Posted on 08/28/2014 2:43:35 PM PDT by HammerT
A Littleton, Colorado, man named Jordan Mathewson was raided by a heavily armed SWAT team thanks to a false shooting and hostage report, and all the chaos was captured on a Twitch game stream (see below). During a Counter-Strike session, Jordan "Kootra" Mathewson -- a founder of The Creatures -- suddenly noticed things around him were amiss. "Uh oh. This isn't good. They're clearing rooms. What in the world, I think we're getting swatted," he says in the video. Luckily, Mathewson stayed calm throughout the ordeal and was released a short time later.
On top of invading his offices, police locked down several schools and businesses in the Littleton area. Suffice to say, the situation was extremely dangerous, and the police chief said, "We have real guns and real bullets, and there's potential there for some tragedy."
Sadly, Mathewson's ordeal isn't an isolated one: "Swatting" is the act of calling in false reports to draw real SWAT teams to a target's house, and is often inflicted on rival gamers. As Vice News pointed out recently, the phenomenon is fairly new and can easily result in deaths, especially when malicious calls involve shots fired. There's no word yet on who perpetrated the hoax (despite one claim) but police said they'd prosecute whoever it was "to the fullest extent of the law."
(Excerpt) Read more at engadget.com ...
If I order a pizza from Dominos they verify my phone # before they send the SWAT, er I mean, delivery person out with a $20 pizza.
/johnny
Shouldn’t the police dig just a little deeper before sending out the riot squad?
or watch the suspect until you can nab him at the 7-Eleven or at least make sure you know who and how many are in the house.
It's a lot to expect them to know that, but they ain't the sharpest knives in the drawer.
/johnny
Or peek in a window or put a stethoscope up to the door before blasting in? I know the kid in Home Alone fooled Joe Pesci with the soundtrack of an old gangster movie but ...
With todays technology, they could probably peek/listen from a distance
When seconds count, police are swatting up and will be with you in a half hour or so...
Exactly! I put it in low-tech parlance to underscore the fundamental nature of basic police work. Technology has changed a lot but the basic principles haven’t. Verify!
That's why I'm pushing to reduce PD budgets about 30%.
Waste of money if they can't do the job they get paid to do.
/johnny
If you keep pushing and I keep pulling maybe one day we’ll get ‘em back in line. ;-)
/johnny
The problem isn’t the ones doing the “prank,” but the SWATZIs who are all too ready to show up armed to the teeth to lay the hammer down, smash down doors unannounced, kill dogs, break teeth and bones then say “oops,” over and over.
Met with appropriate resistance (already supported by several state supreme court cases this past year), they just MIGHT tone it down a bit.
“To Protect and SERVE,” not enslave.
It would seems that they are all to eager to smash first and ask questions later - after people and dogs have been killed and property damaged.
I would like to see them inflict some punishment in kind for those folks - if it’s determined they were negligent, they should have to suffer a similar type raid conducted at random by a different swat team.
They may have a different attitude if they have suffer what their victims had to go through.
POTTS lines aren’t secure either. Anyone between your house and the telephone switching equipment (miles from the location) can make a call that really appears to originate at your house, no spoofing involved.
And you are correct, there is very little security on those lines. In the 3/4 of a mile from here to the CO, I can think of 3 places where that could happen (without climbing poles) if I actually had a landline.
/johnny
Appt, condo, and office buildings are even easier.
You don't need a landline. Just a buttset.
More than one of them also complained that the pool of competent SWAT guys was too small for the demand and they were getting people who should be the last to be given a badge, gun, and the color of authority.
By the way, I had to stop reading the book as I was getting too pist off to continue reading about these abuses and the officials continuing to refuse to admit that they did anything wrong. The book didn't just catalog these incidents, but used them in a "this is why that happened" context.
[Sidebar] The small Nevada town near me (pop 15,276) just got an MRAP, so I suspect a SWAT team is not far behind. There isn't much crime there, so I expect that in about a year or so, a "let's use it anyway" scenario will arise and we'll have a tragedy.
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