Systems - both our healthcare and policing

With cancer even with places that do have socialized medical care you might still need a lot of money.

Cancer sucks.

Damn, it did make the news after all.

Grandma could have died...

She couldve died, they frequently shoot innocent people and animals during these raids

Swatting is fucked up

Why do you think that? Do they mention some kind of payout in the video? It sounds unlikely to me.

It's really easy to say that when you're not the one calling the police because there's an actual madman with a gun holding your loved one hostage. I think it's a tough situation that, really, has more to do with the overall culture in America than how emergency services respond to particular calls. If the overall level of potential danger was lower due to cultural reasons, I think then we could talk.

Showing up with 20 swat cars doesn't mean that there's 20 swat cars blindly shooting at the house.

There's no harm on just showing up. As long as they verify the claims before acting on them, I don't see the issue.

The only issue is that it is expensive and may break a door or something. Which is why the caller should be tracked, and made to pay for all of it.

If you don't have someone authorized by the state to enforce laws, you're still going to get people enforcing "laws", it's just going to be vigilantes, people with grudges, etc. Just look how frequently you see incidents of road rage. Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.

Take all those incidents of people calling the cops on black men having a picnic or taking their dogs for a walk. If there were no cops, do you think these white "Karens" would just leave the black men alone? Or do you think they'd get together and lynch them?

I think the US needs to scale its policing way back. It needs mental health specialists to respond to certain kinds of calls. The person who responds to a report of a stolen bike probably shouldn't have a gun. But, at some point you are going to need people who will use physical force to enforce the law. Those people should be heavily supervised by a truly independent body. But, they still need to exist in some form.

Probably shoot you and the aggressor since keeping themselves safe is the priority in their training.

Cant believe it got so normalized. What a country.

Just missing the cyber punk.

Why don't the king's guards attack the king?

The police know their job is to enforce the law, but they also know who gets a free pass... or at least who gets a lot more leeway than other people. At a minimum it changes "shoot first and ask questions later" into "ask questions then maybe shoot".

Because the police are mercenaries, not wild animals. They generally don't bite the hand that feeds. Besides, they still have 99% of the population to target.

Because America worships pedophilia and psychopathy.

someone called the swat team on her?

some anonymous tip

That's not what happened. Someone called 911 and described a situation that involved a shooter who has already shot someone. The 911 operator then had to relay that to the responders (in this case, LE). The responding officers might have only received an address, that there was a barricaded active shooter, and that there was at least one shooting victim.

It's not up to the police to debate the veracity of a report. Imagine being in a hostage situation, you manage to call 911, and they respond with "sounds fake, not coming".

Because they have the equipment and are always looking for an excuse to use it to justify the cost and training. And because the more they use it, the sooner they can get more of it.

It makes zero sense to a normal person, nor does their justification for needing the equipment in the first place, but once they have it they'll use it any chance they get.

Ever seen Stripes, the '80s action comedy film with Bill Murray and other notables?

There's a scene in it that I think of every time this kind of story crops up, where you have over-equipped and under-educated people who are trained to think that everyone's the enemy, and so prioritise their blood thirst and fear over everything else:

"All I know is I finally get to kill somebody!"

Their actions aren't about right/wrong or just/unjust, but that they were let off the leash to do what they have been conditioned to do.

So you get people calling in hoaxes to police forces who send militarised forces to raid grannies, young children, whomever. It's about the drama and lulz. Objectively horrifying.

The US has lived in a state where any measure to squash terrorism would never be enough, for a long time. All you have to know is an address and say to the police that you heard a group of Arab looking middle aged men speaking of blowing up a place and a small army would be raised ready raze that domicile to the ground if necessary.

That's what happens when a group of people is armed beyond reason and in constant paranoia.

It's America, just say a black man has a gun and they send a batallion.

There is an enormous difference between the conduct of police officers between the US and Europe. Again, it mostly comes down to the public's access to firearms, but the quality of training, institutionalized prejudices, and corrective actions (or the absence of those things) are also significant factors.

The US is not a punching bag. It's receiving fair criticism and experiencing repercussions for decades of failure to improve public safety, and using both legal mechanisms and populist rhetoric to sanctify gun violence and the persecution of vulnerable groups, leading to a deeply divided, damn near tribal society (Us against Them), and the rise of the American Gestapo under the false banner of immigration control. Be patriotic, absolutely. But patriotism without awareness and due criticism is nothing more than zealotry.