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I feel like occasions where the police react too slowly and hostages get killed would make it into the news. Instead we have stories about swatting. Any polic

by ksdale 8y ago

I feel like occasions where the police react too slowly and hostages get killed would make it into the news. Instead we have stories about swatting. Any policy needs to weigh the harm to actual hostages against the harm to victims of swatting and right now it seems like swatting victims are bearing the brunt of police action. It is just my hunch that Hollywood has made us believe that crazy dangerous hostage situations happen far more often than they actually do and in reality, pranks are much more common.

esoterica 8y ago
That's a very silly thing to believe. Real hostage situations happen all the time, you just never noticed because "angry drunk waves gun around while wife and kids cower in the corner" is not exactly national news.
- ksdale 8y ago
  I appreciate this perspective, I definitely hadn’t considered all of the ways a hostage situation can arise. A very quick Googling turned up an article that said that 85-90% of hostage situations are resolved nonviolently. Another article said that police in the US receive something like 100,000,000 non-emergency calls (including pranks calls) in a year, so we’re probably talking at least tens of thousands of prank calls (not just swatting though, obviously). Based on admittedly sensational news stories, violence seems to happen more often when people get swatted than it should and it doesn’t seem silly to think that overreacting to elaborate prank calls isn’t capable of causing harm that’s greater than the harm caused by underreacting to real calls.
oh_sigh 8y ago
Swatting is a much more sensational story, even more so than a real SWAT-necessary situation. Odds are you have no ability to judge the relative frequency of pranks vs real swat calls, because only the pranks and extremely high profile real ones are reported on national news.
trhway 8y ago
>I feel like occasions where the police react too slowly and hostages get killed would make it into the news. Here you go https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/15/parkland-surveillance-video-shows-officer-standing-outside-school-during-shooting/428147002 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/15/pa... I'm pretty sure that an experienced police easily recognizes when it is a serious dangerous stuff like the above, and when it is just a safe, for police, swatting where you can just go in with all guns blazing.

by ksdale 8y ago

esoterica 8y ago

That's a very silly thing to believe. Real hostage situations happen all the time, you just never noticed because "angry drunk waves gun around while wife and kids cower in the corner" is not exactly national news.

ksdale 8y ago
I appreciate this perspective, I definitely hadn’t considered all of the ways a hostage situation can arise. A very quick Googling turned up an article that said that 85-90% of hostage situations are resolved nonviolently. Another article said that police in the US receive something like 100,000,000 non-emergency calls (including pranks calls) in a year, so we’re probably talking at least tens of thousands of prank calls (not just swatting though, obviously). Based on admittedly sensational news stories, violence seems to happen more often when people get swatted than it should and it doesn’t seem silly to think that overreacting to elaborate prank calls isn’t capable of causing harm that’s greater than the harm caused by underreacting to real calls.

oh_sigh 8y ago

Swatting is a much more sensational story, even more so than a real SWAT-necessary situation. Odds are you have no ability to judge the relative frequency of pranks vs real swat calls, because only the pranks and extremely high profile real ones are reported on national news.

trhway 8y ago

>I feel like occasions where the police react too slowly and hostages get killed would make it into the news. Here you go https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/15/parkland-surveillance-video-shows-officer-standing-outside-school-during-shooting/428147002 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/15/pa... I'm pretty sure that an experienced police easily recognizes when it is a serious dangerous stuff like the above, and when it is just a safe, for police, swatting where you can just go in with all guns blazing.