I think they'll just take any excuse to LARP as soldiers, play with guns, and bully people. They know they don't have to worry about facing any consequences for their actions so they can do whatever they like.

SWAT team had a KPI target to meet. Not enough calls and they get less military surplus gear.

The cops know it's fake, but they enjoy driving over and yelling and waving guns around, so they don't care. From another news article about this guy (https://www.tmj4.com/about-us/lighthouse/people-have-died-th...):

> Exclusive body camera video obtained by TMJ4 shows officers arriving at the couple's home on multiple occasions, even as both officers and the couple acknowledged the calls were fake.

> In one exchange captured on body camera, an officer can be heard telling a colleague, "This guy keeps getting swatted." In another, a body camera recording from inside a squad car captures an officer describing the address as "a known swatting location."

> Despite that awareness, officers continued to respond, at times with a full tactical presence. Body camera video shows one officer pointed a gun at the couple's door on their fourth response in a single day.

Well, now we have some idea why police can’t find the resources to prioritize retail theft — there’s no budget left after responding to all the fake SWAT calls.

I think they should be more concerned with public safety. If the couple asks them to stop, maybe but if they are slow to respond to those calls because of the history, they're going to get skewered when a real call comes in.

Tbf, support cloudflare's general refusal to censor what they host.

Their near monopoly is very bad for the health of the net, and I'd never use them for that reason, but if they are going to have a monopoly I'd rather they were pretty liberal on censorship. I know there are examples of deplatforming from them, but by and large their stance tends to be without legal intervention all is fair game and that's certainly better than enforcing their own morality.

Not only that, but according to another article, the victim had to pay the stalker/site operator after losing the case.

>A judge also ordered Mr Tomlinson to pay the anonymous blogger behind the website $23,700 in legal fees.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/sw...

> At some point, the responding local police should be held criminally liable.

At some point, the people doing the "swatting" (false police call) should be held criminally liable, maybe even for attempted murder by cop. There's definitely a crime being committed there. I'm 100% sure that calling the cops on someone and making a false report is against at least one or two (or maybe even several) laws.

Having that badge should cause you to be held to a higher level of accountability. Abusing the power given to you by being an officer should mean receiving much more severe consequences.

There's so many common sense, bipartisan things like those. A few are are uncapping the house, a federal holiday for election day, stock trading ban for politicians, data broker loophole, warrant requirement for your data on service providers.

I fear to think about where we would be without the constitution considering how authoritarian law enforcement is in the US. It's definitely lacking, but I am still grateful for it.

In Canada?

it's the actual swatting

> What real solutions are there?

For starters, in the general case, try having a larger threshold to go in guns blazing, like trying to verify with the residents first, or just knocking on their door normally to address whatever it was instead of a full on raid. The trauma of being subjected to a SWAT raid is obvious, so they should recognize that and more properly balance it with the harm of not doing one, rather than simply doing it.

Looking at the article's specifics for this specific situation, some options are:

- don't violate the constitutional rights of the victims as a court ruled retroactively happened in this case

- ensure that all officers are professional, as the article says that only some were

- add them to the swatting house list

- have basic dignity, like facilitating the person covering up instead of cuffing them naked on the curb; police and prisons seem especially happy to engage in forced nudity in a general case -- it's part of a concerningly high fraction of police abuse news

After the first 40 false calls about that address they should probably perform at least 5 minutes of investigation to try to verify if there are actually any signs that a real crime being committed. That kind of "police work" where you figure out who is in the home and what is happening is pretty important.

At the very least if they want to keep violating the rights of the people in their home by breaking in, after seeing that there's no obvious signs of crime they should probably not immediately drag people outside naked and handcuffed.

I'll give these cops some credit though, at least they managed to raid the correct house 55 times in a row. I don't know who trained these SWAT officers to read house numbers, but they should probably pass that info along considering the countless stories of police raiding the wrong home.

This is an amazing top comment. Like maybe almost anything. So many better options. For one if I were the subject of this harassment I would prefer the cops to never come.

> wtf are you supposed to do if a real crime is being committed

You say that as if most of the world doesn’t get by just fine without any militarized SWAT law enforcement units whatsoever…

>Not responding to a swat call is not really an option with the way the system is setup.

This is 100% not true in the US. The police have no obligation to show up what so ever as decided by the SCOTUS.

>ne day could get criminals breaking in another

And like in every large city they'll get put on hold when calling 911 and maybe the cops show up 30 minutes later.

> not show up in actual reality with actual lives at stake?

As they say, when seconds matter, help is 15 to 20 minutes away.

Well before the 55th call they should have started investigating the origin of those calls and find the people making them. I'm not familiar with the US jurisdictions so maybe they are outside the one of Milwaukee police, but the people making those calls are toying with the Milwaukee police too, not only with the two victims. Then there are Federal investigations. Eventually that cost Milwaukee half a million.

> What real solutions are there?

See what is the reaction to the 3rd SWAT call for the local police dept's boss' home. Then apply that to everyone. I'm absolutely sure they can figure that one out.

>isn’t much they can do

How about: Track down and identify the person making these calls?

Just for context, many urban police departments won't show up for a myriad of calls they deem "non-emergency". The fact they always respond to swat calls is suspect and probably has to do with padding their numbers so they can justify more spending and overtime.

Investigating and solving the real root cause ? Who reported the crime, trace back to the troll ?

Easy, have policies for such situations. Just don’t show up like bin laden is hiding in the home if it’s the third fake call of the week.

And because their entire existence is to show up, you have a conflict of interests on how you answer the call.

...not responding to a swat call for the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, fortieth, or fiftieth time...

> What should the rule be? When is it okay for police to receive a distress call and not show up in actual reality with actual lives at stake? Who's responsible for the consequences of not showing up?

Currently there is no legal responsibility to “protect and serve” any single member or group of the public.

Just a moral one, due to it being their tax money used.

No need for residential raids. You know where the person is. Wait outside. Hostages? Wait out of sight. Eventually they come out.

There's something they could have said that you believe would justify this?

“Hot take: I’ve never found Norm Macdonald funny and was pretty sure all my comedy friends who did were either nuts or screwing with me."

shockingly mild

"Over two years" is "in 2022 and 2023".

This happened between July 25 of 2022 and (I believe) April of 2023.

The lawsuit is at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68293540/robinson-v-cit... and April is the last charge listed in the initial complaint. That's 35 weeks, not 104.

It’s Patrick Tomlinson, I’m pretty sure he’s been a well known “lolcow” for a half decade before that post. He wasn’t targeted because of that.

i read that in norm's voice

He said he didn't do political jokes, except this one, from 2016:

"Americans hated Hillary Clinton so much, they voted for someone they hated even more."

WAS funny. Apparently he died. I didn't even know he was sick.

The problem seems to be that a certain tribe of always online far-right leaning sociopaths have decided MacDonald is one of them.

He wasn't.

I am being charitable with this assessment, too.

MacDonald was extremely funny, even if you were liberal. His comedy was not political, and maybe that is kind of the appeal to conservative leaning people - some kind of "retro" appeal. If you are wondering what I am getting at, read the book, "The Compleat Practical Joker" from 1953.

This happened between July of 2022 and April of 2023. Thirty five weeks.

> from his grave

I didn’t even know he was sick.

Read the article. The police were well aware. They're on body/doorbell cams multiple times commenting that "this house always gets swatted" or otherwise acknowledging that the call is probably fake. Then they run in guns blazing anyway. They know. They don't care. They enjoy doing this.

> Word nothing of what ICE is going to do!

You mean the terrorists who used to work for ICE before it was defunded.

Luckily the US has a lot of prison capacity.