Swatting Incidents

Remember that SWATting is a thing.

The news popularized SWATting as a something that in the US leads to the target's death, because those cases are more "newsworthy". There are probably many more cases that end up with no deaths or injuries but still a lot of psychological trauma. But this still means that SWATting in the US can be used to good effect with the intention of getting the target killed or at the very least seriously harmed. You can view it as a combination between contract killing (the caller) and mans

Calling what they did "swatting" is already a perversion. They made a phone call. Deploying a SWAT team is not, and can not be their decision.

not send swat? actually at that not have a swat team that needs to justify its existence?

For what it’s worth, most swatting calls don’t end with a shooting, and it’s actually unusual to get the SWAT team. Most police departments will make an effort to gather information before escalating so far. When news articles about swatting showed up in major papers, police departments across the country announced that they were aware that some people believed it was hilarious to make false reports, and they would respond appropriately.

What exactly do you want police to do after being told that a guy is going around killing people? As that probably happens more than swatting attacks in the USA. Sending a SWAT team on such a report seems quite reasonable.

One of these days, there's going to be a swatting case that's deadly for the police.

maybe don't have SWAT teams that just go to people's places when getting the smallest excuse to do so?

It's SWATting when you try to pit the cops against innocent people.

Unfortunately the prevalence of guns in America is a seriously mitigating factor on behalf of police blame for swatting here. With ~15,000 gun homicides every year, >20,000 gun suicides, and several tens of thousands of additional shootings, you can’t fault the police for expecting a call about gun violence to actually involve gun violence.