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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.
Would it be overkill to consider swatting a form of domestic terrorism?
It places people in imminent threat of bodily harm, definitely spreads fear - and the one that seems to tip the scales for me is that it intentionally disrupts the police's ability to respond to real threats and is basically derailing society's ability to defend itself.
Okay, labeling it terrorism would probably be too much, but things like swatting strike me as attacks on society itself - which to me falls under my own definition of terrorism.
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.
Better to call it "terrorism by proxy".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Swatting is our warm colloquialism for the unintended consequences of the slow but progressive militarization of our local and regional police forces. forty years ago, the war on drugs and whats known in our nation as 'tough on crime' policies began to take the form of whatever our politicians fever-dreamed the nature of crime to be. California came out with 3 strike laws that relegated everything from bounced checks to jaywalking third offences to a minimum life sentence in prison, and the idea of civil forfeiture became a smart way to enact real-world consequences for movie-screen criminal caricatures. In america as it stands, thanks to the policies of carter, reagan, nixon, bush, and johnson, police officers can now purchase surplus military equipment for free, less shipping. And since america's chief export is war these days, we have a lot of surplus military equipment waiting to be used. This program ramped up after 9/11 and before we knew it, sleepy towns like Dothan Alabama owned tanks, mine resistent personnel vehicles, and millions of dollars in tactical military hardware such as night vision and machine guns with no realistic opportunity or purpose to utilize them.
So without real use, these systems degrade and deteriorate and the cost to maintain them is, well, very expensive. as a result, police departments found themselves shoehorning equipment requesitioned from hand-me-down government transfer projects and knee-jerk terrorism overfunding into everything. Warrant service for taxes? SWAT and a 40 ton tank can handle that. peaceful parade against planned parenthood? sounds like a job for machineguns and nightvision. And finally, the SWATting. Its an innocuous situation where some crank-yanker calls in an odious situation that requires immediate action. Hostage situations and school shootings arent oustide the american experience, but our response is nothing short of lethal interception no matter how far fetched it seems that a hostage situation in the Dugal county truck stop mens room is taking place.
Cops are baked in it. Theyve spend 30 years growing into this nonsense, that everything that isnt pulling over minorities in classic cars should be handled like a van damme movie. Their defense is often pretty good, noting that america is relatively unique in that citizenry can openly and easily procure weapons capable of quickly defeating both their body armor and their general defensive capability. But municipalities have no excuse for continuing to perpetuate this police-state response other than the obvious: theyre run by boomers and the elderly. People who have direct influence over the tactics and policy used by our police are obviously easily frightened. 24 hour news and internet forwards from grandma have reduced what should be a responsible, level-headed committee to a clamouring rats nest of assholes hovering somewhere between religious nationalism and dictatorial rule of law. the bottom line: cops arent soldiers, but we liketo pretend they are to make sure theyre ready to fight our boogeymen.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The first armed man put down the telephone. His accomplace briefly averted his eyes from us to glance at him, asking "Did they buy it?"
"Sure thing. The police think it's just another night at the library, that the call they got was a hoax. Totally bought the line I was the night watchman. They have no idea about the hostages."
"Good", said the first. "What now?"
"Now", the first armed man replied, "We dial 911, and tell them we have hostages and list our demands..."
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
The solution is to re-examine SWAT team usage nation wide, and how they are used and for what. Until we do, SWATing will always be a threat. The solution is to fix the vulernbility by replacing a dangerous and broken system with one that works better.