For nearly two years, police have been tracking down the culprit behind a wave of hoax threats. A digital trail took them to the door of a 17-year-old in California.
There was a story posted a day or so ago about a teen getting arrested for multiple Swatting attacks. This story from Wired explains how the authorities tracked him down and pieced everything together.
in that story, the townsfolk eventually stop coming when they realize that the boy is lying for attention. so, the question should be: has anyone working SWAT ever read that story?
of course, there are alternative interpretations…
They stop coming when an actual tragedy is occurring. The point I was trying to make is that you don’t want paramedics, firefighters, or police officers deciding for themselves if it’s a real emergency or not. They should treat them all like real emergencies.
these aren’t SWAT teams, though, and in the time between the call and the deployment, certainly someone can pick up a phone and/or google to check out the target to see if it’s legit.
I didn’t think I would have to clarify that I was including SWAT in police.
lol, ok, fair, but I tend to separate SWAT from police because it’s not what most would consider a typical police response/service (when grouped with fire/EMT as you did). at least in the context of this conversation.
anyway, the point that I’m trying to make is that, after decades of SWAT teams’ response system being abused horribly this way - especially against public figures, etc - one would think there should and would be steps taken to put safeguards in place to prevent such misuse.