I think there's enough blame to go around: 1) police send an entire SWAT team because of ONE anonymous phone call, even though they should know by now that people abuse that ability 2) the gamer guy who made the phone call.
Kind of reminds me of bomb threats -- how many people who actually place bombs make a phone call first? It's almost like if a bomb threat is called in, you can be sure there's no bomb. I remember my high school years ago kept getting bomb call threats, and eventually started ignoring them, figuring it was a student making the calls.
I think the IRA usually warned of a bomb a few minutes before it going off, so that it would cause a lot of inconvenience, a lot of material damage and relatively little human casualties.
I thought it was interesting to find the information via a 20 year old online newspaper article, instead of a link to Wikipedia or some more recent rehash of the information presented in the article.
That line of thinking in regards to bomb threats is dangerously wrong. Politically motivated bombers often make warning calls to spare innocent people. Today it may seem legitimate bomb threats are rare but this was certainly not the case in the late 60's and early 70's in the US.
From the memoirs of Richard Nixon. "From January 1969 through April 1970 there were, by conservative count over 40,000 bombings, attempted bombings and bombs threats-an average of over eighty a day. Over $21 million in property was destroyed. Forty-three people were killed. Of those 40,000 incident, 64 percent were by bombers whose identity and motive were unknown."
> I think there's enough blame to go around: 1) police send an entire SWAT team because of ONE anonymous phone call, even though they should know by now that people abuse that ability 2) the gamer guy who made the phone call.
The police react to the incentives we create for them. How many articles did you read in the 1990s flipping out because police didn't react to some tip. How much "the police should've known about the 9/11 bombers all along!" In contrast, nobody will remember this accidental shooting.
Kind of reminds me of bomb threats -- how many people who actually place bombs make a phone call first? It's almost like if a bomb threat is called in, you can be sure there's no bomb. I remember my high school years ago kept getting bomb call threats, and eventually started ignoring them, figuring it was a student making the calls.