Counting The Seconds Til The Lawsuit Is Filed
By Mitch Berg
LA Police say they’ll no longer immediately release addresses of people who’ve been “SWATted” – victimized by prank false alarms designed to bring out a maximum, intrusive police response:
The Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that they will no longer offer immediate information to the media on bogus 911 calls that target celebrity homes.
“We think that whoever is doing this is motivated by watching the police on TV and watching the helicopters come in, and we don’t want to allow that opportunity,” said Cmdr. Andrew Smith.
This is a good thing; it removes a motivation for these potentially dangerous pranks, and it might even potentially free up one of their overstretched supply of scarce reporters to cover the Gosnell trial!
Er, wait – no. They’ll be busy filing paperwork to find out who’s been SWATted:
Smith said the department will also stop broadcasting the “swatting” calls so news organizations can’t hear the location of the star’s home. The media will now have to file a public records request, which can take 10 days.
They know what matters, after all.
April 15th, 2013 at 1:56 pm
But Mitch, how will this effect the nation’s (based on the results of the 2012 Presidential election) main sources of news, TMZ and Comedy Central? If Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert aren’t allowed to give their funny takes (via the smirk and/or cocked eyebrow) on the days evenst, how is the average Democra, er, I mean consumer of news supposed to know what’s news?
April 15th, 2013 at 4:53 pm
This ban could just so happen to have the completely unintentional effect of keeping the media away from no-knock raids on non-celebrity homes as well.