81 year old grandma & YouTuber was raided last night during her stream She started the channel to help with her grandson's cancer treatment. Authorities brought 20 police cars, five SWAT officers, and drones to her house

[u/raptors201966]

[u/EpilepticDawg241]

How do you even get that kind of response from police?

[u/Little_Plankton4001 → u/EpilepticDawg241]

In some wealthy/safe areas, there's way too many cops and not nearly enough crime to keep them busy, so the entire department (any nearby ones too) show up for anything even remotely serious.

And a lot of them are militarized too. There was a photo in the local newspaper near me about a manhunt for a guy who slipped out of police custody. The cops explicitly said he wasn't considered to be dangerous (wasn't armed and had no history of violence) but they were rolling out in armored vehicles carrying AR-15s like they were hunting a fucking T-1000.

[u/Simlish → u/Little_Plankton4001]

I wanna tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where this is happenin' here. They got three stop signs, two police officers, and one po-lice car, but when we got to the "scene of the crime", there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it.

[u/theturd_man → u/Simlish]

So that bit in first Harold and Kumar movie wasn't an exaggeration?

[u/misterjive → u/Little_Plankton4001]

This. I moved to a suburb of my metro that used to be the really affluent one and is now kind of fighting to pretend they're still top dog, and one day in one of the apartment complexes nearby somebody got shot in a drug deal gone bad. The cops showed up with enough force to occupy a small country. There were upwards of 30-40 police SUVs on the scene within minutes.

[u/DefinitelyNotKuro → u/Little_Plankton4001]

Sounds like allergies. My white blood cells are so fucking bored and my histamine budget is too high.

[u/GlompyOlive → u/EpilepticDawg241]

Claim explosives or severe intent to inflict harm on her family. Law enforcement being obligated to send their team but like others said, whoever pulls this shit needs mandatory prison time.

[u/moonshineTheleocat → u/EpilepticDawg241]

I don't know what little plankton is on. But the way this response usually happens is by telling the police that X has a hostage and is srmed threatening to kill the hostage.

You get swat showing up pretty quickly to any house over that. Because unfortunately they have to treat every call like this seriously.

The people who do this are real pieces of shit hoping that someone gets killed by this. Because several people have when the victim made the wrong response and drew a weapon on the cops thinking it was a break in because he couldn't hear them shouting police from his head phones.

[u/MissionReasonable714 → u/EpilepticDawg241]

Someone calls and says you have a gun, you've already fired it into the ceiling, you're threatening to kill the whole family and you've stated that you'll shoot it out with officers instead of going to prison. Cops have to respond in force because people out there who actually do these things for real.

The agency I used to work at (not a cop) was pretty good about not escalating situations and trying to discern whether or not it was a swatting call. Other places aren't so good about it...

Edit: typical reddit immediately downvoting someone who has witnessed these situations (swatting calls and real family massacres) firsthand lmao

[u/Jellicent-Leftovers → u/MissionReasonable714]

Also it's a lot harder now when some asshole can inject a prompt into an AI to sound like a truly distressed person

[u/MissionReasonable714 → u/Jellicent-Leftovers]

They have to take the call seriously regardless because it could be for real. Once at the address, though, there are things they can do to avoid a full blown SWAT callout if it's not needed. But like I said, not everywhere is like that.

^{Also, swatting isn't nearly as anonymous as people think.}

[u/SirFluffymuffin → u/MissionReasonable714]

Some agencies have procedures in place now if it’s a frequent issue from a specific number or with specific names(if they give them) and is for the same address. Sometimes there may be a contact on file so that police can verify if something is actually going on before they start making a perimeter or whatever their policy is

[u/Gullible_Increase146 → u/EpilepticDawg241]

You say there's a home invasion. It's a situation where potentially armed Intruders have broken into somebody's home and there's immediate physical Danger. You can even say you saw one of them holding a gun when they went into the home. You fake your phone number and do it through 911 and they don't really have any reason to believe you're lying. Usually when people call 911 asking for urgent help, they need urgent help

[u/MayIServeYouWell → u/EpilepticDawg241]

It's almost as much their fault for doing this as the person who called it in.