Multiple Michigan Swatting Events Today

If the call isn't from the location of the alleged crime, the police should meet the complainant in person before taking much other action.

Also in case of an actual school shooting, there will be many calls to 911 not just one.

I can think of at least 2 incidents within the past month where our dispatch center received a call from out of state regarding suicide attempts, both were true, one of them died. No one could have possibly met the complaintant, and calling their local law enforcement to meet them to see if the call was 'true' would have probably resulted in 2 of 2 being dead.

You don't sit around waiting for verification. You send units and you send them NOW, regardless of where the call came from.

Although, it doesn't matter. If you don't send and it's real, you end up on the news, if you roll every unit and it's fake, you get complaints for the way you did that.
 
They wouldn't send the SWAT team to a suicide attempt though. Traditional swatting involves making up a story that hostages are being held, other people have already been killed, etc.
 
If the call isn't from the location of the alleged crime, the police should meet the complainant in person before taking much other action.

Also in case of an actual school shooting, there will be many calls to 911 not just one.
What do you mean a call from the location? How quickly can police triangulate the position of a cell phone call?
 
Definitely police have overreacted on some - 100% suspicious calls. Reason, often times is not straight duty or heroism. Sadly because what I call "we have the equipment". Many police forces are indeed overzealous. Give me a balanced sheriff any day of the week. They should never roll in blazing on a single call. Never.

That said , even in the olden days of 1960's police asked who is calling, I know I know - first step. But not something to be glossed over.

Too assume police are currently doing nothing about swatting seems a leap. I can tell you some are, and most all will send in early quick response teams

It's never going to be perfect.
 
Who says about sitting around and doing nothing? So I take it that the action law enforcement took and it’s severity was perfectly adequate? Nothing to see here, don’t question anything right?

How hard would it be to send a patrol there and call the schools. Don’t many of them have a police officer on site anyway. Can’t they be used to verify the situation? In the meantime get the swat team ready.

I guess not, sending in the full force is the only sensible action from the sounds of it. Police is behaving more and more like a trained dog.
 
"...more like trained dogs..."
I'd say 'military' instead.
We can go over the policy on different levels of force, who provides them, etc. (Guard, cops, etc, etc)
What's important to me is costs and community reaction. Sending in the marines seems wrong (costs
and community reaction) but what is between the cop U know as resident, neighbor, etc and... that?
 
Funny how nobody talks about steps the police should take in recognizing these false calls. Nope, send in fully geared hitman and terrorize the neighborhood and innocent citizens. The people gotta stay scared, no?
Lots of after action reviews of active shooter incidents all come to the same outcome, an active shooter situation does not improve with time, actually the opposite.

The center of gravity in response to an active shooter is time.
 
Lots of after action reviews of active shooter incidents all come to the same outcome, an active shooter situation does not improve with time, actually the opposite.

The center of gravity in response to an active shooter is time.
You mean like in Texas where the school was surrounded by cops an no one went in, not even the swat team? How much time did they give that young man? He had all the time in the world. Some parents snack in and got their kids out, rightfully so, as law enforcement was not there to serve and protect it seamed, all 376 of them. Yup, 376 officers where there, pretty much a small army and all they did was prevent help.

Wasn’t there a Supreme Court ruling that cops have absolutely no obligation to protect citizens 🤔


https://www.texastribune.org/2022/07/17/law-enforcement-failure-uvalde-shooting-investigation/
 
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You mean like in Texas where the school was surrounded by cops an no one went in, not even the swat team? How much time did they give that young man? He had all the time in the world. Some parents snack in and got their kids out, rightfully so, as law enforcement was not there to serve and protect it seamed.

Wasn’t there a Supreme Court ruling that cops have absolutely no obligation to protect citizens 🤔
I think case study will likely show that the leader on the scene failed to make a decision. I don't know that personally, but from what I have read all points to the officer in charge failing to make a decision.

"
Wasn’t there a Supreme Court ruling that cops have absolutely no obligation to protect citizens
I am not aware of a supreme court decision of that nature. Here is an interesting case study, where a state trooper with sniper qualification was called to a scene to support local law enforcement, shot a pistol out of the hand of a subject (fugitive) about to commit suicide. The trooper was officially/ formally reprimanded for his actions.

 
I can speak with some experience to some of these questions.

First - LEOs are no different, nor are their agencies, from the overall general public; we are all a bit different from each other. Different jurisdictions are reflections of their different locales, in nearly every aspect. Therefore, my answers are not 100% attributable to all agencies; my comments are generalizations and there will always be some example that does not fit my answers. That said, I'll continue:

- Training and responses: most all agencies have active shooter training now days. Typically combined with other agencies in the general area. Training is practice, and "practice makes perfect". Obviously, no one person and no one agency is perfect! There are examples of failures (such as the recent one in TX), and there are also examples of success. Each agency will have their own protocols and SOPs; most will be similar across the spectrum, but probably never identical.

- Dispatching: the job these folks have is very different, but can be just as stressful, as LEOs in the field. They, too, get training nowdays for all manner of calls; domestic violence, missing persons, active shooter, natural disaster, etc. The "investigation" they do is based on getting particulars about the call, but they do not discern the nature of the call (real or fake). Dispatchers collect and disseminate info; they do not investigate the nature of sincerity or credibility; that's not their job. Typically, calls of this nature (active shooter) are going to involve not just the LEOs, but also fire and medical responses, initiating lockdown protocols, informing high-level agency management, etc. They don't have time to discern the truthfulness of call; they are the first aspect of the overall response - it's their job to kick all the legs of response into action, not just the cops.

- Location personnel: They also may get training, depending upon local policy. The quality of event response vary widely not only because of policy, but also personnel. Think about any typical school ... there's always "new" personel somewhere; a teacher or two, an office person, a janitor, even substitute teachers and temp hires for kitchen staff, etc. Just because the school has a written policy, it is HIGHLY likely that some of these "new" folks don't know the protocol because they never participated in the training. Typically, even if the school district does have active shooter training, it only happens once a year. If you were hired after that, or were sick that day, or are a substitute teacher, you probably didn't get that training.


I recall, early in my career, we had an active bank alarm call. (NOTE - it was an accidental alarm; no actual robbery). I was the first to respond; I was very close when the call came out. Our department had training in how all the local banks were to respond; there were code phrases and words to be used, protocol to be followed on scene, etc. When I arrived, I asked dispatch to call the bank back, give the pass code phrase, and get the word response; they called and the bank answered with the wrong response. Because it was a false alarm, they were supposed to give a particular phone code, and then walk outside with a colored 12" x 12" card in hand held above the head. None of that happened, so when the bank person walked outside the door, I had to cuff that person and gave the on-scene call that things were not OK. (despite the fact that everything was truly OK, they weren't OK in terms of protocol). So my fellow officers came screaming up in their cars, rifles were out everywhere, customers were panicing, and it was a mess. In debriefing, it was agreed that it was the bank's fault and not mine; new bank employees didn't know the process, and being a Saturday, it was a skeleton crew in the bank. It could have ended much worse than us pushing people down on the ground and cuffing them all.

All it takes is a single failure in the response system and the whole thing begins to break down. Be it the responders or the victims, they are affected by these general failures:
- lack of policy
- poor policy
- lack of training
- poor training
- lack of response
- poor response
These all even have many aspects within each element.

My point? There is only 1 way any emergency response goes right, and about 100 ways it can go wrong. It's super easy to play Monday-morning quarterback. Some response failures are easy to identify, some are not. Some failures will never be completely purged, because human beings are not always predictable or accountable. We can always TRY to be perfect, but it's not reasonable to think we will be.


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As to the responsibility of LEOs (or really, the "system" as a whole) ...
SCOTUS has not once, but twice clearly determined that agencies have no particular duty to protect any one individual.
See the following:

- Warren vs District of Columbia
- Gonzales vs Castle Rock, CO

It comes down to this concept ... There is nothing in the Constitution that ascribes any manner of "safety" being assured to a person. There are concepts of Life, Libery and Pursuit of Happiness, but not one mention that your "safety" is going to be a gauranteed condition in the US. Despite common belief to the contrary, it's not the goverment's role to protect an individual. Regardless of what many people think, cops do not have a duty to protect you from life's events. They can attempt to do so, but they are not obligated to do so, so any perceived or real failure to protect is a matter of bad luck and not reasonable expectation. Communities who want their safety "assured" are going to be disappointed. Communities can certainly do things to provide for "better" levels of protection; stacking the odds in their favor by having more emergency services, better funding, better training, etc. But that in no way obligates goverment at any level to gaurantee your safety. The only time a goverment entity has a duty to your safety is when you are in custody; because once in custody, you cannot reasonably protect yourself as you are limited/restricted in your ability to care for yourself or make decisions. Once in custody, the goverment does have some obligations. But not for the general public; there is no duty to protect. So says SCOTUS.
 
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The likelihood that school staff would actually follow the training (assuming they even got it) is slim to none. There are some brave exceptions but more often than not its a bunch of people with their hair on fire. They simply arent built for that.
 
There is no Constitutional requirement for any government to collect and dispose of garbage from around the city, but if a local government does democratically agree to spend tax money to hire people to do that, and they fail or refuse to do the job, they will be fired.

The public expectation is that police have standing orders to go after and stop violent criminals, even if that entails a considerable risk to their own safety. When someone is in the next room actively shooting kids, there is little reason to consult a chain of command.
 
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They are not obligated to help, but sure did handcuff parent that wanted to go in themselves for “interfering”. In Texas there was nothing to interfere with, they were all standing doing nothing.

So they do not have to help, but have the power to take away your own ability to help. I would compare it to some other regimes, but don’t want my post deleted again.
 
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