82-year-old YouTuber grandma was raided by police and SWATs during her live stream last night where she plays Minecraft to raise money for her grandsons cancer. Authorities brought 20 police cars
3 months ago by Puddinghelmet to c/games
Authorities brought 20 police cars, five SWAT officers, and drones to her house
update: Found this video from local news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGeb3cuqLxE
While she's trying to raise money for her grandkid's cancer treatment, no less.
Seriously, fuck whoever did this.
Systems - both our healthcare and policing
The most fucked up thing is that SWAT teams keep falling for it. What fucking information did they have that warranted this level of a response? How the fuck is someone not fired every time this happens?
Grandma could have died...
Making the mother of all omelettes here, Jack! Can't fret over every egg!
Why do you think that? Do they mention some kind of payout in the video? It sounds unlikely to me.
Stop being right about that!
Perhaps the problem is the swat teams doing this shit with zero verification.
Oh this absolutely happens here in europe too, just not with such a needlessly large amount of cops. Makes it no less dangerous though.
Do elderly women have to stream videos to pay for cancer treatments? My father has cancer, and all his bills this year add up to €0. Well, sometimes I leave the car in a paid parking lot; in the whole year it's probably been around €20.
Oh no i meant the swatting part my bad.
America has "police by intimidation" as its default response. Most of Europe seems to have "police by consent" as the default.
It leads to a different mentality. They might still roll out the whole cavalry, but it will more likely be led by a polite knock at the door, and an initial attempt to de-escalate.
I have been stopped while doing something illegal that was a minor infraction, but still caught red handed, could have easily been fined, but was let go with a verbal promise to do better and the whole interaction was very civil. Also a few months ago the police recovered stolen items and managed to detective their way to me to return them as well as caught the bastards that did it. The whole process was honestly impressive and the cops I dealt with were just awesome. My interaction with police throughout my life has been at worst neutral but mostly positive. In Europe ACAB is bullshit as far as I'm concerned and anyone who uses it here is memeing after the Americans where it sounds like it's 100% applicable.
The UK force has its problems, but it functions fairly well. It also has a lot of people in it who honestly want to do a good job.
The problem is the rules and mandates coming down from the government. (And the political upper management level of the police)
It's only be more American if the cops entered her home and shot her while claiming a controller was a gun
All cops are idiots.
Meanwhile, when an actual credible threat is ongoing: "We'll send our best confrontation avoider and check back in about 3 hours from now"
I will never forgive Uvalde police for that school shooting situation. Not only did they do nothing to stop the shooter, they actively held back parents who were going to do the cops jobs for them.
If I remember right, 23 kids, and 3 staff members died that day in an attack that took hours, but should have been stopped in minutes. They arrived on the scene 6 minutes after being called. Then they let it go on and on and on.
I will never forgive Uvalde police.
When seconds count, they're an hour away
I was paid a dawn visit many years ago by an armed unit (UK). The way they ran it was two plainclothes (handguns only) officers knock on the door to assess the threat, with a van full of tooled up guys in balaclavas just outside, just in case. It was all very chill and no unnecessary stress/escalation for anyone. Seems like this would be a more sensible approach.
It would indeed be a more sensible approach.
I'm frequently amazed that despite your countries declining standard of living it is still light years ahead of that of my own. I'm actually jealous. Please rejoin the EU as soon as it's convenient.
That sounds very nice. I'm honestly jealous. However, there were 408 mass shootings in the USA last year. That's more than 110 people shot per day. While I in no way support the policies of the police in the USA, I do have to admit that given the likelihood that the residents of any particular home might be armed, I personally would not want to be a lightly armed and unarmored cop knocking on a door here. I mean, people here have literally been shot just for knocking or ringing a doorbell.
While all cops are indeed bastards, many of the other people in this country aren't any better. The left end of the bell curve in this country is very heavily armed and doing their part to help police turn the nation into the war zone they think it already is. Until common sense gun laws are passed and the dumbest and most violent among us are disarmed, it's not going to change for the better.
I wouldn't be surprised to see there is a episode of something where someone needs to do a crime in area so they pull this so all the cops are in other side of town.
Well yes, but its an example of a call you can make that probably results in extreme responses. Would be interested in knowing what they thought they were going to for that kind of response though.
Those questions would only matter if this kind of police reaction wasn't almost exclusive to the US. So American police are idiots.
In Europe there were a few cases in France, but they led to changes in police procedures to verify reports more thoroughly before busting through doors.
There are a lot of things that can be pointed at as to why this happens so much in the US. But I think most people forget that this is a problem that can literally be fixed using laws and technology.
Swatting can only happen because the US telecom system is so full of holes and because the US legal system isn't doing its job.
The primary thing you have to do is fix it so that the emergency operators can know where a call actually originated. And all we need to do to make that happen is to change the law so that telecom companies are held criminally and civilly liable when a person uses their infrastructure to fake where an emergency call is coming from.
Calls that come from foreign sources or from internet sources would harbor great suspicion. Imagine that the operator gets a big flashing notice that the call is suspicious right from the start.
I'm not saying that police and gun nuts and police gun nuts and incompetent police and nazi assholes don't have a lot of culpability, or that we shouldn't have severe penalties for people who do the swatting but the core fault lies in our elected representatives being too corrupt to hold telecom companies to account.
I don't think giving the police more surveillance options is the best option. The main problem is the extreme militarisation of the US police. This amount of force is a ridiculous response to almost any likely scenario they would have encountered.
Your argument is almost exactly the same as the ones being used to rationalize things like age-verification, surveillance, deanonymizing platforms, etc.
The people supporting these measures are going after operating systems, VPNs, web browsers, everything but targeting the actual people committing the crimes that they're pretending to be trying to prevent.
Holding telecom companies primarily responsible for how their platforms are misused is a very large step towards the dystopian future that we're already sliding towards.
All cops are idiots.
"ACAI"???
Everyone blames swatting on the person who called in a fake report, but swatting only works because the are idiots. Someone actually decided to bring 20 cars to an house legally owned by an 85 year old with a single unverified report as their only evidence.
It's not that they're idiots, though many cops are. It's that they don't get punished for falling for a SWATting attempt.
If you could lose your career if you fell for it, they'd try a lot harder not to fall for it. But, instead, they never face punishment for being overly aggressive, and might face punishment for not being aggressive enough in the case of a real emergency.
In fairness, the police don't have a list of who is in every house at all times. They don't exactly have X-ray vision. All they know is that they got a call saying that someone is holding someone at gunpoint in this house.
Of course, 20 cars is comically overkill
This sort of overreaction isn't rare though. People have died from it.
It's also not exclusive to the U.S. We had a guy here in Sweden who got assaulted and practically kidnapped by masked men in the middle of the night. Guy thought he was going to die, and didn't find out that they were police until they got him in the car and drove to the station.
What was his horrible crime? He'd shared images via Yahoo mail of him and his 30 year old boyfriend having sex. Some American organisation trawled through Yahoo mail, flagged these images and videos as possible CSAM, and forwarded it to Swedish authorities. Our authorities, instead of you know, doing any kind of investigation, or summoning the guy to the police station, or even just arresting him in a calm and peaceful manner, decided that sending masked goons to raid his home in the middle of the night was the way to go.
Oh yeah, I'm fully aware. My own city made national headlines in my country a few years back when bastard pig Justin Rapp shot and killed Andrew Finch. SWATting should be considered attempted murder, and if a pig murders someone during a SWATting, they should be charged as well.
Fun fact! Bastard pig Justin Rapp sued the city when they placed him on leave, and won. Now he's a detective whose salary is paid by my tax dollars. Fuck the police
This happens frequently enough where you'd think there would be a system in place to prevent this type of abuse.
But then they wouldn't get to cosplay as action heroes.
they now are responsible for potentially more victims.
No they are not. Multiple court cases have exonerated police for failing to respond or not responding quickly enough. See: Uvalde (among many others).
They are trying to play it both ways: not responsible but also must respond in the most over-the-top aggressive manner possible.
There is Federal precedent on this, actually
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.
Showing up with 20 swat cars doesn't mean that there's 20 swat cars blindly shooting at the house.
There's no harm on just showing up. As long as they verify the claims before acting on them, I don't see the issue.
The only issue is that it is expensive and may break a door or something. Which is why the caller should be tracked, and made to pay for all of it.
Takes a special kind of asshole to swat a little old lady for trying to host a wholesome gaming stream for a good cause.
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.
Yet they won't do a damn thing if someone is actually assaulting you.
I still believe that "defund the police", is the correct choice. The whole damn thing has to go.
If you don't have someone authorized by the state to enforce laws, you're still going to get people enforcing "laws", it's just going to be vigilantes, people with grudges, etc. Just look how frequently you see incidents of road rage. Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.
Take all those incidents of people calling the cops on black men having a picnic or taking their dogs for a walk. If there were no cops, do you think these white "Karens" would just leave the black men alone? Or do you think they'd get together and lynch them?
I think the US needs to scale its policing way back. It needs mental health specialists to respond to certain kinds of calls. The person who responds to a report of a stolen bike probably shouldn't have a gun. But, at some point you are going to need people who will use physical force to enforce the law. Those people should be heavily supervised by a truly independent body. But, they still need to exist in some form.
Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.
No, cops exist to protect capital.
This is just one example too, they've issued multiple similar rulings. Also, uh, see: Uvalde.
If there were no cops, do you think these white “Karens” would just leave the black men alone? Or do you think they’d get together and lynch them?
...you think cops keep black people safe? Are you being remotely serious here?
Yeah, this is what a lot of people fail to take into account when it comes to the purpose of policing in society. There's obviously a lot of inherent problems with the way the police are structured in many countries as a whole, but to believe that we can just make do without something like them altogether is pretty shortsighted to say the least. I think that prevents a lot of otherwise sympathetic people from taking the backlash against police institutions seriously.
You don't know what she did in Minecraft.
(/s)
I did not know that, so thank you for sharing. I'm disappointed, but not surprised to learn this
After reading this, and then checking the video, I was surprised that the victim was white.
As always ACAB
Just here to point out that it's not normal for a military response to some rando calling in a hit on someone's house.
A normal response is a check by a single police car with two officers. One to knock on the door and ask questions. The other to remain with the vehicle to call in any issues.
This is a police state.
It really depends on what the call in was.
If someone says there's an active threat and their life is in danger, sending 1 car would would be gross negligence and a danger to the officers.
Now, this call, seems excessive. I dont know what would warrant that response even if it was an active threat.
That's an argument to be made, but I don't believe that is true at all. Sending one car to check on the safety/welfare of one active threat seems an entirely reasonable balance of risk. An unverified active threat is not at all the same as a confirmed active threat. That should be obvious simply by the existence of "swatting" as a common term and act these days.
It is not the duty of police to protect people from eminent harm, they have argued this themselves in court. Their job is strictly punitive, again an argument they have made in court many times. They only pretend to "protect and serve" when it suits their agenda of justification for their over inflated budgets. This isn't a public safety issue. It's a class warfare issue.
Yeah, you send one car first and have the other ready. It's insane to send 20 cars instantly for an unverified anonymous tip. Idc if the caller said there's an army of cannibals killing dozens of people, it's still an unverified anonymous tip. If it's real you'll get more phone calls or the first car will radio it in.
Confused european here - why?
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
It's not up to the police to debate the veracity of a report
Why not?
and they respond with "sounds fake, not coming".
Why wouldn't they just respond with "we'll have to verify this".
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.
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.
It's America, just say a black man has a gun and they send a batallion.
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.
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.
America is a dystopian capitalist nightmare lol
Just missing the cyber punk.
Cant believe it got so normalized. What a country.
Especially when they're led to believe the person in the home is unstable and well armed.
This happens in europe too https://www.tomshardware.com/... this happened in Germany, but no SEK was involved (german equivalent of SWAT). His wife was so shocked, he mentioned they moved out of the country.
Why don't people send police to the white house and houses of CEOs on a cooldown?
Why don't the king's guards attack the king?
The police know their job is to enforce the law, but they also know who gets a free pass... or at least who gets a lot more leeway than other people. At a minimum it changes "shoot first and ask questions later" into "ask questions then maybe shoot".
This has been my feeling latley as well with so many things going on in the US....
Becusse in america nothing is better than being an edgelord
Publicity to increase donations.
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.
Possibly this https://apnews.com/...
They need to respond, but they need to end the whole "Killology" mindset that American cops are trained into.
Yah, send a car around first to at least glance, maybe try calling them too.
Not only without repercussions, but without reparations. Anything destroyed or damaged is on the owner to replace/fix, including the pile of splinters formerly known as your front door
Pretty cool way of collecting OT too… kitting up with the boys, kicking doors down, shouting at grandmas…
Police? Work? Nah
Gotta test this bearcat somehow!
In my state there is a law that makes false call to 911 a criminal offense. If someone says "there is a bomb" on such call, that makes it more serious offence because this will cause public alarm. If the person making such call is stupid enough to do it from their phone, they will likely be identified and prosecuted. And people doing stupid things tend to be that stupid.
I'm not sure about damages caused by the raid, though. SWAT doesn't know if the threat is real or not, so they can't be held liable. Probably the victim can sue the caller, if they've been found...
How about the police do, idk, like 5 min of police work to verify literally any part of the story first?
things like this can often be very time sensitive, beyond that exactly how would they verify it?
Call people in the neighborhood, ask if anything is off? Send in a single car to scope out the scene, while keeping reinforcements in the wings? Ask 911 where the call originated, and adjust expectations based on that?
At least two of these things can be done while the police begins to move towards the destination, as intel gathering doesn't require policeman to be making the inquiries, just support staff.
0000
Fact of the matter, is that American police are the same breed of 'warrior' that Pete Hegseth is: Bloodthirsty, undisciplined, incompetent, and in service to powers of capital and hate, not the citizens they are supposed to serve.
Like what? Do you have an example?
I don't really believe that swat is necessary even in theory.
If someone is being held hostage, call in a negotiator. If it's a bomb, bomb squad. What precisely is the swat team for?
Uvalde was time sensitive and real and yet we have video of police standing around in the hallways scrolling through Facebook on their phones while children were being murdered just feet away. Those pigs didn't face any accountability. Don't forget police took cases all the way to the Supreme Court to have it declared that they have zero duty to protect people.
That's crazy talk!
Exactly. They treat this like a bomb threat when the perpetrator gets arrested, but completely gloss over the fact that the police are "the bomb" in this scenario and as human beings, they have full agency over their own actions. They should most definitely spend 5 minutes to determine the real situation but they dont because they never face accountability and just go off of whatever some random caller told them, especially when it means playing soldier.
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.
This whole story is a series of failures.
#Freedom
Because orphans need to be ground and you gotta pay to stop that.
Most people get cancer free of charge. Is there an opt-out in the US or do you just have to pay for cancer whether you want it or not, like taxes?
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.
Social media, however and in a way, acts so much like an MMO. A fucking PK server, really.
offline PK
That is certainly a way of phrasing it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pure evil, a truly irredeemable soul. Hope terrible things happen to the person that called the Gestapo on her.
For life!
Whoever did this needs to be charged with attempted murder. You can't expect that police get a report of a threat at a residence (like a bomb threat or a murder threat) and they show up without weapons. Shame police time and resources had to be wasted ruining this poor old woman's Minecraft night.
I guess on the up side, not many 82 year olds can tell their friends that they are important enough to have so many people show up to their house so late at night.
EDIT: Early news reports say that police received a call that said her grandson shot her (the 82 year old grandmother) and was threatening to kill himself. Completely reasonable response to that kind of a threat, if that is what the call was.
EDIT2: Apparently the police may have been able to catch it as SWATting early by confirming with the grandson himself? The way he seemed to talk, the police were cordial and weren't aggressive, as if their guard was down maybe? They cleared the home to make sure the threat was fake, but I guess they were apologetic to grammcrackers, and she seemed in good spirits about it at least.
Completely reasonable response to that kind of a threat, if that is what the call was.
I think twenty cars is still too many
It is. Cops are bored that time of night so anything like this gets blown outta proportion
If someone was shooting people, I would definitely want every officer in the local area to show up. The police can't possibly know if its real or not until they show up, and even if they talked with the home owner before they arrive they still have to check to make sure.
While I sure wish they could just believe you if you said you weren't a criminal or something, that's exactly what a criminal would say. So they gotta treat it as real even if its fake. Truly a shame so many awful people have led to this, but it will only get worse as time goes on.
Yeah I don't disagree that they should go check it out with enough people but that's, what, 40+ officers? To an incident supposedly involving two people? What are they all supposed to do? It's just chaos and I don't think they are helping the situation.
Police get a call about a person who has a gun, who already shot someone, and is threatening to kill himself. Logically speaking, a person that is erratic enough to report themselves like that isn't likely far from the idea of deciding to shoot their neighbors or others in view too.
A person with a gun shooting even in the general direction of people, even if they don't hit anything, is enough for me to say every officer in the area should be responding. If the first officers get there and become targets that are killed, more are showing up or are on the way. In a shooting situation it should be the goal of police to become the target being shot at instead of innocent civilians.
They can't know if this kind of call is real or not, so they have to treat it like it is real. I would rather there be a few hours of chaos on a residential street for a false alarm by treating every report this seriously compared to something like the Ulvade school shooting happening again because police didn't want to show up or were too scared to do their job.
So they send every operative to one call and let the rest of the area without support if something happens. Haven't they seen Die Hard 3?
Whoever did this needs to be charged with attempted murder.
Doing that would raise certain implications, and validate a lot of concerns people have with police in the USA. I don't think that's likely to happen.
They should be charged with something, but I'm sure that won't become a legal case which confirms that the police is basically a blunt weapon that can be swung with a phone call.
Completely reasonable response to that kind of a threat, if that is what the call was.
This sounds like complete absurdity, even as a Canadian.
"There's nothing we can do about it!" -says only country in the world where it regularly happens
Another side benefit to The Drug War, the gift that keeps on giving.
Hundreds of thousands of people are sitting in jails and prisons right now for using. Over three hundred thousand on any given day.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/...
This holdover from the Nixon era gets a little worse every year. Why do we have TWENTY cars available for any random prank caller?
Are we safe yet?
Don't you feel fine having what is essentially a para military forced within the USA whose intention is to protect property and not people at all? I know I sure as shit don't.
This keeps the military spending going. You sell last years models to the cops and you can use taxpayer money to buy new toys while people starve
Your title leaves out the part about her being swatted. Who knows what the scammer told the police.
And that required mobilizing a 4-star GTA response in the middle of the fucking night?
This is police state horseshit.
They needed 3 hours to determine the state of grandma.
Shit cops with shit people calling them in, while granny tries to raise money for medical treatment for her grandson... Your shit country is working as designed.
Info about Grandma Crackers’ fundraisers for her grandson’s cancer treatment and Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
They also created a crypto token where the fees go to the previously mentioned fundraisers.
Ew crypto
Love it how banks managed to convince everyone that crypto is bad, so they can stay rich and in power of controlling your money.
banks managed to convince everyone
I don't think banks have been in charge of the countless pump and dump crypto schemes in recent years. And Bankman-Fried (despite his name) wasn't running a bank.
Nah, they just launder money so it's OK.
Oh, I didn't know that billionaires are honest and law abiding people. Not some greedy corrupt pedophiles, no no no.
"Please, Mr. Billionaire, take my money, I know you will do good things with it. I'll even kiss your boots to take my money."
You know why there's much less fraud with banks? Because they're regulated. You know why crypto is not regulated? Because banks don't want it, it's bad for business.
And if you think billionaires/bankers won't do everything in their power to hold on to that power and money, including campaigns to make crypto look bad, and everything in their power to hide their own crimes, you are are heavily misguided.
I really hope, they find out who swated her and jail them.
Just curious about why she was raided. What did the warrant say?
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.
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.
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.
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
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
Proving beyond reasonable doubt that they weren't genuinely concerned can be tough, and mistakenly calling the police (or emergency services in general) shouldn't generally be punished or people will hesitate to call for help when they need it.
But you're right: there should be some recourse to abuse, if not criminal then civil. Of course, a lawsuit is a lot of work and possibly money you would pay up front, and there's no guarantee that you'd actually see much money if the perpetrator is a basement-dwelling neet whose meagre pocket money is immediately spent on Gacha games, trading cards or those weird plastic figures with oversized heads that some people go crazy over.
So maybe the state / police should instead pay compensation to the victim and, if it seems like a case of abuse, bring their own suit to potentially recover those damages from the caller. That would reduce the damage of mistakes, protect well-meaning callers from retribution and thus shift the cost for this security from the individual to the collective. It also allows an option to shift it back onto malicious individuals.
Of course, the police response could be more measured too, and the whole thing is contingent on the justice of the judicial system, but the latter part is true of any system and the former applies to many things the police do anyway.
Conspiracy theory:
Tap for spoiler
it's far from impossible to de-anonymize swatters, but they won't go through the effort to do that, let alone prosecute the psychopaths who do this because it's fun for the cops to cosplay as spec ops, everyone gets some fat overtime checks, and the event can be used for PR propaganda to say 'we need this militarized platoon in case something actually does happen'
True
If someone kept giving you fancy expensive toys but you were only allowed to play with them on official business matters ...
You ever watch Police academy? You remember Tackleberry? That's basically the United States police.
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.
That made me laugh. Big gun virgin.
Oh Eugene...
Does the video mention if she met her donation goal? After all the bullshit, I hope she destroyed it.
It doesn’t say. I did find another article that says it’s for her grandson’s cancer treatment so it might be an ongoing thing.
EDIT: I found this. Looks like she also donates money to Phoenix Children’s Hospital
People fucking suck
TLDW; Also, fuck YouTube ads. Can I read about this somewhere?
Or an a ad-blocker.
And if you're using a phone, use a browser instead of the app.
And an ad-blocker.
Tell me about it. Wish this wasn't considered a legitimate source of news. But that would require a mainstream outlet to cover it.
Videos take 10x longer and often aren't worth it
Props to Grannycrackers for handling the aftermath with such grace and humour. Not sure I would be half as composed as her. (Or half as chuffed at getting to ride in a police car.) Hope she smashes her fundraising target.
Looking forwards to the news of the arrest of the no-lifer who swatted her.
Yeah. The best possible outcome after a situation like this is the victim not being harmed in any way, so the perpetrator is denied the satisfaction of causing harm.
You'd be surprised at how many old people request to be arrested by the police, it's like a thrill ride for some of them.
In case somebody actually thinks this is hyperbole....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
https://kennedyhumanrights.org/...
Tulsa massacre for good measure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood_District
I remember being in college when a lady brought this up. Talked about Black Walstreet and the class' vibes were really "no they didn't and please stop talking" but the professor agreed with her, and I looked it up later abd was shocked to find yet another atrocity completely omitted from my k-12 education.
Considering the US police are trained by the IDF, you've actually landed on their goal. Considering tech that's tested on Palestinian people usually comes to the US shortly afterwards. Instead of bombs, they want robots with machine guns to make entry in these situations.
This is where your tax money goes.
Amurica 🦅
Well, that'll teach her.
It's some kind of thing were if she goes afk, chat can decide what the player should do. In this case they decided to mine ores.
That person achievement get: Massive piece of shit.
They swatted grandma crackers? Why?
Awful, the damn SS and NKVD would be proud of the US SWAT officers.
Did she survive?
Whoever swatted her deserves a place in hell, the fucking piece of shit.
Funny how these supposedly specialized police officers have such a cool name, SWAT, because of course they do because it's the US and they have to look and sound cool and do cool stuff.
Never mind that they supposed to be serving and protecting the citizens
I know these specialized teams also exist in other countries. What are they called there? No fucking idea, but it ain't cool because in those countries, those guys are actually the real deal and they don't need cool nicknames or military equipment, they are there to do a job.
Fuck, the US always was such a shit show, why are you people allowing police to be so fucking put of control?
What country are you in?
You thinking SWAT sounds cool is on you. Though the marketing does help, tv series, movies, games etc.
In Sweden we call our equivalent "Strike Force" but in swedish of course. And they basically have access to whatever they need to get the job done. That's why they exist. And personally, i think their name is pretty cool. It's very direct and you know instantly upon hearing it what it is they do.
why are you people allowing police to be so fucking put of control?
Two issues. One is that some asshole did a fraudulent call and police had to respond.
Other is that due to gun proliferation they can take it lightly and have to assume the worst
They can take it lightly, but they are trained away from de-escalation and critical thinking in general.
I can't speak for anywhere else, but here in Canada, emergency response team is not a full time job (except in the largest metro areas). Members do regular police work until an emergency.
And even if the cities with full time ERT, they rarely respond as a full team. They are often dispatched to assist constables for other duties. It's very rare for a full rollout of a tactical ERT team here. And even more rare that shots are fired.
Edit: I am in no way a police expert, but I learned a lot when I worked on a rollout of a body camera program.
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Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
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This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
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No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
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This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
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you have to be one sick twisted individual to be swatting a person, let alone a freaking elderly woman
save