Originally published at: Florida Senator Rick Scott claims Naples home swatted by cops - Boing Boing
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I mean, it’s possible that the only thing that’d get America’s cops to stop responding to every emergency call with over-the-top killing force would be someone tricking a SWAT team into assassinating a prominent conservative senator.
On the other hand, I used to think mass executions of children would get some sensible gun laws passed, and that clearly ain’t never gonna happen. 
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That’s not going to stop the police from responding with overwhelming force… it’ll just cause them to double down against people on the left…
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I feel at this point, being a former governor, especially a Republican, could be considered probable cause.
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So he acknowledges that police forces have terrorist elements. Got it.
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More likely it will mean that Republican officeholders will get more money (in the form of tax write offs, direct grants) to establish individual protective squadrons. And of course, private jets, legal privileges against disseminating information, and so on.
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So the system was working as intended until it didn’t. Well, I have nothing to say about leopard eating faces and what not.
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Do the police have some list of “important people” that they consult if they get a call? Is it part of 911 operator training or is it up to the responders to consult it?
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I think it’s high time we stopped these criminals from doing this. And while we’re at it, we should stop the people calling these criminals and asking them to do it.
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A Google news search show there have been quite a few lately to democrats and republicans.
Marge, and her kids we’re swatted over the holiday.
The secretary of state in Maine, who removed trump from the ballot, was also swatted.
Somebody is eventually gonna get hurt, I wish they’d all stop.
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Simple answer: disarm the first responder cops. Some countries, which all have lower rates of police shooting people, do this, including the United Kingdom (except for Northern Ireland) and, believe it or not, the United States Virgin Islands. That’s right, there’s a place in the US where the cops don’t carry guns unless there’s an actual need for it, I just found that out myself, and find it a bit startling that somehow one small part of my country seems to have somehow avoided the gun insanity of the mainland and most of the rest of the country.
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“The calls are coming from inside the house!!!”
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In this case there’s a separate(but obviously related) problem: SWAT is being used as first responder cops; out of some combination of an excess of SWAT teams brought about by every podunk jurisdiction wanting to be tacticool and get 1033 toys, risk aversion; and there being no real penalty for overreaction.
In very approximate theory SWAT teams are reasonably analogous to a segment of armed officers you’d find in jurisdictions without a reputation for police lethality(not even as heavily armed or seriously trained as some, particularly from countries where using military for law enforcement isn’t something illicit that you need to sneak in the back door); but that obviously doesn’t help much when a single spoofed phone call can get one to show up; making them the de-facto first responder an uncomfortable percentage of the time; which is not so typical of analogous units elsewhere.
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And/or pressure the ambitious cop precinct leadership in their purview to increase individual protection. They already do that sort of thing in Beverly Hills and for the businesses there.
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I think the problem can be argued as not enough deescalate training but I think the root cause is PD across country keep hiring people who wants to be cop. Just like politicians, those are the least suited for the job.
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It would mean that the swat teams would have to start caring about vetting the calls coming in. They should be vetting those calls, but it sure seems they are not. They aren’t really accountable, so without that, here we are.
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and no real penalty for doing absolutely nothing with all that gear whenever they actually do face a dangerous situation
basically, it seems the people the most in danger are the ones least likely to pose a danger.
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I certainly don’t want to actually encourage people to do this. Seriously, this shit is dangerous and summary execution is not a good response to damn near any misdeed. But I wonder if there are mechanisms in place to prevent, say, SWATS being called on other police? Members of the judiciary? Police union officials? Prosecutors?
Like I legitimately hope so because if not, then you’d definitely fewer people use the tactic in an inadvisable attempt to demonstrate to the police how dangerous this is than, say, nastier cops bullying other cops/angry criminal defendants getting revenge/etc.
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