They call, gunman sees caller ID, freaks out, shoots everyone.
If they don’t, gunman lies. They send a cop over. Cop get shot, gunman freaks shoots everyone.
I think the more pressing issues are:
Demilitarize the police. Sure they can have body armor. They don’t need fucking assault weapons and armored personnel carriers though.
Criminalize swatting. We already know that since the Dubya era that federal US has had their hands on all communication in the US. Find out who the swatter is and prosecute the twatwaffle
I think if you got a jumpy gunman scenario they’re going to start shooting when the police come roaring into the neighbourhood. A call might lead to a hostage negotiation scenario which will more likely to have people surviving than a gunfight between a jumpy gunman and even more jumpy cops with some hostages in the room.
Sure there are scenarios where a call back probably wouldn’t be a good idea, but the 9/11 operator has a description of the scenario, and I’d think for most of them a call back would be fine.
But surely there’s a practical middle between “shoot first, ask later” and “sit and wait an hour”
“Okay everyone gather up, the plan is we wait around for 30 minutes and start shooting our guns into the air.”
Or how about make a call to the registered number at the address the threat was called in at… then send a car over to verify.
You can literally de- escalate in 60 seconds and verify in as much time as it takes to send swat in to fuck shit up.
But… they have all that swat gear and they want to use it! And fucking shit up is about 90% of policing nowadays.
They call, gunman sees caller ID, freaks out, shoots everyone.
If they don’t, gunman lies. They send a cop over. Cop get shot, gunman freaks shoots everyone.
I think the more pressing issues are:
I think if you got a jumpy gunman scenario they’re going to start shooting when the police come roaring into the neighbourhood. A call might lead to a hostage negotiation scenario which will more likely to have people surviving than a gunfight between a jumpy gunman and even more jumpy cops with some hostages in the room.
Sure there are scenarios where a call back probably wouldn’t be a good idea, but the 9/11 operator has a description of the scenario, and I’d think for most of them a call back would be fine.