They need to get sued _hard_ and lose millions, as well as have cops put in jail before real change happens. I feel sorry for this kid but he's doing the right thing.
Come to think of it, this is America dammit. Cops should be licensed, bonded and insured, and if their training or records aren't up to standards they don't get covered. We have higher standards for plumbers and pest control than we do police.
If it's one cops fault, charge the cop. If it's multiple cops fault, charge them AND the department. This makes it fiscally prudent to make sure cops in the department are well trained and educated on enforcing the laws and respecting rights.
If they don't want to foot the bills for police misconduct, maybe the taxpayers should elect someone who actually holds the police accountable and doesn't just blindly approve any policing budget and look the other way when the police wrongfully harms someone?
Right. The real justice comes from treating this incident like you would if there were no municipal coffers at play, and simply punish criminals for criminal action.
Sure, the person making the bogus call to police should suffer some consequences vis a vis jail time.
However, swatting only works because police regularly take a shoot first and ask questions later stance. They go from an anonymous tip about an ongoing crime at an address to shooting up said address in short order without any effort to verify a crime is actually taking place, perhaps in no small part due to the fact that qualified immunity ensures they'll never see any consequences for any property damage and/or casualties which occur as a result.
I'd liken it to initiating a gang hit, except at least in the gang hit, the gang members responsible for carrying it out have a chance at facing some accountability.
Cops need to face the possibility of (at minimum) termination and even jail time for recklessly endangering civilians, and cop training needs to be fundamentally changed to eliminate this "us vs. them" mentality seen in so many of those in blue.
Now, if I were to answer your question, I would say it first depends on circumstances. I have encountered many people with guns. But if I was and active officer and encountered someone with a gun, I would do my best so that the encounter was arranged in a manner that gave me some advantage and at least a second or two to think before acting. Sometimes, mistakes are made though, and they always will be made. But the fact someone had a gun is no excuse.
Police in many jurisdictions will just walk onto your property in pursuit of a suspect and get mad at you if you open a window or door to see what the hell is going on outside your home.
They were at the right house and the bodycam footage shows that they did announce themselves at the front door.
Reportedly the victim was using noise cancelling headphones and was not aware of the police's presence until they broke into his bedroom window.
Notice that swatting is problem almost exclusively to USA. In Europe cops will just check what is going on first before bringing the big guns.
The public would probably be served by the shooters not carrying a badge anymore, but it doesn't take jail to accomplish that.
The man is 24 years old.
The studies that found that your brain develops until you're 25 didn't study anyone older than 25.
More recent studies have found that your brain continues developing over your whole life. Different parts improve and decay at different rates at different times in your life.
There is no one age where you're ontologically perfect; it's all spectra all the time.