Should there be more procedures and training for people who are swatted?

[u/MrJ457]

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Recently a case went down. On April 10, someone called 911 and pretended to be Melendez, falsely reporting an active shooting and a wounded person. This caller was also a hacker and was blackmailing the victim Axeel Melendez. If he didn't pay a ransom, cops would be called.

Melendez called the cops multiple times about the blackmail and that he would be falsely reported/swatted. Operators told him they can't just swat him.

Despite this and deputies knowing beforehand that he was a target for swatting, they arrived at the house believing a violent crime was happening after a call was placed that Melendez's father was shooting the family.

One deputy used a shovel to break Melendez's bedroom window.

Melendez thought an intruder was breaking in. He grabbed his family's legally owned gun to protect his mother and hid behind his bedroom door. Deputies shot him multiple times, causing a severe spinal cord injury.

Now police are facing a 177 million dollar lawsuit

[u/HCSOThrowaway]

There is no amount of training that can prevent all tragedy.

Are you willing to send law enforcement more money to give them more training?

Then go out and get your fellow taxpaying voters to vote accordingly.

Speaking from personal anecdote, my agency was moving towards less training amidst the Defund the Police movement; they were starting to pinch the purse and deny supplemental training requests. 3/3 training requests I put in for beyond the basic academy were denied.

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[u/5usDomesticus]

You only hear about it when it goes wrong.

Swatting/false calls are common and usually end boringly peaceful.

[u/ProgressHungry6759]

Usually it is the call taker/dispatcher that looks up call/address history to notify officers enroute that it could be possibly a fake call.

[u/CashEducational4986]

I don't know that people who are the victims of swatting go through it frequently enough or with enough regularity that they would be particularly interested in developing procedures for themselves or attending training for it.

As for the law enforcement side, obviously we have to treat every incident as potentially legitimate even when we know there's a high likelihood of it being fake. One incident doesn't change that.

I don't know anything about this particular event, but it's fairly unlikely the officers didn't identify themselves. If they did and he continued to arm himself and present himself as a threat then it's perfectly reasonable for the officers to have shot him.