The Last Poster Wins! [v23]

[Lychee]

What is SWAT ing? It's an acronym, right? I'm guessing it's an American thing?
Sounds pretty bad!

[HorusMyDude]

What is SWAT ing? It's an acronym, right? I'm guessing it's an American thing?
Sounds pretty bad!

Yeah, it's a thing where someone watching a stream will call the police on a streamer, who sends in SWAT to basically raid their house. Super dangerous and really not the nicest thing

[Neo Emolga]

What is SWAT ing? It's an acronym, right? I'm guessing it's an American thing?
Sounds pretty bad!

SWAT stands for Special Weapons And Tactics. In a nutshell, it's a more advanced and special police force usually sent to address highly dangerous hostage and terrorist situations. In cases like that, they'll break through windows, smash doors down, and come barging in with assault rifles and full riot gear in case they encounter heavy resistance and armed criminals that retaliate. These guys are highly trained to go in and secure a perimeter as quickly and as effectively as possible. You do not want to be on the receiving end of that.

SWATing someone is becoming a very nasty trend where if you really want to absolutely ruin someone's day and give them a serious scare (not to mention cause property damage), you make an anonymous call, claim some highly dangerous situation like a hostage crisis or bomb threat is going off at the address where your intended target is, and hang up. Currently, it's standard police protocol to take every claim called in seriously, so yeah, doing that will result in a bunch of highly armed and trained special police officers breaking their way in, holding the SWAT victim at gunpoint, and searching through the entire area to make sure beyond all reasonable doubt that there is no actual threat.

I remember watching a video of a guy who was simply streaming himself playing a game to a viewer audience, and some horrible excuse of a person SWATed him, resulting in a SWAT team breaking their way into every room, and then eventually into the room where he was on his computer, streaming the video. He was forced to put his hands up as the SWAT team searched the area and made sure there were no threats. All the while, they had several rifles pointed as his head while he had his face down on the desk as they searched him to make sure he wasn't carrying any weapons.

Thing is, the police won't reimburse the owner for property damage caused this way. The other thing is that it's HIGHLY dangerous. God forbid you suddenly make the wrong move in front of these guys and they interpret it as a potentially threatening response and open fire as a result. Meanwhile, it uses a lot of police resources that should be dedicated toward real crisis situations. And at the same time, too many false alarms like this results in guards being let down and that's also extremely dangerous.

Yeah, unfortunately this is the kind of world we live in where people do these things... :(

[Noblejanobii]

Yeah they pretty much explained it. You can do it to lesser extents too which is what I've seen other people do where they'll claim someone is being held hostage or something.

[Lychee]

Weird! idk if my country has a service like that. But hopefully theres less terrorism paranoia or less terrorism overall?
I can't imagine anyone who cares about you would make people break your home and break your stuff! But if you were worried about that, not letting her know your address would probably help?

Closest thing I've done/experienced is like, calling the cops on someone who is trying to die. Even then they seem to be open to chat and knock politely. Heavy scary stuff, police interventions!

[Chakramaster]

Yeah it's pretty awful that people do it. Some doing it live while someone is streaming on YouTube or Twitch. There's nothing they can even do to explain it live either. Other than just cooperate with them and go with them. It's just laughs for the one that calls it in on them.

So many others find other ways to do it too. It's pretty awful the way people find to use SWATTING and cause trouble.

[Noblejanobii]

Yeah I think if I remember correctly we actually don't need police SWAT units nearly as much as we used to so they get overused in order for the states to keep their SWAT funding. It's been a while since I studied that branch though.

[Bulbasaur]

I feel like (at least around here) the majority of police usually only make situations worse. I despise almost all police. Not that there aren't good ones, but...

[Neo Emolga]

I feel like (at least around here) the majority of police usually only make situations worse. I despise almost all police. Not that there aren't good ones, but...

There's good cops and bad ones. Thing is most of the time the media puts the bad ones in the spotlight, so people tend to think those are the only types that exist.

[Bulbasaur]

There's good cops and bad ones. Thing is most of the time the media puts the bad ones in the spotlight, so people tend to think those are the only types that exist.

Honestly, I'm basing it off more than experience. Obviously the media is gonna portray what gets people revved up. I just personally have had many poor experiences with them.

I did have one experience with an officer where they were reasonable and fair, but that's it.