“This SWAT gag is, like, hilarious, Kendall!
“Totally, Kylie. Hey, look! They just shot Khloe!”
“Awesome!!!”
“Swatting,” the ultra-vile and dangerous “joke” in which someone falsely calls down a SWAT team on a household that is neither in peril or threatening it, is seriously and criminally wrong—even when the victims are the almost as vile, if not necessarily dangerous, Kardashian family. The victims of a “swatting prank” yesterday, the rich, spoiled, vulgar and useless reality show family immediately reminded us of why someone might be moved to swat them by making a big joke out of the whole thing, or at least the younger generation of Kardashians did. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait until sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner are posing in obscenely tacky and expensive boob-exposing outfits while having inane and semi-grammatical conversations on their own E! reality show. SWAT me now, Lord!
But let’s not talk about how unethical swatting is, which is obvious, or how depressing the celebrity of the Kardashians is, which is makes me want to stick my head in a fryer. Let’s muse on what will happen if and when one of these swatting incidents leads to an exchange of gunfire—perhaps because a Second Amendment enthusiast is convinced that President Obama is making his big move to enslave the populace, and by God, he’s not going down without a fight. Let’s also muse on what will happen if that exchange of gunfire results in the deaths of one or more children. Just to make sure something happens in our hypothetical, let’s stipulate that the dead children are white, cute, and recently recorded a tear-inducing video urging world peace and racial harmony.
My God, children! Since we now know that saving even one child’s life is worth just about anything (according to President Obama), will there be consensus by the media, gun-haters, concerned parents, and libertarians who view the police as inherently evil that SWAT teams are too dangerous, and that anyone who supports them doesn’t care about kids? Will there be calls for the expenditure of billions to give police the ability to trace anonymous calls? Will anyone calling in an SWAT-worthy emergency now be required to give a name, address, and verifiable Social Security number before the rapid response team will be allowed to act? If the bullet that kills the child comes from the home-owner, will that be sufficient to turn everyone into Andrew Cuomo, and spur gun confiscation efforts? If the bullet that kills the child comes from the police, will that convince legislators that SWAT teams are just too dangerous to have around, because they get kids killed, and their valuable functions in law enforcement just aren’t worth it?
Just what hysterical, knee-jerk, emotional, irresponsible policy and legal measures will be demanded by activists and exploited by politicians to try to do what I call “the expedient impossible,” and make sure that what already happened doesn’t happen, when it already did?
In a mature, responsible, ethically-functioning society led by rational adults, we would prioritize the problem of swatting, which is indeed dangerous, and devise reasonable measures to deal with it before a random tragedy warps our process, discourse, and policy-making.
But we don’t have that.
Do we?
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Graphic: Imobsessed
Ethics Alarms 
You can’t beat children as mannequins around your political display. As for the Kardashian girls; can anyone truly classify them as mature? Or their fans, for that matter? Maybe Cuomo should hire them.
Some people in the 1% deserve to be vilified by Occupy Wall Street; the Kardashians are among them.
Which level of government is employing said hypothetical SWAT? Which region of the nation? That may impact the national narrative a bit. The media certainly reported on Waco and on Ruby Ridge, but were relatively soft on the federal actions involved. It also helps that those had the guise of a constituted authority response.
In general, I’d feel that the societal response to your hypothetical would be significantly against the swatters, a large bit against the ‘gun nut’ and from isolated pockets against the SWAT team itself.
Such incidents, even without the hypothetical would betray that SWAT teams, as employed, possibly are set loose without a proper gathering of pertinent information. For lack of better terminology, battles are begun with your lowest form of contact appropriate for the intelligence gathered. Anonymous calls certainly don’t suffice for reliable information justifying immediate SWAT deployment. A simple reconnaissance would be necessary to confrm or deny SWAT necessity.
I think the rational response to your hypothetical, would be for agencies to amend their escalation of force and engagement criteria SOPs.
On the flip side, appropriate measures would need be taken to ensure proper punishment is applied to people calling in false reports. Can’t be a simple slap on the wrist. But something that sucks seriously enough that it dissuades the juvenile amongst us who find such pranks amusing.
There will be a fringe of society that hates all authority and will blame SWAT in its entirety. And another fringe that will blame the ‘gun nut’ entirely. Rational people will seek ways to dissuade the ‘swatters’ actions.
It boils down to the agenda of the media. I’d imagine with our current media, SWAT will be completely forgiven, a call for more gun restrictions will occur and a call for more cumbersome anonymous reporting will occur as well.
I know several of the political bloggers who have been SWATted in the last couple of years.
And the idea of “if you had a TV remote in your hand in a dark house, they could shoot you.” is a common one.
Your statement about punishing those who make the calls is an important one – to date, I don’t believe any have been caught.
When someone calls in an says there is a hostage crisis, you don’t want to wait before acting. However, once the team is alerted, perhaps the police should try to get some more info. If the police would start considering themselves part of the community and not separate and above it, they might consider calling the neighbors. Perhaps a less aggressive first response should be in order as well. Send one unit in first, with the rest waiting nearby. Evaluate the situation.
Now, the proliferation of SWAT teams is another thing. The frequency of incidents requiring “SWAT”-level force is incredibly small. This can easily lead to an overzealousness (Finally, we get to do this!). Most police forces have a SWAT team is because it is cool, the government I funding them, and the scaredy-pants people think they have to have one because LA does. I have lived in this town for over a dozen year. The number of incidents requiring a SWAT team in that time has been 0…for the entire county…and all counties bordering this county. Despite this, the described area maintains no less than 7 SWAT teams. This is a huge waste of time and money. Sure, there could come a time where a SWAT team is needed, but how many needs are going unmet to fund these teams that are largely ego exercises?
As for the “gun nut”, let’s go over a scenario that these police tactics make possible. Let’s say a law-abiding ‘gun nut’ is awakened by the sound of people trying to break down his door. He grabs a loaded rifle and heads downstairs to see armed, screaming men with flashlight entering his house and pointing guns at them. He shoots one of them, then another. At some point, he realizes they are the police. At that point, his options are to stop shooting and be killed by the police (who will then cover up the fact the this is all a tragic mistake), or kill the rest of the police officers. If he manages to kill all of them, he is legally in the clear in my state. If they broke into the wrong houses or it was a hoax call, the police are at fault, assuming he can survive long enough to make his case. Is this really the way things should be operating?
The increasing level of police “paramilitarizatiion” under federal auspices and funding has become a source of unease to many. That occurrance you mentioned, Michael, has essentially happened. It will again. In this country, we’ve largely followed the British tradition of elected sheriffs and a popular posse of volunteers as the core of our law enforcement effort. The continental European system (of a more authoritarian based society) consisted of (again) a paramilitary national establishment; known variously as gendarmes, carabinieri and milice.
We’ve been steadily devolving to a “gendarmerie” in this country, as I see it. Instead of an elected county sheriff, we have mainly to deal with appointed police chiefs who are not directly accountable. (Ironically, the metro cop concept came about in London!) Then there are increasing numbers of federal enforcement agencies (hundreds now!) that are increasingly being trained and equipped for literal combat. And some wonder why “assault weapons” are selling like hot cakes among the citizenry!
In my own city, there was a botched raid (not a deliberate SWATting as far as I know but a wrong-house raid) that severely injured a small child (I don’t think she died, but she may have eventually) from a flash-bang thrown through a window that landed on her. Of course, this was a low-income black family rather than a cute white kid, so the tempest was barely teapot-sized.