• w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
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    3 hours ago

    Info about Grandma Crackers’ fundraisers for her grandson’s cancer treatment and Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

    https://thegrandmafund.com/

    They also created a crypto token where the fees go to the previously mentioned fundraisers.

  • 87Six@lemmy.zip
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    5 hours ago

    How the fuck is swatting even a thing?

    Can just anyone call the police, yell “BOMB AT X ADDRESS!” and they just show up, tear down doors and throw you to the ground???

    All, without repercussions???

    • FUCKING_CUNO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 hours ago

      Not only without repercussions, but without reparations. Anything destroyed or damaged is on the owner to replace/fix, including the pile of splinters formerly known as your front door

    • pound_heap@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 hours ago

      In my state there is a law that makes false call to 911 a criminal offense. If someone says “there is a bomb” on such call, that makes it more serious offence because this will cause public alarm. If the person making such call is stupid enough to do it from their phone, they will likely be identified and prosecuted. And people doing stupid things tend to be that stupid.

      I’m not sure about damages caused by the raid, though. SWAT doesn’t know if the threat is real or not, so they can’t be held liable. Probably the victim can sue the caller, if they’ve been found…

    • III@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      What else are they going to do with all of that excessive money and time…and desire to shoot people?

  • Guy Ingonito@reddthat.com
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    7 hours ago

    Reminder that SWAT was created in response to the black panthers. It’s a Jim Crow tool for dealing with uppity blacks that know their rights.

    • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
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      3 hours ago

      It doesn’t say. I did find another article that says it’s for her grandson’s cancer treatment so it might be an ongoing thing.

      EDIT: I found this. Looks like she also donates money to Phoenix Children’s Hospital

      https://thegrandmafund.com/

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Just here to point out that it’s not normal for a military response to some rando calling in a hit on someone’s house.

    A normal response is a check by a single police car with two officers. One to knock on the door and ask questions. The other to remain with the vehicle to call in any issues.

    This is a police state.

    • modus@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      They probably reported to the operator an excess of melanin at the residence.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      It really depends on what the call in was.

      If someone says there’s an active threat and their life is in danger, sending 1 car would would be gross negligence and a danger to the officers.

      Now, this call, seems excessive. I dont know what would warrant that response even if it was an active threat.

  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Another side benefit to The Drug War, the gift that keeps on giving.

    Hundreds of thousands of people are sitting in jails and prisons right now for using. Over three hundred thousand on any given day.

    https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/pie2026_drugs.html

    This holdover from the Nixon era gets a little worse every year. Why do we have TWENTY cars available for any random prank caller?

    Are we safe yet?

    • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      5 hours ago

      Don’t you feel fine having what is essentially a para military forced within the USA whose intention is to protect property and not people at all? I know I sure as shit don’t.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    Takes a special kind of asshole to swat a little old lady for trying to host a wholesome gaming stream for a good cause.

    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      The fact that swating still happens just proves how much of a joke policing is in general. The fact that you can get a bunch of gun-wielding adrenaline junkies to show up somewhere, frothing at the mouth for violence, in the most spurious of ways is a damning indictment for the whole institution.

        • merc@sh.itjust.works
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          7 hours ago

          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.

          • ∟⊔⊤∦∣≶@lemmy.nz
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            20 minutes ago

            Yeah for people downvoting this, cops being a problem is largely an American thing. In many other places around the world they are actually beneficial.

          • 7101334@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.

            No, cops exist to protect capital.

            This is just one example too, they’ve issued multiple similar rulings. Also, uh, see: Uvalde.

            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?

            …you think cops keep black people safe? Are you being remotely serious here?

          • binux@sh.itjust.works
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            6 hours ago

            Yeah, this is what a lot of people fail to take into account when it comes to the purpose of policing in society. There’s obviously a lot of inherent problems with the way the police are structured in many countries as a whole, but to believe that we can just make do without something like them altogether is pretty shortsighted to say the least. I think that prevents a lot of otherwise sympathetic people from taking the backlash against police institutions seriously.

        • 1984@lemmy.today
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          8 hours ago

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

    • But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      This keeps the military spending going. You sell last years models to the cops and you can use taxpayer money to buy new toys while people starve

  • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
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    12 hours ago

    Kudos to granny for being so positive about it and acknowledging that the cops have to follow up on the calls they receive, but if some anonymous tipster can bring down a SWAT team on some grandma’s house without any kind of check being triggered, that might indicate that there are some problems about how these issues are being handled. Other people may get out of this with much worse than a funny story to tell when two dozen cops decide to visit their house at night.

  • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works
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    13 hours ago

    And these police organisations keep spouting “but we need more funds, to protect the community”

    No, you fucking dont, you’re wasting your resources by attempting to uphold your strict quotas rather than actually serve and protect the community.

  • daggermoon@piefed.world
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    17 hours ago

    This happens frequently enough where you’d think there would be a system in place to prevent this type of abuse.

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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      16 hours ago

      Genuinely hard to do. Even if we ignore the problem of guns in the US (this also happens in the europe, for example).

      Emergency services kind of have to assume every call is real and act accordingly. In hostage and shooting situations there’s not really much time to debate the validity of the case, because if they delay and it was a real situation, they now are responsible for potentially more victims.

      The only real solution is that the forces need to arrive with the potential that it’s a fake call. But that’s easier said than done

      Oh, and prosecute the hell out of the callers. Which is not always possible, depending how energy they put into making the call anonymous

      • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com
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        6 hours ago

        they now are responsible for potentially more victims.

        No they are not. Multiple court cases have exonerated police for failing to respond or not responding quickly enough. See: Uvalde (among many others).

        They are trying to play it both ways: not responsible but also must respond in the most over-the-top aggressive manner possible.

              • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com
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                1 minute ago

                This story is about the U.S. and very distinct aspects of our society (notably our healthcare system and our policing), hence the context of my comment is about the U.S.

                Grandmothers in other nations would not have to live stream Minecraft to raise money for their grandchild’s cancer treatment.

    • iamthetot@piefed.ca
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      14 hours ago

      It’s the ol’ “boy who cried wolf” situation. You probably don’t want public services like police and firefighters deciding which calls seem real or not.

      • Canaconda@lemmy.ca
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        13 hours ago

        K but there has to be some happy medium between 20 swat cars and showing up 2 hours after the pizza driver.

        • iamthetot@piefed.ca
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          12 hours ago

          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.

        • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          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.