'Swatting' Hits a Dozen US Universities. The FBI is Investigating (msn.com) 110
The Washington Post covers "a string of false reports of active shooters at a dozen U.S. universities this month as students returned to campus."
The FBI is investigating the incidents, according to a spokesperson who declined to specify the nature of the probe. While universities have proved a popular swatting target, the agency "is seeing an increase in swatting events across the country," the FBI spokesperson said... Local officials are frustrated by the anonymous calls tying up first responders, straining public safety budgets and needlessly traumatizing college students who grew up in an era in which gun violence has in some way shaped their school experience...
The recent string of swattings began Thursday with a false report to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, quickly followed by one about Villanova University later that day. Hoaxes at 10 more schools followed... Villanova also received a second threat. As the calls about shootings came in, officials on many of the campuses pushed out emergency notifications directing students and employees to shelter in place, while police investigated what turned out to be false reports. (Iowa State was able to verify the lack of a threat before a campuswide alert was sent, its police chief said. [They had a live video feed from the location the caller claimed to be from.]) In at least three cases, 911 calls reporting a shooting purported to come from campus libraries, where the sound of gunshots could be heard over the phone, officials told The Washington Post...
Although false bomb reports, shooter threats and swatting incidents are not new, bad actors used to be more easily traceable through landline phones. But the era of internet-based services, virtual private networks, and anonymous text and chat tools has made unmasking hoax callers far more challenging... In 2023, a Post investigation found that more than 500 schools across the United States were subject to a coordinated swatting effort that may have had origins abroad...
[In Chattanooga, Tennessee last week] a dispatcher heard gunfire during a call reporting an on-campus shooting. "We grabbed everybody that wasn't already out on the street and got to that location," said University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Police spokesman Brett Fuchs. About 150 officers from several agencies responded. There was no shooter.
The New York Times reports that an online group called "Purgatory" is "suspected of being connected to several of the episodes, including reports of shootings, according to cybersecurity experts, law enforcement agencies and the group members' own posts in a social media chat." (Though the Times, couldn't verify the group's claims.) Federal authorities previously connected the same network to a series of bomb scares and bogus shooting reports in early 2024, for which three men pleaded guilty this year... Bragging about its recent activities, Purgatory said that it could arrange more swatting episodes for a fee.
USA Today tries to quantify the reach of swatting: Estimated swatting incidents jumped from 400 in 2011 to more than 1,000 in 2019, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which cited a former FBI agent whose expertise is in swatting. From January 2023 to June 2024 alone, more than 800 instances of swatting were recorded at U.S. elementary, middle and high schools, according to the K-12 School Shootings Database, created by a University of Central Florida doctoral student in response to the Parkland High School shooting in 2018.tise is in swatting... David Riedman, a data scientist and creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, estimates that in 2023, it cost $82,300,000 for police to respond to false threats.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
The recent string of swattings began Thursday with a false report to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, quickly followed by one about Villanova University later that day. Hoaxes at 10 more schools followed... Villanova also received a second threat. As the calls about shootings came in, officials on many of the campuses pushed out emergency notifications directing students and employees to shelter in place, while police investigated what turned out to be false reports. (Iowa State was able to verify the lack of a threat before a campuswide alert was sent, its police chief said. [They had a live video feed from the location the caller claimed to be from.]) In at least three cases, 911 calls reporting a shooting purported to come from campus libraries, where the sound of gunshots could be heard over the phone, officials told The Washington Post...
Although false bomb reports, shooter threats and swatting incidents are not new, bad actors used to be more easily traceable through landline phones. But the era of internet-based services, virtual private networks, and anonymous text and chat tools has made unmasking hoax callers far more challenging... In 2023, a Post investigation found that more than 500 schools across the United States were subject to a coordinated swatting effort that may have had origins abroad...
[In Chattanooga, Tennessee last week] a dispatcher heard gunfire during a call reporting an on-campus shooting. "We grabbed everybody that wasn't already out on the street and got to that location," said University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Police spokesman Brett Fuchs. About 150 officers from several agencies responded. There was no shooter.
The New York Times reports that an online group called "Purgatory" is "suspected of being connected to several of the episodes, including reports of shootings, according to cybersecurity experts, law enforcement agencies and the group members' own posts in a social media chat." (Though the Times, couldn't verify the group's claims.) Federal authorities previously connected the same network to a series of bomb scares and bogus shooting reports in early 2024, for which three men pleaded guilty this year... Bragging about its recent activities, Purgatory said that it could arrange more swatting episodes for a fee.
USA Today tries to quantify the reach of swatting: Estimated swatting incidents jumped from 400 in 2011 to more than 1,000 in 2019, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which cited a former FBI agent whose expertise is in swatting. From January 2023 to June 2024 alone, more than 800 instances of swatting were recorded at U.S. elementary, middle and high schools, according to the K-12 School Shootings Database, created by a University of Central Florida doctoral student in response to the Parkland High School shooting in 2018.tise is in swatting... David Riedman, a data scientist and creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, estimates that in 2023, it cost $82,300,000 for police to respond to false threats.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.
Ha! (Score:1)
What they mean is that Kash Patel is running few google searches. The FBI has lost too many people to properly investigate anything anymore.
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Kashyap Patel. Why not call the anchor baby of an illegal immigrant by his real name?
Likely for the same reason William John Neeson is adressed as Liam Neeson to most anyone that knows he exists. Or that "cellular telephone" has become "cell phone". A television is just TV. The name Johannekin has evolved into Hank. There's more where that came from.
People are lazy and so we remove syllables when it suits us.
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Likely for the same reason William John Neeson is adressed as Liam Neeson to most anyone that knows he exists. Or that "cellular telephone" has become "cell phone". A television is just TV. The name Johannekin has evolved into Hank. There's more where that came from.
People are lazy and so we remove syllables when it suits us.
This "laziness" did not stop MAGA folks from calling Obama by his full name, when they thought emphasizing his middle name would undermine his position.
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Emphasizing his middle name wasn't likely to change minds,
There were people who emphasized his middle name to turn people against him. That is fact.
I'm happy to report that he was elected anyway. People liked who he was.
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I'm thinking of concepts like "low hanging fruit" and "broken windows".
If you want to see illegal aliens (which you refer to as "undocumented workers") deport themselves then the best place to start is with blatant violations. I don't know what you mean by "undocumented workers fighting wildfires" but I'd guess that if illegal aliens are so comfortable with living in the USA without a visa that they sign up to a volunteer fire department then you got issues. Start with blatant violations like that then wo
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You can't "simply" tell the FBI to enforce parking laws without creating 1) a deathspiralling hellhole for work-a-day residents of that neighborhood where all the broken windows are and 2) an FBI-free playground for weathly, homeowning elite criminals somewhere else
Re: Ha! (Score:3)
If you want to find blatant violations you look at the people hiring people without work authorization and determine their intent, which is always to break the law for profit.
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If you want to be draconian about homelessness I agree but you can't start that process without all the work on the backend to actually you know, house them and either clean them up and get them into society or get them long term assistance. Doing the former without the latter is just busywork and the problem repeats.
If you want broken windows policing I also agree but you need less squad cars, less patrolmen, less swat, less military gear, less guns and way way way more detectives and way more forensics t
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No, you go after the people hiring the illegals. But that doesn't fit the narrative and its the more rich, well connected white men that are hiring them. Heaven forbid you go after someone like that
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The name Kash Patel sounds like a crooked tv evangelist.
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The name Kash Patel sounds like a crooked tv evangelist.
He kneels for money.
lolol (Score:2)
Someone came along to mod in defense of ol' bug eyes, #maggotslovepedos
The problem with swatting is not the callers (Score:4, Insightful)
The main problem with swatting is not the people making the calls.
The underlying problem is the police can be wielded like a weapon that is likely to get someone killed.
If the police were trigger happy thugs, desperate to play soldier with military surplus toys while being almost completely immune from consequences, then there would be no swatting.
"but the swatters are guilty of attempted murder"
sure, but the real problem is the police are a ready tool of murder.
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sure, but the real problem is the police are a ready tool of murder.
So is a hammer. Ban hammers?
Police have to have lethal force available. There's no way around that.
So no, it may feel clever to natter about the "real problem", but the real problem is the losers who do this.
If swatting got you a reliable 40-60 years inside, I suspect we'd see a lot less of it.
Re:The problem with swatting is not the callers (Score:5, Insightful)
sure, but the real problem is the police are a ready tool of murder.
So is a hammer. Ban hammers?
OP is suggesting that the police ought to be smarter than a bag of hammers.
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Re:The problem with swatting is not the callers (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is the problem in a nutshell: you consider the police to be analogous to hammers: a tool with zero agency only wielded by others.
That's, frankly put, completely insane.
Firstly the police are supposedly human which means they have human qualities, agency, free will, judgement and culpability for crimes. Second, you appear ok with the idea that it's even possible for a criminal to wield the police as a weapon.
To repeat: You have reduced the police, armed people who are paid for their job, to business hammers to be picked up and swung by any crook. Are you really ok with that? Do you really have such a low opinion of the police? So you genuinely feel having this hammer available to criminals is in the interests of society?
Ok the real problem isn't even the police, it's that the population appears to be largely speaking ok with handing state backed lethal force over to criminals.
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To repeat: You have reduced the police, armed people who are paid for their job, to business hammers to be picked up and swung by any crook. Are you really ok with that?
No, I'm the one who actually would like to do something about it.
Preventing police from having lethal force available isn't a real alternative. Giving real, painful sentences to swatters is.
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No, I'm the one who actually would like to do something about it.
You are not:
Preventing police from having lethal force available isn't a real alternative.
You entirely invented that as the only possible alternative to what you have now. Making up clearly stupid things an presenting them as the only choice means you don't actually want changes.
Giving real, painful sentences to swatters is.
It's pretty well established that very harsh sentences don't reduce crime. People commit crimes like that on the assump
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"Preventing police from having lethal force available isn't a real alternative"
Yes it is and you'd better re-read our constitution to show where it in fact is proscribed as a remedy - that removal of one's life without DUE PROCESS is a violation of the constitution.
So disarm the fuckers until they can show they're worthy enough to hold a gun.
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Still waiting on you to tell me who the fuck Jessica price is.
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Giving real, painful sentences to swatters is.
It does not work with mentally insane, impulse criminals who do it for the immediate excitation. Harsh penalties might work with rational minds, e.g. fraudsters and scammers, who bargain the risk to get caught for possibility of profit, but as the swatters are not bargaining anything, even heavily loading one side of the scale does not move their needle.
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Preventing police from having lethal force available isn't a real alternative.
Many societies have no problem with policing without lethal force. Also the idea here isn't that they don't have lethal force, the idea is that they don't have *EXCESSIVE* lethal force.
The whole existence of "SWAT" is a fundamental failing of American society, and not one that can be fixed by giving them bigger guns.
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Furthermore, I guess his post gives us insight on who might be making those phone calls or at least what type of people they are.
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Police have to have lethal force available. There's no way around that.
I'm not convinced that "police" are the correct response to every problem, nor that lethal force must be available in every situation.
"When a police wellness check becomes a death sentence [cnn.com]": "Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old black woman, was shot and killed last weekend by a Fort Worth, Texas, police officer who was conducting a wellness check at her home."
"Chicago Police Fatally Shoot 2, Including 55-Year-Old Woman 'Accidentally'" [go.com]: "Chicago Police said an officer killed two people Saturday during a conf
Re:The problem with swatting is not the callers (Score:4, Informative)
>"The main problem with swatting is not the people making the calls."
No, that is the main problem.
>"but the real problem is the police are a ready tool of murder."
Really? So, for these "more than 1,000" swatting calls in 2019, how many incidents of the police accidentally killing people when responding to these fake calls? The article covers not only 2019 but 2015 through 2022 and lists *ZERO*.
So I performed my own research. And could find only one, ever, Andrew Finch in 2017.
Re:The problem with swatting is not the callers (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that is the main problem.
No, it isn't. Nobody would be swatting anyone if the police weren't known for overreaction, because getting them to overreact in hopes that they will harm the victim is the point.
Important note for this argument: There also doesn't have to be a death for there to be harm.
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>"Nobody would be swatting anyone if the police weren't known for overreaction, because getting them to overreact in hopes that they will harm the victim is the point."
They don't have to overreact to cause trauma, distress, embarrassment, and inconvenience for the person being swatted. So yes, there is a motive to cause such reaction by swatters. "Over-reaction" depends on one's definitions. Do I think there have been over-reactions? Yes. But I also think there have been far more appropriate reactio
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So I performed my own research. And could find only one, ever, Andrew Finch in 2017.
Still one too many.
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I found three "deaths from swatting" (two sort of indirect): Andrew Finch (Wichita, Kansas) December, 2017; Mark Herring (Bethpage, Tennessee) April, 2020 ("died of a heart attack during the police response"); and Candice Pickelsimer (Rome, Georgia) December, 2024: "An officer responding to a fake bomb threat targeting U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was involved in a car accident. The collision resulted in the death of a 60-year-old bystander, identified as Candice Pickelsimer. Authorities annou
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The main problem with swatting is not the people making the calls.
If you were the victim of a violent crime then would you not want the police to respond with equivalent violence?
The underlying problem is the police can be wielded like a weapon that is likely to get someone killed.
Again, put yourself in the position of the victim. If you called the police about someone shooting into the university library then would you not want a dozen officers in full body armor showing up with rifles and pistols to kill the bastard that is killing people that just wanted to read a book in peace?
If the police were trigger happy thugs, desperate to play soldier with military surplus toys while being almost completely immune from consequences, then there would be no swatting.
We might not have this if we had a different idea on what it meant to have "military surplus
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If you were the victim of a violent crime then would you not want the police to respond with equivalent violence?
No I wouldn't because the police are not an extra-judicial vengence tool. I would hope they apprehend the criminal, using the minimum force necessary.
Again, put yourself in the position of the victim.
I am. Victims of violent police are also victiims. Why do you not consider them so?
If you called the police about someone shooting into the university library then would you not want a dozen officers
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A program that apparently started under the Clinton administration.
herp derp teh damarcrats HATE HATE HATE.
I'm not American. Why do you think bleating about the dems or Clinton will score points in this argument?
If military surplus equipment to police forces disturbs you then look to Clinton, Obama, and Biden as much as Trump or anyone with the surname of Bush.
Yeah no shit, Sherlock. It's a bipartisan problem throughout the entire country.
I'm seeing people try to lay this militarization of police forces at
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Oh wow America compares well to Haiti. That's a high bar!
That's your bar, seriously? I would have thought context would have made it obvious I was talking about prosperous nations on generally the same level as the US. Having no effective government to enforce the laws is very obviously going to mean the laws aren't going to have any effect.
You whine about the UK, but we have an almost infinitely lower gun death rate, bit also a lower murder rate and a lower violent crime rate. Homicide rate is higher than
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You whine about the UK, but we have an almost infinitely lower gun death rate, bit also a lower murder rate and a lower violent crime rate.
The USA is a big place, and with states that have widely varying laws on gun ownership. Look at DC where gun ownership is effectively forbidden, nearly 30 murders per 100,000 people per year. I live in the Midwest USA, the murder rate is below the national average here. Maybe not as low as UK but it's likely skewed by the big cities that, like DC, have police that don't appear to be all that concerned about containing violent crime.
But speaking of safe... You now have the military deployed on us soil. Your guns didn't protect your from that.
I see you've been following the US news. We do have military deployed on
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You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts
There's is no basis for your claim that the police are ignoring violent crime. It's been dropping year over year and it's close to an all time low.
Trump doesn't give a shit about the crime rate and had no idea what the figures are. He's trying to trigger, quite successfully, useful idiots to get them inured to the idea of a military state.
You say the national hard and presumably marines in California are no big deal. We both know yo
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There's is no basis for your claim that the police are ignoring violent crime. It's been dropping year over year and it's close to an all time low.
The problem with that claim is the police allowed crime to levels that caused concern in the first place.
Democrats have been running DC for years, decades, I'm not caring enough to check. Trump has only so much "mental bandwidth" and so he might not have thought much about crime in DC until he saw one of his own consultants nearly beaten to death in an attempted car theft. Now that it's on his mind he's looking to fix the problem. If the DC police can't keep a White House employee from taking a beating t
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Well, I guess Trump decided the crime rate wasn't dropping fast enough.
I find that person to be one of the most repulsive human beings I've ever encountered, but I have to give him credit for his ability to manipulate the news media. (Although that isn't hard to do.) A couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of discussion in the news about the Epstein files. Various people who had previously argued in favor of releasing the files were, now that they were in a position to do so, not doing that. Trump drops one off-handed comment about sending the National Guard to Chicago and may
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What of South Africa? You believe it better to leave farmers defending their land unarmed?
Oh, my. I hope you haven't been taken in by the propaganda about a genocide against white farmers.
UK restricts ownership of any bladed weapons, is that making them safe? There's a video that's popular of a teen protecting herself from attack with a hatchet and butcher knife. I'd have preferred she had a gun but at least she protected herself and her sister.
No, she didn't [dailymail.co.uk], and a gun would not have helped matters. "Now we can reveal the man being threatened is a family man who has been living in the UK for four years -- and who was accompanied by his wife on the way to the shops when the incident occurred."
Your call to search out deaths by firearm exposes our bias. ... In the USA the places with the highest murder rate coincide with the places with the most restrictive rules on gun ownership.
I agree that all homicides should be treated as equally bad, but the majority of homicides in the US are in fact committed with guns.
The claim about the "hig
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Funnily enough most countries don't have this problem to anything like the same extent as America.
Were you not paying attention? These nations solved the problem by arming the students and teachers.
There's no school shootings in Texas.
Really? You must have missed this: "The Uvalde school shooting [wikipedia.org] was a mass shooting on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot 19 students and 2 teachers, while injuring 17 others."
Santa Fe High School shooting [wikipedia.org]: "On May 18, 2018, a school shooting occurred at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, United States, in the Houston metropolitan area. Ten people -- eight students and two teachers -- were fatally shot, and thirteen others were wounded."
Also, "List of shootings in Texas [wikipedia.org]"
And, "Texas has had nine mass shootings in the past 14 years, while lawmakers have steadily loosened restrictions on carrying firearms [texastribune.org]", By Mandi Cai and Chris Essig (Nov. 12, 2019 Updated: May 8, 2023)
That said, the USA really is an exceptional nation in several respects, including the number of guns owned by civilians and the high homicide rate. The UK, for example, doesn't have nearly as many homicides or mass killings, and they didn't fix the problem by giving everyone guns. I don't know what the answer is for the US. Most gun-control laws to date haven't materially affected violent crime.
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Homicides per 100,000: 2017-2022, FBI
Hawaii: 2.8, 2.6, 2.9, 1.6, 2.1
Massachusetts: 2.0, 2.2, 2.3, 1.9, 2.1
New Jersey: 3.2, 3.0, 3.7, 4.1, 3.1
Minnesota: 1.9, 2.3, 3.4, 3.6, 3.2
Texas: 4.6, 4.9, 6.6, 7.1, 6.7
Homicides per 100,000, 2017-2021, CDC:
Massachusetts: 2.6, 2.3, 2.3, 2.7, 2.3
Hawaii: 2.5, 3.1, 2.5, 3.3, 2.7
Minnesota: 2.2, 2.3, 2.8, 3.6, 4.3
New Jersey: 4.1,
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You're being silly. Yes, there are lots of instances of the police being trigger happy, and that's a real problem that should have consequences...but...the swatters are the problem here.
It's not clear how the system could be redesigned to serve the needed purpose, but also not allow malicious individuals to abuse it. Being able to trace calls to the emergency system, though, would seem to be a step in the right direction.
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You're being silly.
You're being foolish.
Yes, there are lots of instances of the police being trigger happy,
Yes and that right there is the massive problem. The problem is the police are trigger happy.
Are the swatters doing something wrong? Yes. But the police are the ones actually being trigger happy thugs. If they can be goaded into that by a shitty teenager, the police are the main, much larger problem.
It's not clear how the system could be redesigned to serve the needed purpose
Oh gee, I don't know. Given
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The main problem with swatting is not the people making the calls.
The underlying problem is the police can be wielded like a weapon that is likely to get someone killed.
If the police were trigger happy thugs, desperate to play soldier with military surplus toys while being almost completely immune from consequences, then there would be no swatting.
"but the swatters are guilty of attempted murder"
sure, but the real problem is the police are a ready tool of murder.
...but also it is very much probable that *much* of the swatting originates from nation states that will us harm. This is text book motivated mayhem for these entities.
I am currently too fatigued to provide citations.
What if (Score:2)
You could eliminate spam phone calls, wouldn't that eliminate swatting calls?
What about identify the red flags (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone is really witnessing a shooting, they'd call 911 using their cellphones. Not an abroad VPN-protected untreaceable service.
So, if police happen to get such kind of callings, where they couldn't trace it, just act with a grain of salt. Instead of sending in *EVERYONE!!!!1!!!*, just send a couple of officers to a "much probably hoax" just to check it out.
Or if it's a school, mall or such, just call the place. Ask some people there about regular stuff and if everything is OK. In a real threat where people are hostages, you can sense in the tone of voice if something is off, or use other protocols, like "if you're under a threat say X". Not to mention cameras.
Swatting is a thing because of police overreacting to anything. Common sense and simple precautions and it'd be no more.
Re: What about identify the red flags (Score:4, Insightful)
Sending in the SWAT team should not itself be a problem. You want them there because they are the ones trained to handle an actual situation like the ones they are being deployed about that turn out to be fake.
The problem is that they are not trained to or don't want to verify that the report was accurate before throwing a flashbang into a crib.
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don't want to verify that the report was accurate before throwing a flashbang into a crib
It should be a felony for any officer to ever deploy a flashbang or any dangerous or destructive device in any situation where they have not already gotten and saved proof that an incident exists making it is necessary in this specific case -- The officers should also be subject to a Suit in civil court for the loss of life, damage, or damages regarding any mental distress they cause including punitive damages. That
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Absolutely this!
Calling the police should never be considered in the same league as attempted murder.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people who think they're is absolutely nothing wrong with such a state of affairs.
Problems also include the work culture, the widespread adoption of military kit and qualified immunity having been expanded so far that it's almost impossible for a member of the police to be convicted. Oh he shot an unarmed black man lying face down unconscious with cuffs in because he didn't
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Swatting used to be amateur league, done by little brats who couldn't stand losing in a computer game or who had some qualms about your political youtube channel. The way this article sounds swatting has become more professional, with whole teams developing advanced strategies and offering their services for money. Their swat calls become more believable, they play sounds of a real shooting at least credible enough to fool first responders. They know how to contact law enforcement in untraceable yet somehow
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It's cute that you think making an example of some will deter others. Hadn't really worked that well in any other area of enforcement, so I'm not sure why it would work here. These people just don't believe they'll be caught. And deterrence requires one to think through the "what if I'm caught" scenario and examine the consequences. Not likely to happen.
Speeding tickets, ostensibly a deterrent, are a dependable source of budgetary revenue. Murders still happen despite the penalties being extreme. People che
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It's cute that you think making an example of some will deter others. Hadn't really worked that well in any other area of enforcement, so I'm not sure why it would work here. These people just don't believe they'll be caught. And deterrence requires one to think through the "what if I'm caught" scenario and examine the consequences. Not likely to happen.
Stiff penalties will not prevent sudden acts of stupidity "this dude just beat me in the game so I'll show him" "this woke princess just got someone cancelled so I'll show her", but they will eventually stop people acting in a planned and coordinated way. While initial evidence seems to prove you right - the founder of "Purgatory" just received a 15 year sentence and these arse holes still continue their ways - I am fairly convinced, that as the number of such sentences goes up the number of intelligent per
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Fair enough. Well reasoned response. I don't agree... but until stats appear, I'm comfortable with "maybe".
Yay happy impasse. That's where more things should land.
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Swatting used to be amateur league, done by little brats who couldn't stand losing in a computer game or who had some qualms about your political youtube channel. The way this article sounds swatting has become more professional, with whole teams developing advanced strategies and offering their services for money.
I wouldn't rule that out, but I wouldn't dismiss the ingenuity of little brats, either. Some of those brats are plenty intelligent, and they not only can learn obvious lessons about prior incidents, they also exchange information.
Their swat calls become more believable, they play sounds of a real shooting at least credible enough to fool first responders.
Yes, but those are things that literal children can comprehend.
They know how to contact law enforcement in untraceable yet somehow trusted ways.
This is the real root of the problem. When some anonymous party makes a report to police, they have to take it seriously because there are legitimate reasons to make reports anonymously. The police are effectively treat
Re: (Score:2)
If someone is really witnessing a shooting, they'd call 911 using their cellphones. Not an abroad VPN-protected untreaceable service. So, if police happen to get such kind of callings, where they couldn't trace it, just act with a grain of salt. Instead of sending in *EVERYONE!!!!1!!!*, just send a couple of officers to a "much probably hoax" just to check it out. Or if it's a school, mall or such, just call the place. Ask some people there about regular stuff and if everything is OK. In a real threat where people are hostages, you can sense in the tone of voice if something is off, or use other protocols, like "if you're under a threat say X". Not to mention cameras. Swatting is a thing because of police overreacting to anything. Common sense and simple precautions and it'd be no more.
The problem with that is if it is a real situation and you misjudge it there can be real serious consequences. When someone says there is an emergency you need to respond appropriately, there'll be plenty of time afterward to relax and be glad it wasn't real. As for 911, I had a friend who was a 911 operator, and told me sometimes they's get a call about something at one location from a payphone far away. They'd responded to the reported location as well as the pay phone and then catch someone in the cat
Re: (Score:2)
Well then just too bad! Everything is always ruined by assholes...this is why punishments need to fit the damage they create.
REGULATION: no unauthenticated phone device is allowed into the phone system. simple. Every gateway and phone company gets a digital cert, since only the old land lines are not digital. This narrows every call down to a provider and they are responsible for whatever regulations you impose upon them beyond that.
Allowing any SIP gateway to let in traffic from anywhere on earth is idioc
Asymmetric Warfare (Score:5, Interesting)
Swatting, much like the rise of drone-based warfare, is an example of asymmetric effects.
Recognizing that in the United States the incentives for law enforcement executives drive the lesson that the appearance of doing something is just as important as actually doing something, and that every potential threat, regardless of credibility, must be reacted to, North Korea, China, or other bad actors are easily able to cost the the US, as the article notes, $82M a year at virtually no expense. If anything, I'm surprised that these asymmetric attacks aren't more frequent, resulting in a strategy of "jamming" the system with noise.
Typical American Hellhole (Score:1)
Another reason I consider the US a hellhole. The only thing America is #1 at is harming its own people.
Isnt it normal ? (Score:2)
I mean University students are meant to swat up arent they ?
Foreign aid? (Score:2)
that may have had origins abroad...
I suppose they might have. But to be fair, it would be a bit like giving an NBA player a step stool. US citizens are perfectly capable of shooting up a school, threatening to shoot one up, or pretending to do so. No aid required.
Must be newbies (Score:2)
Students usually wait for the exams.
The FBI is Investigating ... (Score:2)
'Swatting' Hits a Dozen US Universities. The FBI is Investigating
The swatting perpetrators called in some on-campus DEI ... /s
Easy solution (Score:2)
Make it impossible to anonymously make 911 calls.
Create an alternate line (811?) that allows anonymity.
Filter accordingly.
Re:LOCAL OFFICIALS ARE FRUSTRATED (Score:4, Insightful)
If 911 is tied up by people hoaxing 'active shooter' this leaves less resources for real emergencies like grandmother's heart attack or car accidents needing medical attention or robberies. I am no fan of most of the bully racist police but this frustrates me too, and I'm not even in these areas.
Also "frustrate" means not just emotional feelings but also "prevented from success", which works well. I didn't read anything in this into anyone being 'whiny little bitches', they are trying to do their job but are facing something they don't have the resources to fight or investigate on their own.
Re: (Score:2)
They tend to rely on the FBI for this level of investigation which, as has been pointed out, has been gutted and de-funded of much of its expertise.
The biggest problems of the FBI right now are not unavailability of cash, but presence of Kash.
Re: (Score:1)
Being a racist cop is a fast track to losing their job.
It took 19 years for this racist cop [wikipedia.org] to get fired.
Re: (Score:2)
If you have a problem with bullies and racists then look to who is running the department.
Yeah, I've always found that interesting.
Gee, I wonder just who runs these "racist" big city police departments? Such a mystery. Should we vote them out?
What's that ... no? Why not?
Re:LOCAL OFFICIALS ARE FRUSTRATED (Score:5, Informative)
Being a racist cop is a fast track to losing their job.
This is a wholesale denial of reality.
Derek Chauvin only lost his job after caught murdering someone on camera.
If there's racist deputies then elect a different sheriff.
Many people are perfectly happy with deeply racist sheriffs, like Sheriff Arpiao. His racism was so bad he actually needed a pardon from Trump to escape consequences of his crimes.
He was Sheriff for 14 years.
Re:LOCAL OFFICIALS ARE FRUSTRATED (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, his wife was Laotian.
And?
Humans are not simple machines, with a binary 'racism' setting. Racism comes in many forms and colors.
Chauvin was a domestic abuser; he likely chose someone who had fewer options and was dependent on him for being able to stay in the US.
There was plenty of evidence of racism in Chauvin's history, and a pattern of repeated racist behavior in the Minneapolis police department.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. And the terms "racism" and "racist" have mutated to mean just about anything now.
The current official-ish meaning of racism (what the authorities who believe it exists and is a problem mean when they say it) is that it's race-based prejudice by a privileged class which disadvantages a real or perceived ethnic group. (I've already described [slashdot.org] what I think it means.) And there is evidence of racism in the department [pbs.org] which is relevant in the Chauvin case. Much of the point of the currently popular definition is that racism is pervasive, and while it can be unconscious, this doesn't prevent i
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
>"The current official-ish meaning of racism [...]is that it's race-based prejudice by a privileged class which disadvantages a real or perceived ethnic group."
That is the left-wings definition, yes. I don't agree with it. Racism is racism, it doesn't matter your "class." It might have less "power" when directed up instead of down, but that doesn't make it not racism.
>>Disparate impact isn't evidence of "racism".
Reply to self- I probably should have said "proof", not "evidence."
>Barring other
Re:LOCAL OFFICIALS ARE FRUSTRATED (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen his a lot. Claims that police are racist. Well, there was a study on race vs. crime. It turned out that Black people were simply more likely to break the law.
That's wrong. That information doesn't exist. What is known is that Black folks are arrested more often than whites. There are several possible explanations for this: one possibility is surveillance bias (also known as detection bias) which just means if the police spend more time in Black neighborhoods, they're more likely to see more crime -- where? In Black neighborhoods. There's further background on this type of erroneous reasoning, going back at least into the 1890s, in The Condemnation of Blackness, by Khalil Gibran Muhammed.
This is one of the problems with predictive policing. Some computer algorithm says that crime is more prevalent in Black areas of a city, so more police are sent there, where they find more crime, proving that the algorithm is correct, and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.
The police also have some discretion in deciding whether or not to arrest a person believed to be guilty of a crime, and prosecutors have a lot of discretion in deciding whom to prosecute. This may lead to racial disparities. It's even possible the police and prosecutors make racially biased decisions without being aware of it, so "I've talked to police, and they don't seem racist to me" is not a strong argument.
Another problem with this claim is that it only considers one factor: race. Again, you tend to find what you're looking for, rather than what you're not looking for. Part of the art of scientific research is identifying all the confounding factors and alternative explanations that might invalidate the hypothesis. Evidently many people aren't even aware of this problem. Rather, they're happy to engage in confirmation bias: they find an explanation they like and seize on it. They have an incentive not to look for other explanations.
For example, in the present case, do Black folks commit more crime, or do poor people commit more crime? Is it possible that poverty could be a factor in crime? What if Black folks are more likely to be poor than whites are? How does that relate to criminality and arrest? Are poor folks more likely to be arrested for actions that wealthier people are not arrested for?
If Black people get ticketed for speeding at higher rates then maybe there is an issue in their upbringing on the respect for rules and other social norms.
Surely you're aware that not everyone who gets pulled over for speeding gets arrested or even gets a ticket. And that Black folks are more likely to get stopped by police.
As I recall Chauvin acted by the book. He responded as he was trained to do.
Sounds like a problem with the training.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the self perpetuating cycle I see. I see Blacks committing crimes. They blame their punishment on racist cops, prosecutors, and judges.
Sorry, but given my previous mention of surveillance bias and the difference between committing crimes and being arrested, I have to ask: I suspect you're being metaphorical. Do you actually "see Blacks committing crimes"? Or do you hear about Blacks committing crimes? Or read about it? Or just assume it?
The criminal learns nothing but that crime is an acceptable way to get food, clothing and shelter, meaning they continue committing crimes.
And if that's the only means they have to get those things? What alternative do you suggest? Did Jean Valjean deserve everything he got, because he was a thief?
I don't know how all states run their prisons but where I live the prisons seem to work hard to set inmates up for means to not come back. They get the opportunity to learn a lot of things. It's on them if they pick up on that or not.
Maybe they do. The problem isn't necessaril
Re: (Score:2)
[George Floyd and Derek Chauvin (interesting name): Did Chauvin act in accordance with his training?]
Sounds like a problem with the training.
Do you have recommendations on new training?
I recall the training was put on trial, and that it was considered lacking in some ways. Maybe I'm confusing one case with another but I recall part of the issue being crowd control. Police are trained to keep the scene secure before attending to medical needs. That makes sense if you consider that there's no means to render medical aid if there's a mob getting in the way. If people had simply backed off and let the police tend to those detained then maybe Floyd would not have died.
I know something about military training, not much about police training. One of the problems is that police are being trained as if they were military; in particular, with a "warrior mentality" and a paranoid mind-set that they could be killed at any moment, so they treat everyone as a potential enemy. (Though, nationally in the US, "law enforcement" isn't one of the top ten most dangerous jobs [bls.gov]. Aircraft p
Re: (Score:2)
Also, his wife was Laotian
What's the relevance of his wife being Laotian? Do you think that someone cannot be racist about some "races" and not others? For that matter, do you think that someone cannot marry someone of a "race" they are prejudiced against?
Re: (Score:2)
>"What's the relevance of his wife being Laotian?"
Really?
>"Do you think that someone cannot be racist about some "races" and not others?"
Of course they can. Any race of person can be "racist".
>"For that matter, do you think that someone cannot marry someone of a "race" they are prejudiced against?"
That would be a bit odd. Certainly a-typical, for certain. And prejudice is not automatically racism.
Re: (Score:2)
Really?
Yes, really.
"Do you think that someone cannot be racist about some "races" and not others?"
Of course they can. Any race of person can be "racist".
I did not ask whether any race of person could be racist. I asked whether racism could be selective.
"For that matter, do you think that someone cannot marry someone of a "race" they are prejudiced against?"
That would be a bit odd. Certainly a-typical, for certain. And prejudice is not automatically racism.
I didn't ask whether it would be odd or atypical.
If racism can be selective, then his wife being Laotian is irrelevant even if someone could not marry someone of a race they were prejudiced against, which they can — just as someone can marry someone of a gender (or sex, if you like, the same argument can be used either way) which they are prejudiced against.
Why do you keep dodging the questi
Re: (Score:2)
>"I believe there are two parts to racism. One, believing race is a real thing. Two, being prejudiced against a race."
I believe a third factor has to be present to be "racism", and that is malevolence. For example- having increased fear about race X being near you, walking the street at night is prejudice. It might be rationally based on observation or statistics. But having hatred toward race X is racism, as would be actively seeking to do people of that race harm. People are first and foremost indi
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting you skipped the bit about Arpiao. So you agree then?
I'd like to see you defend that constitution violating scumbag and the President that pardoned him.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Interesting you skipped the bit about Arpiao."
It is not relevant. His actions or beliefs are not evidence of some other individual's actions or beliefs.
>" So you agree then?"
Agree with what? Arpiao being a "racist"? I have no idea.
Re: (Score:3)
First you claim the police aren't racist, then you discount examples as "not relevant".
Agree with what? Arpiao being a "racist"? I have no idea.
Yeah it's clear by this point you're playing silly games. You know he's racist, but you just want to fuck around trying to sow doubt.
Why? Why not just be happy it's the way you want and proud?
Re: (Score:2)
>"Why not just be happy it's the way you want and proud?"
Further reply isn't warranted because you are not even asking questions in good faith.
Re: (Score:3)
You already weren't answering in good faith. Deny reality, disclaim evidence as irrelevant then get into a strop and flounce.
Re: (Score:2)
Don’t forget that all happened due to nationwide protests and media coverage.
Re: (Score:2)
Being a racist cop is a fast track to losing their job.
This is a wholesale denial of reality.
Derek Chauvin only lost his job after caught murdering someone on camera.
If there's racist deputies then elect a different sheriff.
Many people are perfectly happy with deeply racist sheriffs, like Sheriff Arpiao. His racism was so bad he actually needed a pardon from Trump to escape consequences of his crimes.
He was Sheriff for 14 years.
Yep, and for every US police force that does something about racist subcultures there's 2 that are happy to hire them. Get sacked from the LAPD or NYPD for misconduct, there's dozens of county sheriff departments in places like Bumfuck, Nebroma that'll hire them and if you managed to be too racist even for there, there's always the Idaho Panhandle. So you end up with a lot of forces, like Minneapolis, turning a blind eye to minor incidents because otherwise they'll have a shortage of officers.
The UK, lik
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"Being a racist cop is a fast track to losing their job."
Fuck me, you actually believe that don't you? I know evidence doesn't work on you, but for anyone else reading
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press... [ohchr.org]
https://news.un.org/en/story/2... [un.org]
https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
https://www.nacdl.org/Content/... [nacdl.org]
Data shows that systemic racism exists in the US police. So no, being a racist cop is not a fast track to losing their job. It's 100% baked in to the system itself.