• flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Takes a special kind of asshole to swat a little old lady for trying to host a wholesome gaming stream for a good cause.

    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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      24 minutes ago

      The fact that swating still happens just proves how much of a joke policing is in general. The fact that you can get a bunch of gun-wielding adrenaline junkies to show up somewhere, frothing at the mouth for violence, in the most spurious of ways is a damning indictment for the whole institution.

  • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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    2 hours ago

    Kudos to granny for being so positive about it and acknowledging that the cops have to follow up on the calls they receive, but if some anonymous tipster can bring down a SWAT team on some grandma’s house without any kind of check being triggered, that might indicate that there are some problems about how these issues are being handled. Other people may get out of this with much worse than a funny story to tell when two dozen cops decide to visit their house at night.

    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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      25 minutes ago

      People have already died from swatting. Faster and cheaper than hiring an assassin.

      • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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        12 minutes ago

        From the point of contact, or including time to find a good one? A good assassin can be very quick.

        I’ll give ya cheaper though. Good work costs good money.

  • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works
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    3 hours ago

    And these police organisations keep spouting “but we need more funds, to protect the community”

    No, you fucking dont, you’re wasting your resources by attempting to uphold your strict quotas rather than actually serve and protect the community.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      Tell me about it. Wish this wasn’t considered a legitimate source of news. But that would require a mainstream outlet to cover it.

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
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      2 hours ago

      Turns out, it’s relatively easy to convince the police to bring in a swat team to someone’s house, and the police are so chomping at the bit to get out the big boy toys that they don’t even question the validity of the call.

      They might say it’s a hostage situation, or gunplay, whatever it takes to make action happen without any real question.

      • Hettyc_Tracyn@lemmy.zip
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        1 hour ago

        Well, if they send someone to look, and it is an actual bad situation, then response time is delayed…

        Of course, as soon as it is seen to be a false call, the person who did the call should be arrested as that’s illegal

      • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I didn’t watch the video (I never do, I want to read). So I assumed there was a warrant, when in fact there does not appear to have been time for that.

        Police received a report of an active shooter with one shooting casualty. That is what prompted the response and that’s all I wanted to know.

        The fact that the response happened isn’t something I personally think should be left up to the police (they shouldn’t be allowed to decide which calls are valid). The fact that this was obviously an overreaction on the part of the police (that so many cops showed up) is still ridiculous in my view.

        What I really want is for there to be an investigation into who made the report and preferably for the book to be thrown at them.

        I don’t disagree with you that this was a ridiculous display of force. But your answer didn’t answer my question.

        • DrMorose@lemmy.world
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          41 minutes ago

          For exigent circumstances like an active shooter or hostage situation they do not need a warrant to roll up. That is what makes these kind of issues so concerning. SWATTING has been going on since streaming became more main stay for any reason or no reason at all. Anyone can do it and repercussions on the caller are almost none existent so it is seen as a “fun” way to cause mayhem.

    • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      You ever watch Police academy? You remember Tackleberry? That’s basically the United States police.

      • atrielienz@lemmy.world
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        4 minutes ago

        This also does nothing to answer my question. I share your opinion up to a point, but I think you missed something here. I was simply looking for factual information about the event.

  • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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    3 hours ago

    Just a few days ago there was a meme of her going around. Guess some asshole saw it.

  • chunes@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Why even put officers in harm’s way? Just strap some bombs to a couple drones and be done with it.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Considering our telecons can’t (won’t) even enforce basic fucking origin checking, it’s not surprising.

      These companies have ways of validating calls, it just takes money to setup and enforce, and we can’t waste money on silly things like basic safety when the shareholder value is at stake.

      • Bazoogle@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        Assuming this was in the US, most 911 dispatchers are E911, so the approximate location is automatically included with the call. Smart phones are able to provide a more accurate location, and dispatchers still ask location because they don’t know what floor you’re on if it’s a multi story building.

        • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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          18 minutes ago

          The E911 location information is not verified. It’s just a field you fill out when you sign up with a voip service. Smart phone location data can also be spoofed, but that’s not quite as easy.

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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          38 minutes ago

          Unfortunately, I’m fairly certain e911 isn’t super helpful against people already spoofing their number and location.

          I’m vaguely aware of possible feature rfc to add another layer to prevent spoofing, but given how lazy telecoms are about doing validations MUCH more basic than extending a protocol/schema, I’m not holding my breath.

  • daggermoon@piefed.world
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    6 hours ago

    This happens frequently enough where you’d think there would be a system in place to prevent this type of abuse.

    • iamthetot@piefed.ca
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      3 hours ago

      It’s the ol’ “boy who cried wolf” situation. You probably don’t want public services like police and firefighters deciding which calls seem real or not.

      • Canaconda@lemmy.ca
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        2 hours ago

        K but there has to be some happy medium between 20 swat cars and showing up 2 hours after the pizza driver.

        • iamthetot@piefed.ca
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          2 hours ago

          It’s really easy to say that when you’re not the one calling the police because there’s an actual madman with a gun holding your loved one hostage. I think it’s a tough situation that, really, has more to do with the overall culture in America than how emergency services respond to particular calls. If the overall level of potential danger was lower due to cultural reasons, I think then we could talk.

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 hours ago

      Genuinely hard to do. Even if we ignore the problem of guns in the US (this also happens in the europe, for example).

      Emergency services kind of have to assume every call is real and act accordingly. In hostage and shooting situations there’s not really much time to debate the validity of the case, because if they delay and it was a real situation, they now are responsible for potentially more victims.

      The only real solution is that the forces need to arrive with the potential that it’s a fake call. But that’s easier said than done

      Oh, and prosecute the hell out of the callers. Which is not always possible, depending how energy they put into making the call anonymous

  • lechekaflan@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Why I quit MMOs and never looked back, because even more than 20 years ago toxic behavior was being normalized, and that included offline PK.

    Fucking little assholes nearly killed a grandmother.

    • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 hours ago

      Is Minecraft really even a MMO? My understanding is that it’s usually smaller servers. This was probably more just some asshole using her streaming to attack, rather than a toxic player.

      • mcv@lemmy.zip
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        3 hours ago

        There are massive Minecraft servers handling hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously, but most are small of course.

        • Bazoogle@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          That’s if you play one of those. Seems like she was in a single player world. I wouldn’t consider Minecraft an MMO in the typical sense.

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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      4 hours ago

      It’s an American thing. The goal is to hopefully use the police to kill the streamer since police often are skittish and tend to shoot first before verifying what is going on.

        • Zink@programming.dev
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          2 hours ago

          Because the police are mercenaries, not wild animals. They generally don’t bite the hand that feeds. Besides, they still have 99% of the population to target.

      • Bazoogle@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I don’t think the goal is to get them killed most of the time. It’s mostly kids thinking they’re “pranking” them, and just want to scare them.

    • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
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      6 hours ago

      Its called swatting. You call police and say someone is dangerous and they come running with all the gear to justify the bloated budgets. Kids were doing this pretty often in the news a decade ago. Especially to streamers.

      • DillDough@lemmy.zip
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        2 hours ago

        It never stopped btw. This has been a constant and consistent issue for well over a decade, it rarely ever makes “the news”.

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Since guns are handed out in America like chocolate at a Willy Wonka publicity and outreach campaign, every law enforcement agency has to be kitted out to potentially combat a barricaded suspect who can rain a small militia’s worth of lead on them and their surroundings. That’s why the response team often includes armored vehicles, snipers, and crayon munchers armed to the tits. And because abusing emergency services doesn’t cut into the profit of any big corporations, there are no effective means to seek justice against the offenders.

      • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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        6 hours ago

        abusing emergency services

        I don’t understand - someone called the swat team on her? Why would they go to a private house with a giant swat force based solely on some anonymous tip? That makes no sense in my head.

        • rtxn@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          someone called the swat team on her?

          some anonymous tip

          That’s not what happened. Someone called 911 and described a situation that involved a shooter who has already shot someone. The 911 operator then had to relay that to the responders (in this case, LE). The responding officers might have only received an address, that there was a barricaded active shooter, and that there was at least one shooting victim.

          It’s not up to the police to debate the veracity of a report. Imagine being in a hostage situation, you manage to call 911, and they respond with “sounds fake, not coming”.

          • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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            5 hours ago

            Okay, but surely upon arriving to said address with a huge swat team and discovering nothing amiss, no panicked people, no gunfire, no anything, their first reaction is to raid the house? The US sure is a strange place.

            • Triasha@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              Gunfire would not necessarily panic people in the vicinity. If you are in a suburban setting, surrounded by 6 foot fences separating 2 story houses, a few shots could be mistaken for hammering, some kind of construction project. If I did think there was gunfire, I would go inside, and take shelter, not hang around to talk to cops.

              I would never run toward cops period. They might shoot me.

              I have fired guns and been around guns as they were fired, and I am not confident I would know the difference easily. Plenty of Americans have less experience with firearms than I do.

            • rtxn@lemmy.world
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              5 hours ago

              You know that shooters have the ability to stay quiet, right? A calm atmosphere doesn’t mean there isn’t someone who is in imminent danger. Back to the thought exercise: you’re a hostage, you call 911, police arrive. Then they wait five minutes and fuck off because nobody’s firing at them or shouting threats. Do you think that’s reasonable? Wouldn’t you want them to breach the house and get you out of the situation?

              It’s fucked up that this happened in the first place, but “well, the police should have…” is not how you fix it. Misuse of emergency resources needs to be a federal crime, and doing it to harm another person needs to be investigated and penalized as attempted murder with prison sentence for first time offenders, both as punishment and as a deterrent. But I’ve seen enough court cases to understand that the US justice system has neither the motivation nor the competence to implement or enforce a law like that.

        • madasi@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 hours ago

          Because they have the equipment and are always looking for an excuse to use it to justify the cost and training. And because the more they use it, the sooner they can get more of it.

          It makes zero sense to a normal person, nor does their justification for needing the equipment in the first place, but once they have it they’ll use it any chance they get.

        • Brewchin@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Ever seen Stripes, the '80s action comedy film with Bill Murray and other notables?

          There’s a scene in it that I think of every time this kind of story crops up, where you have over-equipped and under-educated people who are trained to think that everyone’s the enemy, and so prioritise their blood thirst and fear over everything else:

          “All I know is I finally get to kill somebody!”

          Their actions aren’t about right/wrong or just/unjust, but that they were let off the leash to do what they have been conditioned to do.

          So you get people calling in hoaxes to police forces who send militarised forces to raid grannies, young children, whomever. It’s about the drama and lulz. Objectively horrifying.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          The US has lived in a state where any measure to squash terrorism would never be enough, for a long time. All you have to know is an address and say to the police that you heard a group of Arab looking middle aged men speaking of blowing up a place and a small army would be raised ready raze that domicile to the ground if necessary.

          That’s what happens when a group of people is armed beyond reason and in constant paranoia.

      • Soulg@ani.social
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        5 hours ago

        Swatting also happens in Europe. I get that were the punching bag right now, but it’s not a problem that only happens here.

        • rtxn@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          There is an enormous difference between the conduct of police officers between the US and Europe. Again, it mostly comes down to the public’s access to firearms, but the quality of training, institutionalized prejudices, and corrective actions (or the absence of those things) are also significant factors.

          The US is not a punching bag. It’s receiving fair criticism and experiencing repercussions for decades of failure to improve public safety, and using both legal mechanisms and populist rhetoric to sanctify gun violence and the persecution of vulnerable groups, leading to a deeply divided, damn near tribal society (Us against Them), and the rise of the American Gestapo under the false banner of immigration control. Be patriotic, absolutely. But patriotism without awareness and due criticism is nothing more than zealotry.