>They’re not irrelevant to the situation. In fact, they’re the people who have malicious intent.
Let's put it this way, they're not irrelevant to the particular situation, but they're irrelevant to the real problem, which is the "open for abuse" system of SWATing, and the problematic management it gets from the police.
Fixing that helps society at large (plus helps this guy).
Whereas getting those guys just solves this particular guy's problem.
I just want to highlight: we really need to do both.
Police response to these types of calls is faulty. The Milwaukee police are definitely particularly deficient in continuing to fall for this and not taking corrective action.
But there's myriad ways to harass people through proxies-- SWATing is only one. We need to be put in the effort to catch and punish people engaging in these stalking and harassing behaviors, because we'll never harden our society against all of these.
We have laws in place for this type of thing, but that's not to say that law enforcement generally cares.
It would take _years_ to get the police to put their house in order. So why not go after swatters as well in the meantime? Most swatters are repeat offenders.
And once the police have cleaned up their act… do you believe former swatters will quietly become law abiding citizens? I don’t. They’ll find some other way to ruin people’s lives, hopefully a less dangerous way.
We could also ask, why do swatters swat in the first place anyway? How could we prevent them from wanting to do such a thing?
Let's put it this way, they're not irrelevant to the particular situation, but they're irrelevant to the real problem, which is the "open for abuse" system of SWATing, and the problematic management it gets from the police.
Fixing that helps society at large (plus helps this guy).
Whereas getting those guys just solves this particular guy's problem.