Lots of people sent me the story about the teenager in Orange County, California who hacked into the local police department’s 911 computer and dispatched a SWAT team to scare the hell out of a couple and their kids.

I didn’t comment because I didn’t really think it was a case of improper use of a SWAT team. The kid reported a fake homicide. I suppose you could criticize the police department for having a hackable computer system, but just about every computer system is vulnerable to renegade teenage hackers.

But Jonathan Blanks did find a quote from the local DA that’s pretty interesting:

…the SWAT team saw a man armed with a weapon at the house where they believed a murder had occurred. We’re thankful no one was killed. It easily could have escalated to that point.”

True. And a fine reason why we shouldn’t send SWAT teams to apprehend people suspected of nonviolent crimes.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 8:34 pm by admin and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.