Very odd to me how so many comments here seem to be blaming the police for swatting and forgetting that there is some random evil asshole attempting to orchestrate violence against another person.
Famously, the collapse of Kiwifarms was triggered by them carrying on their usual campaign of swatting against Keffals when she had gone to an address in Northern Ireland, whose police are much more savvy to threats.
You really don't hear about swatting being a thing in the UK because the police don't have nearly the same level of license and impunity for violence. So everytime there is such an incident it's national news.
Not really, no. People do sometimes call in bomb threats to skip school though.
The by far most common crime involving cops and phones is to call elderly people pretending to be cops to extort money. They usually spoof the caller ID of the local PD or even the emergency number itself in some cases.
Swatting requires more than someone wanting to orchestrate violence - swatting absolutely requires police to participate actively in the swatting. The person wouldn't be able to do this sort of violence if the police refused.
