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Watching a "Swatting" Slowly Unfold
netbuzz writes That online gamers have been victimized has unfortunately allowed us to see what "swatting" looks like from the perspective of the target: terrifying and potentially deadly. A similar type of criminally unnecessary SWAT scene played out Saturday night when a caller to police in Hopkinton, Mass., claimed to be holed up in the town's closed public library with two hostages and a bomb. The library stands within eyesight of the starting line for the Boston Marathon. An editor for Network World, there by happenstance, watched for two hours, and, while it was a hoax and no one was hurt, his account highlights the disruption and wastefulness these crimes inflict.
Wouldn't it be smarter for the police to call back the library, and ask if there's anything going on ?
Moderately interesting article. Too bad they decided to add the clickbait boston marathon reference. Makes me feel a little dirty for giving them a click.
No actual guns blazed in this scenario. Lots of people milled about, but not a single shot was fired.
Did you have some kind of point to make?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Is because of the predictably over-the-top military reaction by the police.
Why kick someone in the balls when you can shine a laser pointer at his crotch, and have his dog bite him there?
De-escalate police reactions and you'll see this go away.
Let me put this clearly. We don't need a damn new enforcement of terrorism laws that they then can use to throw at the books of everyone and their grandma. There are laws already on the books for dealing with this from filing a false police report on up.
What they need to do to put a stop to this is start putting people in jail for it and make people realize they cannot fake a call to 911 anonymously. Once the story makes the rounds that if you do it you will go to jail people will stop doing it. That's all you need to do, start putting the pranksters in prison for a year or so and giving them a felony record in the process and this will stop. But you have to prove to the public that if you make one of these calls you will be caught.
But as long as the police departments treat it as a non-crime by not investigating it's only going to get worse. The for profit policing that the war on drugs had created discourages the police from pursuing real crime that's not tied to drugs.
No the real problem is the police having essentially a para-military mindset
Yes but you are still blaming the wrong people for the incidents. It's like blaming the explosion on the explosive. The one who lights it up is the one that caused the explosion, no the chemicals. You're using the .01% rule as your argument and that's why it's not valid.
In my opinion, every police officer should be tried before a jury for every shooting
A good start would be making them 100% accountable by putting body cams. I've said this a million times. People keep saying the police has too much power. The power isn't the problem, it's the lack of accountability. Without the body cams their word will always rule in court hence why they do things they can get away with.
He's not wrong. Sorry, i'm not a leftist ideological hack, probably just the opposite, and I agree with, in essence, everything said by the GP poster. We did militarize our police forces for bad reasons. We do overreact to crimes. We should strip out all of the military hardware from "first responders" aka law enforcement. There's no need for it and it makes our existence more coarse.
Getting rid of some stupid drug laws and over the top criminal enforcement would also help.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
when it affects someone in power.