Couple was swatted 55 times in 2 years over a post about Norm Macdonald

> On Aug. 3, 2022, one officer sent a memo to the acting police captain requesting the couple's home be marked as a "swatter house." The captain declined, saying it could cause a "complacency issue for responding officers.”

You'd think they'd be more concerned about constantly wasting time and resources to constantly send out SWAT to some random couple's house twice a week.

This has a side story from some years ago of Patrick trying to act against the forums organising the swatting... and Cloudflare sending lawyers to explain how they can't help with anything, even though it's their customers. Cloudflare spent actual money on lawyers to ensure someone continues to be swatted. Something to keep in mind next time you choose a vendor. It's not only the police and the individual swatters that are a problem here.

At some point, the responding local police should be held criminally liable. A tiny brass badge should not shield you from having to comply with society's laws.

This is primarily a failure of the police, but second place goes to data brokers and anyone who collects unnecessary data and doesn't secure it. A flood of personal information already leaks illegally through cybercrime and companies not protecting data, and we haven't even stopped the huge legal industry of public-info data brokers. You shouldn't be able to look up an email or phone number and get someone's family and address.

The powers that be like phone numbers because they're like a medium-level KYC. In many countries getting a phone number requires ID, and there was a recent proposal to do that in the US. Of course swatting and spam are used as excuses to introduce KYC requirements, but those problems are endemic to phone numbers, and more identity verification just causes more leaks, which gives them excuses to require more KYC.

My idea for replacing phone numbers and email: SimpleX for calls and texts (no accounts and therefore the least PII possible), and Monero micropayments for spam prevention. Most people spend way more on their wireless plan then they'd need to spend in Monero to make the initial connection, for publicly posted SimpleX links.

We've really got to rein in qualified immunity in this country. That and civil asset forfeiture.

So many replies here are blaming the police but despite how screwed up the situation is there isn’t much they can do. Not responding to a swat call is not really an option with the way the system is setup.

We can all say “well, if you get many calls about one location, maybe you should stop showing up” but wtf are you supposed to do if a real crime is being committed? The same couple getting swatted one day could get criminals breaking in another, possibly for the same reason even. How can you make the call not to show up if your entire existence and role in society is to show up?

What real solutions are there?

Edit: a bunch of identical responses to this comment with "just don't show up". I know it's easy to sit and judge from the comfort of your keyboard, but do a little bit of thinking. 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?

Edit2: now people switched to "show up, but softer, knock on the door". Now we can agree, because this comment is about showing up, not about specifics. Yeah, more considerate approach is warranted. To be clear, I agree that police should be punished for violating laws and conduct policies. Yet there is the other side of it, there's still an alert and it could still be real. Police still have to be mind-f'ed into figuring out every time if there's real danger or not.

Edit3: People who say "police can catch the callers" and suggest other triumphant movie-esque feats make me feel like we need an article "Falsehoods programmers believe about police".

Do police in the US has any unified system for dispatchers to track the history of incidents/resolutions? Just wondering if they could start making notes there for future calls, I guess it would be useful in general but not sure if they have/allowed to have something like that.

This is one of those things where someday people will not believe this was common enough that there was a word for it.

the worst thing about all this swatting is the hypocrisy

Wait, before I rush to judgment someone tell me what they said about Normy...

These Norm fans sound like real jerks.

55 times over two years, so basically every two weeks on average?

At what point do the officials involved in this become involved with the criminal harassment themselves? At what point is it legal / acceptable (though unwise) to shoot the armed men entering your house?

“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."

…i was expecting something significantly more incendiary.

Norm would have a funny story about this.

Norm Macdonald IS funny though....

So, this will continue every two weeks?

wouldn't that qualify as gross negligence?

Zooming out a bit, it's pretty scary to think of what's coming next if Dems do what seems looming in the mid-terms. The police riots, their willingness to flout the legislative body and cause torment against cities they are nominally supposed to be protecting is going to be deep trouble. Word nothing of what ICE is going to do!

Vought has seized the power of the purse from Congress, and Congress has so far let him get away with it. What happens when Congress starts actually trying to legislate, and the police and ICE just... don't comply seems all too likely a confrontation.

Thanks for the excellent thread on this William F Fuckley, https://bsky.app/profile/opinionhaver.bsky.social/post/3mxag...

Norm Macdonald would be telling this as a joke and laughing from his grave if it wasn't a tragedy.. It is not April!

" he wrote on Twitter, now X: “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." "Two weeks later, here I am, you know, on my front porch in the middle of the night, exposed to all my neighbours with shxtgxns......... pointed at my head."

I'd be putting a big sign out the front of my house explaining the situation to the cops and hoping they stop to read it before they storm in. I don't know if it would work but worth doing something. It's extremely strange to me that there was no coordination for the police to be able to say: "this guy has been swatted before, he's a victim, maybe we shouldn't proceed?"

I assume he's in an area with thousands of police like in a big city or something. Would you be safer in smaller towns against this threat or what? It's scary that essentially anyone who can find your address can do this kind of thing. Even though the penalties are severe if you get caught. The bold always find a way...

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