Posted on 08/07/2011 1:48:47 PM PDT by InvisibleChurch
When police stormed a home in Canada last month, they were prepared to face a man who had killed his mother and was threatening to kill his sister.
But instead they found Jason Myles, a software consultant who was alone in the apartment and listening to music on headphones.
Myles told the Toronto Star: 'As soon as I heard it was the police I knew it had to be a mistake of some kind.'
Dangerous trend: 'Swatting' is done when a hacker phones in an emergency via a computer with the aim of getting a SWAT team dispatched 'There was nothing going on in the apartment that would warrant any kind of police response.’
Mr Myles, 39, was handcuffed on the floor while police searched for the ‘victims,’ but they found nothing – no dead mother, no threatened sister.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
It is if you want to discharge your very expensive M-16, kill someone or their dog and have an excuse after the mop up operations.
Even then, it’s not necessary.
Once the owner is subdued, SWAT can liesure go from room-to-room looking for the dog.
Some juvenile moron needs his ass seriously kicked.
It will. SWAT will open fire on what they think they see or a homeowner will fire on police breaking down a door who haven't properly identified themselves.
Police used to be taught contain, control, correct as a measured response to any such call.
I may be wrong, but I thought I remembered the police at Columbine didnt enter the school until the perps killed themselves.
The objective appears 2b political: they aim to aggravate public sentiment against SWAT raids —it’s not a prank on the people.
My guess the callers are pot-heads whose buddies have been raided, or people aware of mistaken or needless SWAT raids.
Claymores would be my preference.
Followed by the AR, of course.
That’s the way it should be.
But I suppose the paperwork on a dead person is shorter than a live and wounded person.
The fact that the prank succeeded is the concern here.
If ya want to be in the use of force business, know your enemy, there are no acceptable excuses.
That sounds like a very real possibility. I trust the right security analysts have thought about the possibility and what to do about it.
I’m assuming he had no dog since no dog was shot.
Radioactive beam.
Well, that’s one way to discredit the police state. Also — more assiduous surveillance by citizens with cell phone cameras ...
A Viking kittie, no doubt, that made them so tense.
It seems I recall several active shootings where people were still beign killed, and SWAT set up a perimeter and waited outside for a negotiator to make contact with the shooter.
If I had to guess, the justification they would offer is that an active shooter is ready for a fight, may have prepped for their entry with boobytraps, and will fire on them when they come in, immediately. Not a good chance of gaining relatively superiority quickly.
In this case, SWAT thought they had the element of surprise with this guy, so they went in quick before he was ready to face them.
These kids need to be punished with the same penalty you would get for invading a home, raping the occupant, destroying their house, and trying to kill them. In the end, that is what they are trying to do.
Cops vary from place to place. Some departments are better, and more selfless, than others.
“... it’s not a stretch to seek attempted murder charges ...”
It is high time that these swat teams on steroids are charged with murder or attempted murder in some of these cases.
I don't mind that part, I usually answer the door. Unless I'm not home.
But...
This is a serious violation of unreasonable search, and the penalties for error must be severe. If not, I see the development of the excuse, "Well, we got this call, and we must treat every report of a crime as a serious event." Even if the police themselves make it up.
With the proliferation of prepaid phone, which anyone can buy, this is a real and present danger. To every citizen.
Either those damned phones must be registeredm just like a gun is, and it's number may not be disabled, so that caller ID is mandatory.
Otherwise we're in a world of hurt.
By the way, I'm curious. Who is responsible for the damage caused by a SWATting attack? This needs to be made clear ASAP.
Some students and a wounded teacher barricaded themselves inside a room and then talked to the police on cell phones.
The teacher died before the swat team entered the building.
Perhaps the teacher's life could have been saved had the swat team acted promptly.
Maybe police shouldn’t respond to calls that come from untraceable sources. Honest people who call 911 WANT the police to know who and where they are. The fact that the number is spoofed should be an immediate cause for suspicion.
There are in fact criminals and scammers—think “Rachel from Cardholder Services”—who place calls from sources for which caller ID doesn’t work, or that redirect to third party phone numbers. Maybe police lines have better ways of identifying the source, though.
A false report to an agency of public safety is a misdemeanor in most places. If it endangers somebody’s life—whether the subject of the SWAT invasion or the police officers themselves—maybe it should be upgraded to a felony. Whoever does this garbage should be prosecuted and punished.
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