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Two More 'SWAT' Calls in California -- One Involving a 12-Year-Old Gamer (ktla.com)
In January an online gamer in California was arrested after at leat 20 fake emergency calls to police, one leading to a fatal shooting in Kansas. But this week in California there's been at least two more fake calls:
- A 12-year-old gamer heard a knock at his door Sunday -- which turned out to be "teams of Los Angeles police officers and other rescue personnel who believed two people had just hung themselves." The Los Angeles Police Department "said there's no way to initially discern swatting calls from actually emergencies, so they handle every scenario as if someone's life is in danger," according to the Los Angeles Times. The seventh-grader described it as "the most terrifying thing in my life."
- 36-year-old David Pearce has been arrested for falsely reporting an emergency at a Beverly Hills hotel involving "men with guns" holding him hostage. A local police captain later said that the people in the room had not made the call and in fact might have been asleep through much of the emergency. The Los Angeles Times reports that there's roughly 400 'SWATting' cases each year, according to FBI estimates, adding that "Some experts have said police agencies need to take the phenomenon more seriously and provide formal training to dispatchers and others to better recognize hoax callers."
Meanwhile, in the wake of a fatal shooting in Wichita, Kansas lawmakers have passed a new bipartisan bill increasing the penalties for SWAT calls. If a fake call results in a fatality -- and the caller intentionally masks their identity -- it's the equivalent of second-degree murder. "The caller must be held accountable," one lawmaker told the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Police don't dispatch SWAT to suicide calls, and cops don't rush in guns blazing on those types of reports.
Still a dick move, but not Swatting.
If there is really no way for a 911 dispatcher to tell that a call is arriving from somewhere outside the local area through a commercial VoIP service, that is a shameful state of affairs that needs to be addressed. Probably all SWATing hoaxes involve that kind of proxy to reach the target dispatch, and probably vanishingly few legitimate emergency calls use those services.
If a dispatcher sees a VoIP call that indicates a high risk of violence or strongly points to heavily armed response, that should be good grounds to watch out for a hoax.
Congrats to the LA police for not killing any innocent people when responding to those incidents. Keep it up.
The world is going to hell in a handbasket and I'm unsure what to put in my carryon bag.
Serenity now, insanity later.
Anything that elicits an armed SWAT response should be considered an attempt to kill the SWATee.
There is no other reason you'd send an armed response team into a situation that split second decisions mean more people may die.
Once swaters start publicly getting 20+ years for single swat attempts it'll put off a fuckton of others.
If there is really no way for a 911 dispatcher to tell that a call is arriving from somewhere outside the local area through a commercial VoIP service, that is a shameful state of affairs that needs to be addressed. Probably all SWATing hoaxes involve that kind of proxy to reach the target dispatch, and probably vanishingly few legitimate emergency calls use those services.
If a dispatcher sees a VoIP call that indicates a high risk of violence or strongly points to heavily armed response, that should be good grounds to watch out for a hoax.
Maybe charge the person who made the fake SWAT call with attempted murder.
A few horror stories about people going to prison, or facing massive financial penalties because of a video game will make people stop.
In the UK we have an offence of wasting Police time, it is minor offence, dealt with by fixed penalty fine. Then our cops down storm houses with guns. What choice are American's going to make?
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-g...
Take away qualified immunity and watch the problem go away.
damaged by dogma
You should NOT rely on data from UNCONFIRMED and potentially unreliable sources to initiate violence against another human being. This is a training issue- not an issue with someone placing a fake 911 call. What this does is it misplaces blame and diverts responsibility for shooting someone to that other than the shooter. The person who placed the fake call should be held responsible for abusing resources- not a murder committed by a poorly trained or over-reactive officer. But no, we can't ever hold the people with guns responsible for there own poor decisions, officers in blue can't ever make mistakes. They're our "heroes". The sad fact is government kidnaps and murders more people every year than all the serial murders and terrorists combined. The problem isn't prank calls or terrorism. It's poor training and an excessive number of police and military personal.
A 12-year-old gamer heard a knock at his door Sunday -- which turned out to be "teams of Los Angeles police officers and other rescue personnel who believed two people had just hung themselves." The Los Angeles Police Department "said there's no way to initially discern swatting calls from actually emergencies, so they handle every scenario as if someone's life is in danger,"
And they didn't suspect something was amiss when someone answered the door?
1) Call tracing and source profiling -- perfect for a simple algorithm or AI to do, just as we do for email servers, black lists etc. Obviously, no black list but a bad source impacts confidence levels.
2) Spam-like filtering. Threat levels or confidence ranking on the credibility of the call. This can be pure statistics for the crime and the area involved, but time of day, time of year, observer type/location, incident type/location are things best done by machines. Going further one could analyze stress in the voice using AI and possibly even do a voice print (not recognition, this is easier.) Think about abusive households, reliable snitches, as well as pranksters. You might not know who the prankster is, but you'll spot them calling from multiple locations... again, this is all a confidence level ranking system.
3) Police get a SIMPLE EASY FAST % number on the credibility of the situation. They still make the judgement call but there is a world of difference between a 99% and 2% risk of an active shooter at the location.
Furthermore, multiple witnesses calling at the same location with different accounts are easier to quickly prioritize conflicting information.
4) VoIP needed to be better standardized and regulated. For example, I lost my long time number due to a 3rd party service agreement change when the law is actually that I own my phone number and they can't take it away. Still happened.
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You would think they would at this point be privy to what is going on with the SWAT calls by now. But oh no. That's not how it works. The police get the latest and greatest machine guns, tanks, tactical outfits, and all the chicks, and they have ZERO accountability for being the soldiers on the streets.
You when it will get fixed?
When they start SWATting top US Federal and State officials, office-holders, their families, & friends. Until that happens, this is just something that happens to those 'deplorables' in 'flyover country' so who gives a fuck.
When they're looking into their own kid's/spouse's eyes as they bleed-out on the floor of their own family room because of a SWATting, *then* they'll care.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
> If there is really no way for a 911 dispatcher to tell that a call is arriving from somewhere outside the local area through a commercial VoIP service, that is a shameful state of affairs that needs to be addressed. Probably all SWATing hoaxes involve that kind of proxy
Well that is indeed how IP works. You can't reliably distinguish the location if the person has made an effort to mislead. The most popular geoip service, Max mind, claims 90 percent accuracy when nobody is trying to be tricky. That's their marketing claim for their own service; the real number is probably closer to 80 percent when no proxies are involved.
I had an idea for how to make a quite accurate geoip service, but nobody has done it yet. Maybe I should call the one company best positioned to do it using my method. It would save them money to have good geoip data, and they happen to be in a position to collect fairly reliable data.
If they aren't using proxies or anything you can fairly reliably figure out what COUNTRY they are in. As soon as it goes through a SOCKS proxy, the connection to the destination is literally coming from the proxy, so any geoip will give the location of the proxy.
No proxy is needed for geoip services such as Vonage. I've moved maybe six times since I signed up for Vonage and they know may current address only based on what I type in to their web page. How else would they know when I move? I've taken my Vonage box with me on a week-long vacation once. They have no way of knowing where I am.
Being a tech'y I cannot even imagine what it's like to be a cop and be a constant target in public. While I'm sure there's something to the current atmosphere focusing on police abuse and overuse of force, it's got to be terrifying, even if they won't admit it, to go to someone's house knowing that deadly force in either direction might be in play.
These SWAT'ing things are truly horrifying. One wrong step on either side and someone is dead, from either site. Each and every one of you think what you would happen if you're playing video games with your headphones on an someone no-knock blasts into your home. What furtive gesture might you totally unintentionally make that would cause a cop to blast you?
The Media Access Control (MAC) address isn't visible once it's an IP packet being routed over the internet. The "media" in "media access control" is the coaxial cable, for a cable modem. As soon as it hits the first router and transitions from coax to fiber or cat6 that's a new medium, and a new MAC. In other words, MAC is a layer 2 address.
Right. Almost no legitimate emergency call will involve people "trying to be tricky". If a VoIP call comes in to an emergency dispatcher with any "someone is trying to be tricky" indicator, that is a strong hint that it's a hoax. Identifying the call as a likely hoax should reduce the risk of the hoax getting anyone hurt.
After we make sure no one is hurt by the emergency response, the question becomes tracking down the hoaxer. Maybe the company or service that connected the VoIP call to the emergency dispatcher should face fines if they cannot accurately identify the caller in the event of a hoax. Those questions are harder to answer in a way that addresses all the concerns about 911 access, but they are easily separated from the question of identifying a SWATing attempt.
(I am not trying to save the world, just the targets of these hoaxes -- without compromising responses to real emergencies.)
We need to update our phone systems to allow a traceroute like command, rather than just looking at the claimed sender phone number.
Knowing that a call that supposedly came from Chicago first entered the phone system in Alabama would be very helpful.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Police need to take every call seriously and at least do a welfare check; that isn't going to change. We weed to be able to easily trace all calls back to their origin. I get calls from scammers using spoofed caller id all the time. How do I know they are spoofing the caller id? Because the first 6 digits of their number is the same as my own number -- and I don't know anybody with a number similar to mine. Also seems like a stupid strategy to convince you that one of your neighbors is calling, since my cell phone humber just indicates where I lived 15 years ago, not where I live now!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And greatly increase the jail time for false reports, yes. I think about a year behind bars might discourage most people.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"Some experts have said police agencies need to take the phenomenon more seriously and provide formal training to dispatchers and others to better recognize hoax callers."
I was a 911 dispatcher for 8 years and I can tell you this line is 100% B.S. You can NEVER treat a call like a hoax due to liability issues. I don't see the "experts" risking jail time for blowing off a call that was real. One of the first things you are taught is that lives are depending on how fast you can get the appropriate help to them in an emergency situation, and if you had a duty to react and fail to do so you can face CRIMINAL charges.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
> If a VoIP call comes in to an emergency dispatcher with any "someone is trying to be tricky" indicator, that is a strong hint that it's a hoax
Such indicators are not reliable, and not always present, but there ARE indicators that could be used to *sometimes* suggest that something suspicious *might* be happening. For example, I have a list of virtually every open proxy used by hackers. Not all suspicious traffic comes through an open proxy, and not all traffic from open proxies is illegitimate, but it's an indicator that it may be suspicious. We took fifteen years building up our methods and database, so it's not trivial.
>. Maybe the company or service that connected the VoIP call to the emergency dispatcher should face fines if they cannot accurately identify the caller in the event of a hoax.
You can't do that without imposing a police state (and having serious problems when someone wants to call 911 from anywhere but their house.) In the US, we can't even expect people to show ID in order to VOTE, much less to call 911, so that's a total non-starter.
> The most popular geoip service, Max mind, claims 90 percent accuracy when
> nobody is trying to be tricky. That's their marketing claim for their own service;
> the real number is probably closer to 80 percent when no proxies are involved.
You mean THIS MaxMind http://www.bbc.com/news/techno... that decided to geo-locate "unknown" US IP addresses somewhere near the geographical centre of the USA? Unfortunately for the inhabitants of a farm located at those co-ordinates, that meant a constant stream of visits from all levels of police, not to mention a few vigilantes who wanted to take the law into their own hands.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Have you tried calling a phone number in the past decade? If so, you may notice that the presence of a âoebusy signalâ is essentially non-existent. Further, if a 911 dispatcher has a call about an active emergency at their house, do you think that someone /not answering the phone/ after the call is disconnected is sufficient to declare a fraudulent call?
Thirty four characters live here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Take every call seriously, but don't shoot the first person within two seconds of him walking out the door. Far too many cops are scared chickenshits, or get-their-gun-off types, neither of which has any business being a cop or possessing a firearm.
Back in the day they wouldn't just kick the door down and go in with tactical teams every time they got a call. Obviously use SWAT when you need "Special Weapons And Tactics"... but if what you actually need to do is send some officers over to knock on a door.. .maybe do that instead.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"teams of Los Angeles police officers and other rescue personnel who believed two people had just hung themselves."
I understand that this one turned out to be just a pair of Hollywood plastic surgeons practicing on each other.
VOIP is largely unregulated. It needs to be regulated. The current federal government won't do that. They're too busy stuffing their pockets with "campaign donations" from AT&T, Time-Warner, and Comcast.
I don't respond to AC's.
People SUE for every stupid thing imaginable; it is not a reason to avoid doing something. The cops ultimately decide and while it does give the cops something to use an excuse, the city gets sued regardless! Rarely does it ever come down to just the cop who gets sued for money.
It's just a ball park which WILL reduce how many innocents are harmed. Right now you have an INFORMAL process at best. "Black man seen climbing into window" already has a % bias being applied which is NOT in writing. Lawsuits happen all the time, it's hard to prove anything -- this does provide more paper trail...
One defense of actuarial science (like insurance companies do to us all already) is that you can trace down the unbiased statistics or have a black box AI -- but you can't claim unfair HUMAN BIAS. Now when the cop gets a 5% warning but shoots the black suspect 1st then you have a much stronger case for the lawsuit against the city.
People ALREADY make these judgements by neighborhood, history, looks, race, gender, nature of the threat... Crazy people do call -- aliens invading a house is not going to get a SWAT reaction. Judgement calls are made and small towns even more so-- local policing is the thing people often idealize. A system which brings more of that into reality would be nice. The cop doesn't need to know you like a small town cop would, the system doesn't need to invade your privacy as much as a small town cop does either but it can provide useful context beyond you just being a unknown situation where biases are influencing every decision by the second.
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I haven't followed much of these stories, I see lots of media and commentaries but no personal knowledge of situations calling for a SWAT team. It seems to me these events begin with one phone call from a single person that leads police to response like the military, similar to something looks funny so call in a airstrike with a few 2000lb bombs. If approaching this like the military, have a recon team to assess the situation before calling in the big stuff that leads to huge collateral damage. Or treat it like a crime instead of a war.
mfwright@batnet.com
America does not need SWAT teams. We don't need an occupying army with tanks and machine guns rampaging through our city streets.
Disband all SWAT team is now! Return to civilian policing!
For that once-a-year situation that's too much for normal cops to handle, that's why we have a National Guard. In the other 99.999% of the situations there is no need for a paramilitary response.
Moar Gulag now!!
Where are the parents? 12 year olds should not be streaming live on the internet.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
It isn't just a waste of resources, it's deliberatey endangering others. No matter how well trained the officers are, there's the possibility of someone getting shot. The officers may think they're in danger, and all it takes is one officer making the wrong decision to create a tragedy. Obviously, the officer concerned should be held responsible, but if the swatter hadn't created the situation to allow the officer to kill someone with a wrong decision there wouldn't have been a death.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes