As much as I dislike police and as weird as I find the idea that police in the US kicks down doors without checking whether the danger even exists — the officer on the ground might not be the one to make that judgement.
Sure, if it happens 47 times I would expect them to add a big red flag aka "first check if danger is present" to the dispatch adress after the second false alarm — and one can blame dispatch for that. But if you are a different officer each time and you are told there is a sociopathic murder taking place in that house that you have never seen, how is it your fault to assume dispatch did their job here.
This is a systemic issue:
- anonymous contacts of emergency services is possible, so swatters abuse this without having to fear immidiate punishment
- dispatch aparantly has no mechanism of linking knowledge between different calls. E.g. if this is the 3rd time we are dispatching swat to that address they should tell the officers that it might be a fake, or don't even dispatch officers at all. However attackers could use this to then go there for real and punch/kill our victim without having to fear police being called there
- police officers don't do a good job at the assessment of the situation before they kick doors in. This isn't always an easy call to make
Ok yeah people have tried several times to unsuccessfully SWAT sitting members of Congress. Like clearly there is a list of addresses like "this address belongs to a Congress person, proceed with caution." Dispatch should add OP to this list.
However, it is the job of the officer to investigate. I doubt it is the officer's first day in life in the United States. They know how things work here.
Yeah, cities hate paying out for police officers who get hurt and disabled on the job and have decided it is cheaper to pay for "bad apples" than to have a police force that shows humanity. This we have this situation where police officers shoot to preserve their own life just in case the suspect is armed (a valid assumption when getting hold of a gun is easy).
> police officers don't do a good job at the assessment of the situation before they kick doors in. This isn't always an easy call to make
The officer on the ground is indeed the one making a determination to kick the door in over nothing but a phone call. I don't see why they shouldn't be held accountable.
I'm tired of all the QI and associated bullshit. Violating someone's constitutional rights should come with consequences.
A funny thing to note, QI only applies to civil lawsuits. So, it only applies in circumstances where they've already decided there is no criminal activity. So a secondary issue here is the legal system has decided that pretty much anything a cop does is legal.
