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.
At some point, the people doing the "swatting" (false police call) should be held criminally liable, maybe even for attempted murder by cop. There's definitely a crime being committed there. I'm 100% sure that calling the cops on someone and making a false report is against at least one or two (or maybe even several) laws.
Which does raise the question: why is it SOP for the police to send a SWAT team to a random house based on nothing but an anonymous phone call? At the very least it should take some kind of statement from an actual identified human who can be held accountable if it turns out to be a hoax.
Act now (to reduce potential loss of life) and verify later
Um, no. In a high trust society "swatting" would not be a thing--because people would understand that it's a huge violation of trust. And people who did make hoax calls like this would suffer severe punishment--because that's what a high trust society has to do to people who violate trust like that, in order to stay high trust.
> Act now (to reduce potential loss of life)
Not necessarily, since SWAT teams are generally not noted for their restraint--certainly not if their response on swatting call number 55 to the same house is the same as it was for call number 1.
> and verify later
Okay, let's say this is valid for call number 1. Still, what about call number 2 to the same house? Let alone call number 55? Especially when the owner of the house produces evidence that people had threatened to swat him?
So no, we do not have the kind of society where your logic makes sense; the rare cases where the quick knee jerk response actually prevents harm are more than overwhelmed by the much more common cases where it's a false alarm but the police keep on violating innocent people's rights anyway.
But in our actual society, false reports are not rare--this case is an illustration of that (55 false reports, no true ones). So, as I said, this logic does not work for our actual society, which is clearly not a high trust society.
America is one of the lowest trust society among developed nations. People don't trust government officers to do the right thing, like, at all, and they wear the distrust as a badge of honor.
For instance, the judge who refused involuntary commitment for the schizophrenic who killed the woman in Charlotte could be held accountable for their bad judgment.
Judges face almost no consequences for their decisions, and so they think it is right and proper that police should have qualified immunity from similar consequences.
That's not trouble, it's a strong selling point. No public official should be immune from accountability for their crimes. Transparency and accountability would solve a lot of problems. Any public official uncomfortable with the idea of not being able to commit crimes and civil rights violations with impunity isn't fit for the job they have.
There's an argument it might effect prosecutorial immunity, presuming someone was a stickler about consistency, but it's tough to say because the justifications are arguably based on a poor historical understanding of how prosecutors took up cases. (Historically prosecutors, even criminal prosecutors, were often private individuals paid by the local government to prosecute a case, or even prosecute a case entirely on their own volition. But today many jurists just assume the prosecutor has always and only been a distinct executive office, which if they're well read enough--but not too well read--might think sometimes had some quirks about who filled the office.)