- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Authorities brought 20 police cars, five SWAT officers, and drones to her house
https://www.twitch.tv/grammacrackers/clip/CharmingSolidNoodleKevinTurtle-CCpMMy7EX_W4v7_S
update: Found this video from local news https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGeb3cuqLxE
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Takes a special kind of asshole to swat a little old lady for trying to host a wholesome gaming stream for a good cause.
The fact that swating still happens just proves how much of a joke policing is in general. The fact that you can get a bunch of gun-wielding adrenaline junkies to show up somewhere, frothing at the mouth for violence, in the most spurious of ways is a damning indictment for the whole institution.
Yet they won’t do a damn thing if someone is actually assaulting you.
Probably shoot you and the aggressor since keeping themselves safe is the priority in their training.
I still believe that “defund the police”, is the correct choice. The whole damn thing has to go.
If you don’t have someone authorized by the state to enforce laws, you’re still going to get people enforcing “laws”, it’s just going to be vigilantes, people with grudges, etc. Just look how frequently you see incidents of road rage. Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.
Take all those incidents of people calling the cops on black men having a picnic or taking their dogs for a walk. If there were no cops, do you think these white “Karens” would just leave the black men alone? Or do you think they’d get together and lynch them?
I think the US needs to scale its policing way back. It needs mental health specialists to respond to certain kinds of calls. The person who responds to a report of a stolen bike probably shouldn’t have a gun. But, at some point you are going to need people who will use physical force to enforce the law. Those people should be heavily supervised by a truly independent body. But, they still need to exist in some form.
Yeah, this is what a lot of people fail to take into account when it comes to the purpose of policing in society. There’s obviously a lot of inherent problems with the way the police are structured in many countries as a whole, but to believe that we can just make do without something like them altogether is pretty shortsighted to say the least. I think that prevents a lot of otherwise sympathetic people from taking the backlash against police institutions seriously.
Yea it’s dunny how they just angry downvote, and if they reply at all, they don’t really respond to the points. Who will do the fucking policing if there’s no police??? There will always be people who need to be forcefully stopped from what they’re doing.
I think the idea generally is to replace the police with social welfare programs and unarmed crisis responders, but that’s jumping through so many hoops that it just sounds way too simplistic tbh. It sounds practical, but it treats the problem like it’s something that can be improved with just a few institutions reforming/being abolished.
There’s never been a society without some form of justice system since cruelty is a part of human nature, and at this point these systems are far too intertwined and embedded in our societies for them to change dramatically without some form of societal collapse or retraction.
Idealism is well and good but the things many want in place of police institutions seem like they’re ignoring how complex and non-specific the issues are as a whole. It’s definitely not a one size fits all situation, especially with how many factors there are. People can disagree with me but I’d prefer to hear why at least, there are probably things I’m not considering here.
Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.
No, cops exist to protect capital.
This is just one example too, they’ve issued multiple similar rulings. Also, uh, see: Uvalde.
If there were no cops, do you think these white “Karens” would just leave the black men alone? Or do you think they’d get together and lynch them?
…you think cops keep black people safe? Are you being remotely serious here?
The cops were (and still are) the ones doing the lynching, whether off-duty in white hoods or on duty lol
Yeah for people downvoting this, cops being a problem is largely an American thing. In many other places around the world they are actually beneficial.
Weird how many videos I’ve seen of German police beating anti-genocide protestors and British police arresting seniors for expressing anti-genocide opinions. Maybe that was just an American psyop.
White supremacy is the problem, and America may have the worst case of that, but certainly not the only case.
Yeah, Thunberg was definitely arrested in America. Just, uh, don’t google it.
Cops can be amenable with enough controls, sure, but they ultimately serve capital, man.
You don’t know what she did in Minecraft.
(/s)
I heard she made a mob farm of babies
you have to be one sick twisted individual to be swatting a person, let alone a freaking elderly woman
While she’s trying to raise money for her grandkid’s cancer treatment, no less.
Seriously, fuck whoever did this.
And fuck who ever supports a system that results in this…
With cancer even with places that do have socialized medical care you might still need a lot of money.
Cancer sucks.
I agree cancer sucks, but how do you need money? There is no fee to access healthcare here.
You get care that is covered, there might still be some drugs and experimental treatments that isn’t. This is because there’s still no actual cure for cancer.
This is why you still can see people collecting money for treatments even when they have socialized medical care.
When your cancer can be treated with already approved treatments then you are golden otherwise you do suffer similarly.
This is not attack on socialized medical care, you are still better than no care, you might still get radiation, chemotherapy etc, it is more attack on situation cancer can create.
There would only be extra costs if you want to go for private treatment
Systems - both our healthcare and policing
Dark thought, what if a supporter did it, 'cuz that kid is definitely getting their treatment paid for now.
Grandma could have died…
Making the mother of all omelettes here, Jack! Can’t fret over every egg!
Damn, it did make the news after all.
She couldve died, they frequently shoot innocent people and animals during these raids
Swatting is fucked up
The most fucked up thing is that SWAT teams keep falling for it. What fucking information did they have that warranted this level of a response? How the fuck is someone not fired every time this happens?
Why do you think that? Do they mention some kind of payout in the video? It sounds unlikely to me.
They didn’t say THAT HAPPENED FOR SURE, they said “dark thought”
You’re allowed to post random thoughts on the internet
If I’m allowed to post thoughts on the internet then why are you yelling at me?
I didn’t yell, I capitalized part of my comment for effect. You can to that on the internet, too! You can also take people’s comments out of context, like you did, but then you’re liable to incur the wrath of some twat correcting you.
No, but the attention they’re getting is probably orders of magnitude bigger after this, and attention=money in this case
I’m afraid “Watch Streamer Get Swatted” is a saturated market. Likely breaking the age record may help though
This was objectively a bad decision, but regardless, none of us would be here talking about this streamer if it hadn’t happened. Most won’t donate, but the more people that see it, the more likely it is that someone will donate.
We’re in Generation Duh where people think doing this kind of thing is funny. But it’s funny only to them, was thought up of in 2 minutes, then discarded once any attention has been brought to it before they think of the next stupid idea that they think is funny.
Stop being right about that!
Perhaps the problem is the swat teams doing this shit with zero verification.
they share the blame for sure
People fucking suck
Most american headline ever
Oh this absolutely happens here in europe too, just not with such a needlessly large amount of cops. Makes it no less dangerous though.
Yes it’s less dangerous (not dangerless obviously), in Europe the swat teams tend to be better trained and way less trigger happy than in USA. Had they busted in there they likely would not have shot an elderly woman found inside, whereas in USA that’s more likely to happen. They don’t just go in and start shooting, otherwise we would have “random kids and women accidentally murdered in a police bust” headlines all the time as well
Do elderly women have to stream videos to pay for cancer treatments? My father has cancer, and all his bills this year add up to €0. Well, sometimes I leave the car in a paid parking lot; in the whole year it’s probably been around €20.
Oh no i meant the swatting part my bad.
I’ve never seen any european police respond to anonymous tips with 20 police cars, SWAT equivalent units or even guns drawn for that matter.
just not with such a needlessly large amount of cops
Hence this part of my comment… like … learn to read boiii
If the child didn’t need money for treatment, granny wouldn’t be on twitch.
sure, but if she streamed for her enjoyment and got swatted, it wouldn’t make a difference
America has “police by intimidation” as its default response. Most of Europe seems to have “police by consent” as the default.
It leads to a different mentality. They might still roll out the whole cavalry, but it will more likely be led by a polite knock at the door, and an initial attempt to de-escalate.
You’re being a little too optimistic, there. It might not be the same toxic culture, but ACAB.
The UK force has its problems, but it functions fairly well. It also has a lot of people in it who honestly want to do a good job.
The problem is the rules and mandates coming down from the government. (And the political upper management level of the police)
They seem to put an inordinate amount of effort into suppressing free speech, prioritizing it over going after actual fucking crimes.
Agreed on that. Though in the scale of the UK there aren’t that many cases. The ones there are however, are (deliberately) high profile. It has a chilling effect on the population, without needing to use it much.
They also hamstring the bobbies via the budget assignments. I know a lot of forces would love to get rid of some of the more overtly racist/sexist/other-ist officers. Their budget limits wages however, which limits the selection of replacements. They end up having to try and weed out the ringleaders (to fire or retire) and split the followers up.
The long and the short, most of the police are working class and do the job to try and make our country better. Some are even trying to counter the bullshit rolling down from on high.
I have been stopped while doing something illegal that was a minor infraction, but still caught red handed, could have easily been fined, but was let go with a verbal promise to do better and the whole interaction was very civil. Also a few months ago the police recovered stolen items and managed to detective their way to me to return them as well as caught the bastards that did it. The whole process was honestly impressive and the cops I dealt with were just awesome. My interaction with police throughout my life has been at worst neutral but mostly positive. In Europe ACAB is bullshit as far as I’m concerned and anyone who uses it here is memeing after the Americans where it sounds like it’s 100% applicable.
‘Europe’ is a generalisation though. I’m sure this might ring true in Scandinavia and some other northern countries, but might also be a completely different story in Greece, Italy, etc.
I mean, yes, saying ACAB is a blatant generalisation too.
They mentioned in the video more cops came because they wanted to meet the gaming grandma, and they cleared the scene pretty quick.
I don’t think a grandma would have to raise money for cancer treatment in the EU…
It’s only be more American if the cops entered her home and shot her while claiming a controller was a gun
Shit cops with shit people calling them in, while granny tries to raise money for medical treatment for her grandson… Your shit country is working as designed.
Whoever did this needs to be charged with attempted murder. You can’t expect that police get a report of a threat at a residence (like a bomb threat or a murder threat) and they show up without weapons. Shame police time and resources had to be wasted ruining this poor old woman’s Minecraft night.
I guess on the up side, not many 82 year olds can tell their friends that they are important enough to have so many people show up to their house so late at night.
Completely reasonable response to that kind of a threat, if that is what the call was.
I think twenty cars is still too many
It is. Cops are bored that time of night so anything like this gets blown outta proportion
If someone was shooting people, I would definitely want every officer in the local area to show up. The police can’t possibly know if its real or not until they show up, and even if they talked with the home owner before they arrive they still have to check to make sure.
While I sure wish they could just believe you if you said you weren’t a criminal or something, that’s exactly what a criminal would say. So they gotta treat it as real even if its fake. Truly a shame so many awful people have led to this, but it will only get worse as time goes on.
Yeah I don’t disagree that they should go check it out with enough people but that’s, what, 40+ officers? To an incident supposedly involving two people? What are they all supposed to do? It’s just chaos and I don’t think they are helping the situation.
Police get a call about a person who has a gun, who already shot someone, and is threatening to kill himself. Logically speaking, a person that is erratic enough to report themselves like that isn’t likely far from the idea of deciding to shoot their neighbors or others in view too.
A person with a gun shooting even in the general direction of people, even if they don’t hit anything, is enough for me to say every officer in the area should be responding. If the first officers get there and become targets that are killed, more are showing up or are on the way. In a shooting situation it should be the goal of police to become the target being shot at instead of innocent civilians.
They can’t know if this kind of call is real or not, so they have to treat it like it is real. I would rather there be a few hours of chaos on a residential street for a false alarm by treating every report this seriously compared to something like the Ulvade school shooting happening again because police didn’t want to show up or were too scared to do their job.
My point is not about it maybe being false, I just don’t think that many people are helpful even if it is real, I think they will make the situation worse, they will not be able to make sensible decisions. I’m not talking about chaos in the street, but in coordination of law enforcement. At Uvalde, many police officers did show up, and they simply didn’t do their jobs. Among many issues with the response, they couldn’t make up their minds about who was in charge, that’s a problem with many people from many departments all showing up to an incident at once.
With 20 cars + swat you’ve just created a target rich environment.
So they send every operative to one call and let the rest of the area without support if something happens. Haven’t they seen Die Hard 3?
Completely reasonable response to that kind of a threat, if that is what the call was.
This sounds like complete absurdity, even as a Canadian.
“There’s nothing we can do about it!” -says only country in the world where it regularly happens
Whoever did this needs to be charged with attempted murder.
Doing that would raise certain implications, and validate a lot of concerns people have with police in the USA. I don’t think that’s likely to happen.
They should be charged with something, but I’m sure that won’t become a legal case which confirms that the police is basically a blunt weapon that can be swung with a phone call.
All cops are idiots.
Ok, so granny got swatted, why?
What was the police told about the situation?
Is there an article about this which explains the cause of this.
Those questions would only matter if this kind of police reaction wasn’t almost exclusive to the US. So American police are idiots.
In Europe there were a few cases in France, but they led to changes in police procedures to verify reports more thoroughly before busting through doors.
There are a lot of things that can be pointed at as to why this happens so much in the US. But I think most people forget that this is a problem that can literally be fixed using laws and technology.
Swatting can only happen because the US telecom system is so full of holes and because the US legal system isn’t doing its job.
The primary thing you have to do is fix it so that the emergency operators can know where a call actually originated. And all we need to do to make that happen is to change the law so that telecom companies are held criminally and civilly liable when a person uses their infrastructure to fake where an emergency call is coming from.
Calls that come from foreign sources or from internet sources would harbor great suspicion. Imagine that the operator gets a big flashing notice that the call is suspicious right from the start.
I’m not saying that police and gun nuts and police gun nuts and incompetent police and nazi assholes don’t have a lot of culpability, or that we shouldn’t have severe penalties for people who do the swatting but the core fault lies in our elected representatives being too corrupt to hold telecom companies to account.
Your argument is almost exactly the same as the ones being used to rationalize things like age-verification, surveillance, deanonymizing platforms, etc.
The people supporting these measures are going after operating systems, VPNs, web browsers, everything but targeting the actual people committing the crimes that they’re pretending to be trying to prevent.
Holding telecom companies primarily responsible for how their platforms are misused is a very large step towards the dystopian future that we’re already sliding towards.
When you call emergency services, they need to know your location. You know, because you’ve got an emergency, which is almost always where you are, and you might not know exactly where you are.
And, this is information that the telecom companies should already know. And it’s information that the caller might not know.
This isn’t a “very large step towards [a] dystopian future.” It’s your vision that is dystopian here. In your vision, people can have emergencies and die because the emergency services don’t know where to go. In your vision, people can easily fake emergencies and swat innocent people. You have a choice between a good thing and a bad thing, and you’re actually choosing the bad thing. It’s hard to fathom.
You gotta love people who would create a dysfunctional government just because they don’t realize that similar things can be good or bad depending on context, and that emergencies are exceptional circumstances.
Except you didn’t say “Emergency services need to know the location of the caller, so telecom services should provide this information automatically.”
You said this:
And all we need to do to make that happen is to change the law so that telecom companies are held criminally and civilly liable when a person uses their infrastructure to fake where an emergency call is coming from.
So everything in your most recent comment is a strawman because it completely misrepresents that discussion that came before. You’re placing words in my mouth as if I was responding to something other than what you actually said, when in fact I was responding to the thing that you did say.
No, holding telecom companies criminally liable for how their customers use their infrastructure is the path towards a dystopia, because it forces them to implement mass surveillance, censorship, predictive policing, and anticipating the will of the authorities (which often leads to even stricter enforcement).
If people are blocking geolocation on their device, and it’s that important to you that the emergency services know where they’re calling from, then give them a pop-up banner that says “to complete this call, please enable location services” with a button to do it in one click.
If someone makes fake emergency calls and swats people, identify the person who did the thing and hold them criminally liable. What you’re proposing is to basically let that person off the hook while punishing the company, and forcing the company to comply with an order to treat all of their customers as potential abusers of their services. That’s dystopian.
Except you didn’t say “Emergency services need to know the location of the caller, so telecom services should provide this information automatically.”
That thing “I didn’t say” is basically the first thing I said:
The primary thing you have to do is fix it so that the emergency operators can know where a call actually originated.
You misread my comment and then blamed me for your mistake. You downvoted my comment and called a common-sense obvious solution “dystopian,” when a decent person would have reread the first comment they responded to, and considered whether they might have actually misunderstood something.
I don’t have the time to have a discussion with you if I also have to explain my comments to you multiple times because you don’t read them properly. Since I’m not going to spend the time necessary to communicate with you, I am blocking you directly after posting this comment, and won’t see any future comments from you.
I don’t think giving the police more surveillance options is the best option. The main problem is the extreme militarisation of the US police. This amount of force is a ridiculous response to almost any likely scenario they would have encountered.
That’s not surveillance. That’s basic service, allowing the recipient of a call to know who is actually calling them. The same thing would also stop a lot of scammers.
they also get alot of surplus equipment from the military that is outdated, which makes it even worst.
Everyone blames swatting on the person who called in a fake report, but swatting only works because the are idiots. Someone actually decided to bring 20 cars to an house legally owned by an 85 year old with a single unverified repot as their only evidence.
In fairness, the police don’t have a list of who is in every house at all times. They don’t exactly have X-ray vision. All they know is that they got a call saying that someone is holding someone at gunpoint in this house.
Of course, 20 cars is comically overkill
This sort of overreaction isn’t rare though. People have died from it.
It’s also not exclusive to the U.S. We had a guy here in Sweden who got assaulted and practically kidnapped by masked men in the middle of the night. Guy thought he was going to die, and didn’t find out that they were police until they got him in the car and drove to the station.
What was his horrible crime? He’d shared images via Yahoo mail of him and his 30 year old boyfriend having sex. Some American organisation trawled through Yahoo mail, flagged these images and videos as possible CSAM, and forwarded it to Swedish authorities. Our authorities, instead of you know, doing any kind of investigation, or summoning the guy to the police station, or even just arresting him in a calm and peaceful manner, decided that sending masked goons to raid his home in the middle of the night was the way to go.
Oh yeah, I’m fully aware. My own city made national headlines in my country a few years back when bastard pig Justin Rapp shot and killed Andrew Finch. SWATting should be considered attempted murder, and if a pig murders someone during a SWATting, they should be charged as well.
Fun fact! Bastard pig Justin Rapp sued the city when they placed him on leave, and won. Now he’s a detective whose salary is paid by my tax dollars. Fuck the police
It’s not that they’re idiots, though many cops are. It’s that they don’t get punished for falling for a SWATting attempt.
If you could lose your career if you fell for it, they’d try a lot harder not to fall for it. But, instead, they never face punishment for being overly aggressive, and might face punishment for not being aggressive enough in the case of a real emergency.
Never ceases to amuse me how they send a ridiculous amount of deputies to one situation. They couldn’t agree on a team or maybe two qualified people, no, let’s send the whole fucking department and have extras just incase.
I mean if they had been told there were gunshots, several dead in the street and hostages. That might be a fairly reasonable response.
If they’ve been told that there are several dead in the street, and they get there, and there’s nobody dead in the street, it’s time to not go in going pow pow pow.
Well yes, but its an example of a call you can make that probably results in extreme responses. Would be interested in knowing what they thought they were going to for that kind of response though.
I can’t think of any call where they need to go in guns blazing unless they can actually see that someone’s shooting, or in the process of being killed.
Anything else and there’s time to peek in windows, send a drone up to upper floor windows, and so-on.
Even if it is an actual situation where someone is in mortal danger, doing that will mean they’re not walking into a dangerous situation blind.
If they do that and can’t see anybody in any kind of distress or danger, then the logical thing is to calmly knock on the door and ask some questions.
I can’t really think of one either which is why I would be curious what they were told
I wouldn’t be surprised to see there is a episode of something where someone needs to do a crime in area so they pull this so all the cops are in other side of town.
I was paid a dawn visit many years ago by an armed unit (UK). The way they ran it was two plainclothes (handguns only) officers knock on the door to assess the threat, with a van full of tooled up guys in balaclavas just outside, just in case. It was all very chill and no unnecessary stress/escalation for anyone. Seems like this would be a more sensible approach.
It would indeed be a more sensible approach.
I’m frequently amazed that despite your countries declining standard of living it is still light years ahead of that of my own. I’m actually jealous. Please rejoin the EU as soon as it’s convenient.
That sounds very nice. I’m honestly jealous. However, there were 408 mass shootings in the USA last year. That’s more than 110 people shot per day. While I in no way support the policies of the police in the USA, I do have to admit that given the likelihood that the residents of any particular home might be armed, I personally would not want to be a lightly armed and unarmored cop knocking on a door here. I mean, people here have literally been shot just for knocking or ringing a doorbell.
While all cops are indeed bastards, many of the other people in this country aren’t any better. The left end of the bell curve in this country is very heavily armed and doing their part to help police turn the nation into the war zone they think it already is. Until common sense gun laws are passed and the dumbest and most violent among us are disarmed, it’s not going to change for the better.
Yeah I get it, it’s a silly comparison as the potential threat landscape is completely different. It’s a sad situation over there.
Meanwhile, when an actual credible threat is ongoing: “We’ll send our best confrontation avoider and check back in about 3 hours from now”
I will never forgive Uvalde police for that school shooting situation. Not only did they do nothing to stop the shooter, they actively held back parents who were going to do the cops jobs for them.
If I remember right, 23 kids, and 3 staff members died that day in an attack that took hours, but should have been stopped in minutes. They arrived on the scene 6 minutes after being called. Then they let it go on and on and on.
I will never forgive Uvalde police.
When seconds count, they’re an hour away
Yeah but like… Weren’t most of the kids brown-ish? /s
All cops are idiots.
“ACAI”???
half the fun is strapping up. so many toys
Her reaction is so sweet
This is where your tax money goes.
Confused european here - why?
It’s an American thing. The goal is to hopefully use the police to kill the streamer since police often are skittish and tend to shoot first before verifying what is going on.
Why don’t people send police to the white house and houses of CEOs on a cooldown?
Because America worships pedophilia and psychopathy.
Why don’t the king’s guards attack the king?
The police know their job is to enforce the law, but they also know who gets a free pass… or at least who gets a lot more leeway than other people. At a minimum it changes “shoot first and ask questions later” into “ask questions then maybe shoot”.
Because the police are mercenaries, not wild animals. They generally don’t bite the hand that feeds. Besides, they still have 99% of the population to target.
This happens in europe too https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/linux-dev-swatted-live-during-a-development-video-stream this happened in Germany, but no SEK was involved (german equivalent of SWAT). His wife was so shocked, he mentioned they moved out of the country.
Especially when they’re led to believe the person in the home is unstable and well armed.
Its called swatting. You call police and say someone is dangerous and they come running with all the gear to justify the bloated budgets. Kids were doing this pretty often in the news a decade ago. Especially to streamers.
America is a dystopian capitalist nightmare lol
Just missing the cyber punk.
It never stopped btw. This has been a constant and consistent issue for well over a decade, it rarely ever makes “the news”.
Cant believe it got so normalized. What a country.
Swatting becoming normalized is the logical conclusion to a “justice” system that offers immunity to trigger happy officers with practically 0 training or oversight.
Since guns are handed out in America like chocolate at a Willy Wonka publicity and outreach campaign, every law enforcement agency has to be kitted out to potentially combat a barricaded suspect who can rain a small militia’s worth of lead on them and their surroundings. That’s why the response team often includes armored vehicles, snipers, and crayon munchers armed to the tits. And because abusing emergency services doesn’t cut into the profit of any big corporations, there are no effective means to seek justice against the offenders.
abusing emergency services
I don’t understand - someone called the swat team on her? Why would they go to a private house with a giant swat force based solely on some anonymous tip? That makes no sense in my head.
It’s America, just say a black man has a gun and they send a batallion.
Ever seen Stripes, the '80s action comedy film with Bill Murray and other notables?
There’s a scene in it that I think of every time this kind of story crops up, where you have over-equipped and under-educated people who are trained to think that everyone’s the enemy, and so prioritise their blood thirst and fear over everything else:
“All I know is I finally get to kill somebody!”
Their actions aren’t about right/wrong or just/unjust, but that they were let off the leash to do what they have been conditioned to do.
So you get people calling in hoaxes to police forces who send militarised forces to raid grannies, young children, whomever. It’s about the drama and lulz. Objectively horrifying.
The US has lived in a state where any measure to squash terrorism would never be enough, for a long time. All you have to know is an address and say to the police that you heard a group of Arab looking middle aged men speaking of blowing up a place and a small army would be raised ready raze that domicile to the ground if necessary.
That’s what happens when a group of people is armed beyond reason and in constant paranoia.
Because they have the equipment and are always looking for an excuse to use it to justify the cost and training. And because the more they use it, the sooner they can get more of it.
It makes zero sense to a normal person, nor does their justification for needing the equipment in the first place, but once they have it they’ll use it any chance they get.
someone called the swat team on her?
some anonymous tip
That’s not what happened. Someone called 911 and described a situation that involved a shooter who has already shot someone. The 911 operator then had to relay that to the responders (in this case, LE). The responding officers might have only received an address, that there was a barricaded active shooter, and that there was at least one shooting victim.
It’s not up to the police to debate the veracity of a report. Imagine being in a hostage situation, you manage to call 911, and they respond with “sounds fake, not coming”.
Okay, but surely upon arriving to said address with a huge swat team and discovering nothing amiss, no panicked people, no gunfire, no anything, their first reaction is to raid the house? The US sure is a strange place.
You know that shooters have the ability to stay quiet, right? A calm atmosphere doesn’t mean there isn’t someone who is in imminent danger. Back to the thought exercise: you’re a hostage, you call 911, police arrive. Then they wait five minutes and fuck off because nobody’s firing at them or shouting threats. Do you think that’s reasonable? Wouldn’t you want them to breach the house and get you out of the situation?
It’s fucked up that this happened in the first place, but “well, the police should have…” is not how you fix it. Misuse of emergency resources needs to be a federal crime, and doing it to harm another person needs to be investigated and penalized as attempted murder with prison sentence for first time offenders, both as punishment and as a deterrent. But I’ve seen enough court cases to understand that the US justice system has neither the motivation nor the competence to implement or enforce a law like that.
What do you think it would look like from the outside if someone had you at gunpoint in your bedroom?
Gunfire would not necessarily panic people in the vicinity. If you are in a suburban setting, surrounded by 6 foot fences separating 2 story houses, a few shots could be mistaken for hammering, some kind of construction project. If I did think there was gunfire, I would go inside, and take shelter, not hang around to talk to cops.
I would never run toward cops period. They might shoot me.
I have fired guns and been around guns as they were fired, and I am not confident I would know the difference easily. Plenty of Americans have less experience with firearms than I do.
It’s not up to the police to debate the veracity of a report
Why not?
and they respond with “sounds fake, not coming”.
Why wouldn’t they just respond with “we’ll have to verify this”.
Swatting also happens in Europe. I get that were the punching bag right now, but it’s not a problem that only happens here.
There is an enormous difference between the conduct of police officers between the US and Europe. Again, it mostly comes down to the public’s access to firearms, but the quality of training, institutionalized prejudices, and corrective actions (or the absence of those things) are also significant factors.
The US is not a punching bag. It’s receiving fair criticism and experiencing repercussions for decades of failure to improve public safety, and using both legal mechanisms and populist rhetoric to sanctify gun violence and the persecution of vulnerable groups, leading to a deeply divided, damn near tribal society (Us against Them), and the rise of the American Gestapo under the false banner of immigration control. Be patriotic, absolutely. But patriotism without awareness and due criticism is nothing more than zealotry.
This has been my feeling latley as well with so many things going on in the US…
Publicity to increase donations.
what do you even have to say on the phone for them to send 20 cars bro
Is she using X-ray and macros or something to cheat at Minecraft? Seeing very little discussion of the video.
It’s some kind of thing were if she goes afk, chat can decide what the player should do. In this case they decided to mine ores.
Why I quit MMOs and never looked back, because even more than 20 years ago toxic behavior was being normalized, and that included offline PK.
Fucking little assholes nearly killed a grandmother.
offline PK
That is certainly a way of phrasing it.
Is Minecraft really even a MMO? My understanding is that it’s usually smaller servers. This was probably more just some asshole using her streaming to attack, rather than a toxic player.
There are massive Minecraft servers handling hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously, but most are small of course.
That’s if you play one of those. Seems like she was in a single player world. I wouldn’t consider Minecraft an MMO in the typical sense.
Social media, however and in a way, acts so much like an MMO. A fucking PK server, really.
Props to Grannycrackers for handling the aftermath with such grace and humour. Not sure I would be half as composed as her. (Or half as chuffed at getting to ride in a police car.) Hope she smashes her fundraising target.
Looking forwards to the news of the arrest of the no-lifer who swatted her.
You’d be surprised at how many old people request to be arrested by the police, it’s like a thrill ride for some of them.
Yeah. The best possible outcome after a situation like this is the victim not being harmed in any way, so the perpetrator is denied the satisfaction of causing harm.
