever-more militarized and hostile to ordinary citizens, wielding technology to match. So there's been an escalation.

And that's why we have #BlackLivesMatter today. Not because cops are inherently evil and shooting innocents on purpose, but because both sides have been warring for decades, and that makes for itchy trigger fingers.

So I think if pranksters are misusing SWAT teams for hoaxes and weaponizing them against their Fortnite adversaries, then perhaps it's a wake-up call to have a ceasefire, a disarmament, and both sides (or all sides) to stand down and rethink why we're all here.

Agreed. I was going to add at the end of my comment something along the lines of

"If just the police isn't good enough, we find ourselves further down an unpleasant spiral than we thought we were".

I also agree with the person to whom you're replying though.

SWAT are the police. They're just normal officers with squad-based training that get mobilized when particularly-nasty situations are called in. A task force of sorts, kinda like the Power Rangers-- just normal kids until the supervillains show up, then they do a costume change and show up to assume their specific role in the response.

"The police" don't show up to calls with reinforced vehicles, ballistic helmets, vests, and shields, and an arsenal of assault weapons to deal with extensive threats. At best, beat cops have an anti-stab vest, a 9mm, a flashlight, and their choice of a shotgun or AR-15 in the car. It takes nothing to gun down a pair of cops.

We expect too much of law enforcement in these situations IMO. The military has intelligence units and recon teams to provide actionable advice. The cops are working with an anonymous call, unknown entities and unknown locations; they have to figure everything out ad-hoc in an urban warfare scenario. It's chaos. Imagine being told you have 5 minutes to introduce a change to a production distributed environment you've never even seen, and either you or an innocent civilian are summarily executed at random for each error you make. Those are the stakes they're working with, and they're nowhere near as smart as you.

Mistakes get made, which is on them, but calling them in as a prank is monstrous for everybody involved. It's just fucking evil.