Seattle Police Department Is Offering An Anti-Swatting Service (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The practice of "swatting," or calling in fake threats to activate an aggressive police response to an unwitting home or business, has unfortunately lingered for the past few years. Starting this week, one police department in the United States is rolling out a system targeted directly at this illegal hoax practice. On its official "swatting" resource site, the Seattle Police Department acknowledges how swatting works, along with the fact that citizens have requested a way to submit their own concerns or worries about being a potential victim. "To our knowledge, no solution to this problem existed, so we engineered one," SPD's site reads. The site claims that swatting victims are "typically associated with the tech industry, video game industry, and/or the online broadcasting community."

SPD's process asks citizens to create a profile on a third-party data-management service called Rave Facility (run by the company Smart911). Though this service is advertised for public locations and businesses, it supports private residences as well, and SPD offers steps to input data and add a "swatting concerns" tab to your profile. With that information in hand, SPD says that any police or 911 operator who receives a particularly troubling emergency report and matches it to a location that has already been flagged with a "swatting concerns" notice, will share that information "with first responders to inform and improve their police response to the incident." The report notes that "all calls" will still receive standard police response, whether or not any swatting concerns are filed. "Nothing about this solution is designed to minimize or slow emergency services," the site reads. "At the same time, if information is available, it is more useful for responding officers to have it than to not."

Comments

Wrong answer

[LostOne]

Or the police could actually respond with someone who actually, I don't know, investigates the report *before* sending in a paramilitary force? I mean, it seems like getting some Mark I eyeballs on a scene first would prevent pretty much every case of SWATing. That doesn't mean that the SWAT people don't go out to the location. Only that they do not deploy as the *first* option before there are any eyeballs on the scene.

Re:Wrong answer

[ShanghaiBill]

This does raise a question, how often does a 911 call actually justify a response by SWAT?

If a police department wants to keep their SWAT team, and keep getting all the cool mil-spec equipment, then they need to use it as often as possible. Otherwise, their budget will get cut.