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I hope that at some point swatting becomes a felony akin to attempted murder.

nickff 4y ago
Proving attempted murder is very difficult, but "SWATting" already falls under the broad umbrella of 'assault'. It seems like the police are likely guilty of criminal negligence as well.
- olliej 4y ago
  Genuinely curious: What is the crime if I shoot a gun at a house knowing that it is occupied?it seems obvious that if I kill an occupant it would be murder, but what happens if I don’t?
  - dwighttk 4y ago
    reckless endangerment?
  - nickff 4y ago
    It might not be murder if you shoot a gun at an occupied house; it could be manslaughter, the laws vary by jurisdiction. One definition (there are many) of assault is as follows: "... the intentional application of force upon another person, directly or indirectly, without the other person’s consent. Classified as a criminal act, it can and will be tried in court."
  - Kostchei 4y ago
    In places where there are strong gun laws, like Queensland, you have offences relating to the weapon, separate laws for damaging the building and circumstances of aggravation if you do some real damage with risk of loss of life WEAPONS ACT 1990 - SECT 78 Weapons not to be discharged or operated - a fine- but also usually, a range of offences related to use, possession, storage of the weapon and ammunition CRIMINAL CODE 1899 - SECT 69 Going armed so as to cause fear (1) Any person who goes armed in public without lawful occasion in such a manner as to cause fear to any person is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to imprisonment for 2 years. 469 Wilful damage (1) Any person who wilfully and unlawfully destroys or damages any property is guilty of an offence which, unless otherwise stated, is a misdemeanour, and the person is liable, if no other punishment is provided, to imprisonment for 5 years. Punishment in special cases 1 Destroying or damaging premises by explosion If— (a) the property in question is premises; and (b) the destruction or damage is caused by an explosion; and (c) either— (i) anyone is in or on the premises when the explosion happens; or (ii) the destruction or damage actually endangers anyone’s life; the offender commits a crime. Penalty— Maximum penalty—life imprisonment. but what you will find is that this sort of activity rarely happens randomly- usually there is a relationship between the victim and the attacker- so something related to stalking, extortion (demanding money with menaces) etc. And those all carry heavy possible penalties. (5 years, 7 years etc)
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Not a lawyer, but if you intentionally shoot a gun at somebody and miss, that's attempted murder. Just because there's a house in the way doesn't change that, if the prosecutor wants to play it that way.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    In my state, one of the laws is > Whoever discharges a firearm as defined in section one hundred and twenty-one of chapter one hundred and forty, a rifle or shotgun within five hundred feet of a dwelling or other building in use, except with the consent of the owner or legal occupant thereof, shall be punished by a fine of not less than fifty nor more than one hundred dollars or by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than three months, or both. This is the law that would definitely apply. Interestingly, it appears that there is a bill before the state legislature that would cover specifically shooting at a dwelling (with intent to hit it), which would carry 5 years/$10k fine. Depending on particular fact patterns, it might fall under attempted murder, reckless endangerment, or other charge in a similar vein. This sort of stuff tends to be extremely jursidiction-dependent.
8note 4y ago
Stopping the swatter doesn't do much, and still allows for people to be swatted. The thing that needs an overhaul is the decision making on when to actually send out the swat team. It's lazy, expensive, and dangerous to send them out for every opportunity without any investigation
- metadat 4y ago
  If the authorities are too slow to respond they get crucified (extreme case: Uvalde, Texas school shooting earlier this year where the cops sat paralyzed while children were actively being murdered by a gunman). I don't like the five-oh but going the route you're proposing will make some instances much worse with avoidable loss of life.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    It's not like those instances had a single random person phoning it in. This comparison doesn't work. Especially the one where cops were already there. This isn't a giant dial that says "cops go fast" <-> "cops go slow"
  - rnk 4y ago
    I don't think that's a good comparison. That was 100+ cops standing around while kids were being shot. How often do swat type all out assaults from cops into buildings save people? They are rare. The cops add risk more than they save risk from attackers. In this case, there is a demonstrated and repeated danger from these swatting attacks. They don't have proper risk management in the police forces of the us, as demonstrated by swatting killing people. The authorities being too slow is not a demonstrated problem, it's the opposite.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    This is an extremely poor example that further illustrates the murderous recklessness of swat teams. The fact that there was a shooter at Uvalde was obvious upon arriving at the scene. Meanwhile, a traditional swat involves a completely innocuous house with no apparent hostiles, because there aren't any hostiles, and yet deaths still occur because of the recklessness of the swat teams. Imagine if you had a school with no shooter and a false report; would the swat teams burst through the windows and start mowing down students at random? Unthinkable, yes?
benatkin 4y ago
There is indeed a substantial risk with police, but I think it would set a bad precedent to say that death is an expected outcome of being SWATted. Reckless endangerment would be more appropriate. From a quick glance on Wikipedia it has death as a likely outcome, not an expected one like with attempted murder.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  I mean the police should obviously also be charged with murder when they murder someone.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Why is it always boys and men who do swatting?
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  Here in Australia the incarceration rate of men vs women is about 12.5 : 1 So I'd guess the answer to your question is something like: for the same reasons that men commit the overwhelming majority of violent crime, which probably has something to do with evolution and testosterone and culture. https://www.statista.com/statistics/648093/australia-imprisonment-rate-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/648093/australia-impriso...
- tartoran 4y ago
  I think it’s some kind of subculture, not sure whether women ever do it though but I suspect gaming to be somewhat involved, mainly shooting/war games where boys/men are in larger numbers
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  That's the 4chan demographic.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Boys and men are conservatively responsible for like 90% of violence, from suicide to dropping nukes.
  - mannykannot 4y ago
    This - though increasingly, women have their finger on the nuclear button, and there are one or two I would not trust any more than the guys.
- fortran77 4y ago
  Women invented "school shootings" though! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(San_Diego) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_sh...
jahewson 4y ago
That seems excessive. I would consider swatting lesser than attempted voluntary manslaughter which carries a maximum 10 year federal sentence. It’s also typically prosecuted at the state level, which kinda messes things up for the Feds. Reckless endangerment feels more appropriate, perhaps a bit too soft at 2 years maximum, though it is rarely prosecuted at the federal level. So 5 years maximum for the federal conspiracy charges seems basically in-line with any reasonable expectation.
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
  It's completely premeditated which is IIRC the main criterion for legally speaking 'murder'.
  - jahewson 4y ago
    It’s not. The premeditated part gets you “voluntary” but the activity they chose to engage in carries only a very minor risk of death. They haven’t set out to kill somebody.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Attempted manslaughter is a federal crime? This doesn't sound right to me, as a (former) lawyer. I would think that special circumstances would be necessary for a homicide or attempted homicide to be a federal crime, which would explain why there might be a mandatory minimum.
  - jahewson 4y ago
    Yes, 18 U.S. C. § 1113. The special circumstances can be as simple as breaking another Federal law while committing manslaughter. Of course the Feds would much rather stick to prosecuting crimes that don’t overlap state laws.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      The section you cite appears to only apply to crimes committed "within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States", which is defined here [1]. By my reading, it does not include crimes committed inside of US states. It is limited to ships, areas outside of other countries, and various other places. Am I missing something? Also, it doesn't require a 10 year sentence — it refers to "not more than seven years or fined under this title, or both.". [2] That literally means that no prison time is required. There is a cap on prison time, and it could be completely eliminated if a fine is given instead. Not exactly harsh treatment! 1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7# https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7# 2: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1113 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1113
pclmulqdq 4y ago
It already is considered attempted murder by some localities. The issue is usually catching the swatter. They often use anonymous VOIP services and voice changers (if they are even in the same country as the target), so it is effectively impossible to track them down.
- teeray 4y ago
  The question is: why is it possible to place a 911 call without all that information being laid bare before the dispatcher and logged. There are extraordinary regulations on carriers for E911, and thus a means to impose that requirement.
  - sowbug 4y ago
    I'm hearing "let's block or delay 911 calls for [a reason]." Not sure that'll get a lot of traction. It's an awful problem that will exist as long as people suck.
    - acdha 4y ago
      This is a problem created and continued by phone companies. It wasn’t a huge problem before VoIP because the phone company networks didn’t allow everyone to forge sender info (SS7, not CallerID). When VoIP came along they didn’t put strict authentication in because it would have cost more, and that really opened things up. Right now, you could have extra caution for 911 calls which originate from VoIP. Pass a law that in five years telco CEOs are charged as assisting murder the next time a SWATing happens and they’d magically discover that egress filtering is easy to implement once you’re not looking at the revenue generated by spammers.
      - Bud 4y ago
        Sounds easy, but I think you'll find that in practice, it's not so easy to just toss around murder (or accessory to murder) charges because something annoys you. Even if it annoys you a lot. It's a slippery slope from that to making basically anything a "murder" charge. Not saying you can't pass some sort of law or create some sort of penalty, but murder-related charges aren't going to fly.
pessimizer 4y ago
I hope that one day we can trust cops not to murder people based on anonymous phoned-in tips. Seems more rational than expecting random marginal people and the mentally ill to care about some draconian penalty for something they don't think they're likely to get caught for.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  As far as I can tell from this report, no-one was shot at, so maybe the correction is already being made. On the other hand, I would not mind those who still find swatting appealing to be presented with plenty of time to develop some form of maturity before they are in a position to repeat. It's not like these are contradictory goals.
Someone1234 4y ago
"Swatting" isn't a significant problem in other parts of the world because the result is super boring: The police knock on the door, ask some questions, and then leave. It is only a problem in the US because the response itself is terrifying and often dangerous. Multiple people have died from "swatting" in the US[0]. "Swatting" should carry a jail term for sure. But police reform is a large component in solving the problem (and many other topical problems). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_due_to_swatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  Is the rest of the world loaded up to the gills with weapons? There's 1.2 guns per citizen...
  - bestcoder69 4y ago
    Well, that's because we have to protect ourselves from SWAT teams!
    - OnlineGladiator 4y ago
      Indiana just enshrined that right into law. https://theweek.com/articles/474702/indiana-law-that-lets-citizens-shoot-cops https://theweek.com/articles/474702/indiana-law-that-lets-ci...
      - scottlamb 4y ago
        Good? As a Californian who doesn't own a gun and hasn't fired one in 20 years, I'm unlikely to take advantage of that law, but I appreciate that it exists. A SWAT assault that isn't preceded by presenting a valid warrant is just a heavily-armed home invasion, and home owners absolutely should be able to respond to those. That was presumably already legal, but if "enshrining" it into law as you put it makes it pointedly obvious to the police that they can be legally shot dead if they don't follow a safe, legal procedure, great. Maybe swatting will be less of a thing then... Edit: wow, just saw this part: > Why did Indiana push this law? The state Supreme Court had previously ruled that citizens had no legal right to resist police officers, even in a case of unlawful entry What a crazy ruling. I guess this law is checks and balances in action in two ways...
basilgohar 4y ago
Why does the claim that a police presence is needed somewhere result in the death of innocent people? Why are the police prepared for war when visiting someone's residence? What situation, time and time again, can possibly justify this kind of repeated response? Put in another, more unpleasant way, how many innocent deaths are worth one police officer death, because law enforcement justifies this due to (truly existent, but I think extremely overstated) danger inherent in the job. But I think any rational mind can perceive it's way too far skewed in one direction.
- bagels 4y ago
  The police get deference in the courts, and their answer is: as many as it takes
tmpburning 4y ago
Swatting is wrong, but it brings awareness to the police problem in the US...
jokoon 4y ago
Swatting is the result of an aggressive police. Of course those scam calls are guilty, but the police should also be less aggressive. If the police would fix it's behavior swatting wouldn't exist.

Proving attempted murder is very difficult, but "SWATting" already falls under the broad umbrella of 'assault'. It seems like the police are likely guilty of criminal negligence as well.

olliej 4y ago
Genuinely curious: What is the crime if I shoot a gun at a house knowing that it is occupied?it seems obvious that if I kill an occupant it would be murder, but what happens if I don’t?
- dwighttk 4y ago
  reckless endangerment?
- nickff 4y ago
  It might not be murder if you shoot a gun at an occupied house; it could be manslaughter, the laws vary by jurisdiction. One definition (there are many) of assault is as follows: "... the intentional application of force upon another person, directly or indirectly, without the other person’s consent. Classified as a criminal act, it can and will be tried in court."
- Kostchei 4y ago
  In places where there are strong gun laws, like Queensland, you have offences relating to the weapon, separate laws for damaging the building and circumstances of aggravation if you do some real damage with risk of loss of life WEAPONS ACT 1990 - SECT 78 Weapons not to be discharged or operated - a fine- but also usually, a range of offences related to use, possession, storage of the weapon and ammunition CRIMINAL CODE 1899 - SECT 69 Going armed so as to cause fear (1) Any person who goes armed in public without lawful occasion in such a manner as to cause fear to any person is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to imprisonment for 2 years. 469 Wilful damage (1) Any person who wilfully and unlawfully destroys or damages any property is guilty of an offence which, unless otherwise stated, is a misdemeanour, and the person is liable, if no other punishment is provided, to imprisonment for 5 years. Punishment in special cases 1 Destroying or damaging premises by explosion If— (a) the property in question is premises; and (b) the destruction or damage is caused by an explosion; and (c) either— (i) anyone is in or on the premises when the explosion happens; or (ii) the destruction or damage actually endangers anyone’s life; the offender commits a crime. Penalty— Maximum penalty—life imprisonment. but what you will find is that this sort of activity rarely happens randomly- usually there is a relationship between the victim and the attacker- so something related to stalking, extortion (demanding money with menaces) etc. And those all carry heavy possible penalties. (5 years, 7 years etc)
- fragmede 4y ago
  Not a lawyer, but if you intentionally shoot a gun at somebody and miss, that's attempted murder. Just because there's a house in the way doesn't change that, if the prosecutor wants to play it that way.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  In my state, one of the laws is > Whoever discharges a firearm as defined in section one hundred and twenty-one of chapter one hundred and forty, a rifle or shotgun within five hundred feet of a dwelling or other building in use, except with the consent of the owner or legal occupant thereof, shall be punished by a fine of not less than fifty nor more than one hundred dollars or by imprisonment in a jail or house of correction for not more than three months, or both. This is the law that would definitely apply. Interestingly, it appears that there is a bill before the state legislature that would cover specifically shooting at a dwelling (with intent to hit it), which would carry 5 years/$10k fine. Depending on particular fact patterns, it might fall under attempted murder, reckless endangerment, or other charge in a similar vein. This sort of stuff tends to be extremely jursidiction-dependent.

8note 4y ago

Stopping the swatter doesn't do much, and still allows for people to be swatted. The thing that needs an overhaul is the decision making on when to actually send out the swat team. It's lazy, expensive, and dangerous to send them out for every opportunity without any investigation

metadat 4y ago
If the authorities are too slow to respond they get crucified (extreme case: Uvalde, Texas school shooting earlier this year where the cops sat paralyzed while children were actively being murdered by a gunman). I don't like the five-oh but going the route you're proposing will make some instances much worse with avoidable loss of life.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  It's not like those instances had a single random person phoning it in. This comparison doesn't work. Especially the one where cops were already there. This isn't a giant dial that says "cops go fast" <-> "cops go slow"
- rnk 4y ago
  I don't think that's a good comparison. That was 100+ cops standing around while kids were being shot. How often do swat type all out assaults from cops into buildings save people? They are rare. The cops add risk more than they save risk from attackers. In this case, there is a demonstrated and repeated danger from these swatting attacks. They don't have proper risk management in the police forces of the us, as demonstrated by swatting killing people. The authorities being too slow is not a demonstrated problem, it's the opposite.
- kibwen 4y ago
  This is an extremely poor example that further illustrates the murderous recklessness of swat teams. The fact that there was a shooter at Uvalde was obvious upon arriving at the scene. Meanwhile, a traditional swat involves a completely innocuous house with no apparent hostiles, because there aren't any hostiles, and yet deaths still occur because of the recklessness of the swat teams. Imagine if you had a school with no shooter and a false report; would the swat teams burst through the windows and start mowing down students at random? Unthinkable, yes?

benatkin 4y ago

There is indeed a substantial risk with police, but I think it would set a bad precedent to say that death is an expected outcome of being SWATted. Reckless endangerment would be more appropriate. From a quick glance on Wikipedia it has death as a likely outcome, not an expected one like with attempted murder.

tshaddox 4y ago
I mean the police should obviously also be charged with murder when they murder someone.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

Why is it always boys and men who do swatting?

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
Here in Australia the incarceration rate of men vs women is about 12.5 : 1 So I'd guess the answer to your question is something like: for the same reasons that men commit the overwhelming majority of violent crime, which probably has something to do with evolution and testosterone and culture. https://www.statista.com/statistics/648093/australia-imprisonment-rate-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/648093/australia-impriso...
tartoran 4y ago
I think it’s some kind of subculture, not sure whether women ever do it though but I suspect gaming to be somewhat involved, mainly shooting/war games where boys/men are in larger numbers
heavyset_go 4y ago
That's the 4chan demographic.
pessimizer 4y ago
Boys and men are conservatively responsible for like 90% of violence, from suicide to dropping nukes.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  This - though increasingly, women have their finger on the nuclear button, and there are one or two I would not trust any more than the guys.
fortran77 4y ago
Women invented "school shootings" though! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(San_Diego) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_sh...

jahewson 4y ago

That seems excessive. I would consider swatting lesser than attempted voluntary manslaughter which carries a maximum 10 year federal sentence. It’s also typically prosecuted at the state level, which kinda messes things up for the Feds. Reckless endangerment feels more appropriate, perhaps a bit too soft at 2 years maximum, though it is rarely prosecuted at the federal level. So 5 years maximum for the federal conspiracy charges seems basically in-line with any reasonable expectation.

NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
It's completely premeditated which is IIRC the main criterion for legally speaking 'murder'.
- jahewson 4y ago
  It’s not. The premeditated part gets you “voluntary” but the activity they chose to engage in carries only a very minor risk of death. They haven’t set out to kill somebody.
gnicholas 4y ago
Attempted manslaughter is a federal crime? This doesn't sound right to me, as a (former) lawyer. I would think that special circumstances would be necessary for a homicide or attempted homicide to be a federal crime, which would explain why there might be a mandatory minimum.
- jahewson 4y ago
  Yes, 18 U.S. C. § 1113. The special circumstances can be as simple as breaking another Federal law while committing manslaughter. Of course the Feds would much rather stick to prosecuting crimes that don’t overlap state laws.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    The section you cite appears to only apply to crimes committed "within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States", which is defined here [1]. By my reading, it does not include crimes committed inside of US states. It is limited to ships, areas outside of other countries, and various other places. Am I missing something? Also, it doesn't require a 10 year sentence — it refers to "not more than seven years or fined under this title, or both.". [2] That literally means that no prison time is required. There is a cap on prison time, and it could be completely eliminated if a fine is given instead. Not exactly harsh treatment! 1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7# https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7# 2: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1113 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1113

pclmulqdq 4y ago

It already is considered attempted murder by some localities. The issue is usually catching the swatter. They often use anonymous VOIP services and voice changers (if they are even in the same country as the target), so it is effectively impossible to track them down.

teeray 4y ago
The question is: why is it possible to place a 911 call without all that information being laid bare before the dispatcher and logged. There are extraordinary regulations on carriers for E911, and thus a means to impose that requirement.
- sowbug 4y ago
  I'm hearing "let's block or delay 911 calls for [a reason]." Not sure that'll get a lot of traction. It's an awful problem that will exist as long as people suck.
  - acdha 4y ago
    This is a problem created and continued by phone companies. It wasn’t a huge problem before VoIP because the phone company networks didn’t allow everyone to forge sender info (SS7, not CallerID). When VoIP came along they didn’t put strict authentication in because it would have cost more, and that really opened things up. Right now, you could have extra caution for 911 calls which originate from VoIP. Pass a law that in five years telco CEOs are charged as assisting murder the next time a SWATing happens and they’d magically discover that egress filtering is easy to implement once you’re not looking at the revenue generated by spammers.
    - Bud 4y ago
      Sounds easy, but I think you'll find that in practice, it's not so easy to just toss around murder (or accessory to murder) charges because something annoys you. Even if it annoys you a lot. It's a slippery slope from that to making basically anything a "murder" charge. Not saying you can't pass some sort of law or create some sort of penalty, but murder-related charges aren't going to fly.

pessimizer 4y ago

I hope that one day we can trust cops not to murder people based on anonymous phoned-in tips. Seems more rational than expecting random marginal people and the mentally ill to care about some draconian penalty for something they don't think they're likely to get caught for.

mannykannot 4y ago
As far as I can tell from this report, no-one was shot at, so maybe the correction is already being made. On the other hand, I would not mind those who still find swatting appealing to be presented with plenty of time to develop some form of maturity before they are in a position to repeat. It's not like these are contradictory goals.

Someone1234 4y ago

"Swatting" isn't a significant problem in other parts of the world because the result is super boring: The police knock on the door, ask some questions, and then leave. It is only a problem in the US because the response itself is terrifying and often dangerous. Multiple people have died from "swatting" in the US[0]. "Swatting" should carry a jail term for sure. But police reform is a large component in solving the problem (and many other topical problems). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_due_to_swatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...

reducesuffering 4y ago
Is the rest of the world loaded up to the gills with weapons? There's 1.2 guns per citizen...
- bestcoder69 4y ago
  Well, that's because we have to protect ourselves from SWAT teams!
  - OnlineGladiator 4y ago
    Indiana just enshrined that right into law. https://theweek.com/articles/474702/indiana-law-that-lets-citizens-shoot-cops https://theweek.com/articles/474702/indiana-law-that-lets-ci...
    - scottlamb 4y ago
      Good? As a Californian who doesn't own a gun and hasn't fired one in 20 years, I'm unlikely to take advantage of that law, but I appreciate that it exists. A SWAT assault that isn't preceded by presenting a valid warrant is just a heavily-armed home invasion, and home owners absolutely should be able to respond to those. That was presumably already legal, but if "enshrining" it into law as you put it makes it pointedly obvious to the police that they can be legally shot dead if they don't follow a safe, legal procedure, great. Maybe swatting will be less of a thing then... Edit: wow, just saw this part: > Why did Indiana push this law? The state Supreme Court had previously ruled that citizens had no legal right to resist police officers, even in a case of unlawful entry What a crazy ruling. I guess this law is checks and balances in action in two ways...

basilgohar 4y ago

Why does the claim that a police presence is needed somewhere result in the death of innocent people? Why are the police prepared for war when visiting someone's residence? What situation, time and time again, can possibly justify this kind of repeated response? Put in another, more unpleasant way, how many innocent deaths are worth one police officer death, because law enforcement justifies this due to (truly existent, but I think extremely overstated) danger inherent in the job. But I think any rational mind can perceive it's way too far skewed in one direction.

bagels 4y ago
The police get deference in the courts, and their answer is: as many as it takes

tmpburning 4y ago

Swatting is wrong, but it brings awareness to the police problem in the US...

jokoon 4y ago

Swatting is the result of an aggressive police. Of course those scam calls are guilty, but the police should also be less aggressive. If the police would fix it's behavior swatting wouldn't exist.