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Swatting, or the act of deceiving an emergency service into sending a police response team to another person's address in the hope that harm comes to them by police violence. This is relatively frequent in the US (1,000/year in 2019), and occurs in Canada (see below). I am not aware of any incidents in any other countries that involve armed police entering a residence and directly endangering the occupant.

While the US has quite high gun crime, it is "only" 21st in the world according to wikipedia 2020 firearm related death rate and Canada is down at 36 only just above Sweden.

How come swatting exists as a significant problem in the US but occurs nowhere else in the world?

Note on Canada and other countries after comments/answers

There have been comments that the distinction between Canada and the rest of the world is less stark than than that between the United States and the rest of the world. The most famous example of swatting that endangered the life of a specific individual in Canada is the swatting of Clara Sorrenti. In 2019 the Calgary police where warning about it being a phenomena that is frequent enough to create significant risks to public safety and end up costing taxpayers, with numbers like "612 officer service hours were expended in response to swatting calls that occurred in 2019" in Calgary alone. In 2015 a recent event was described as "put[ing] the dangerous prank back in the spotlight" and four examples are given for 2014.

This all sounds quite different from the examples given for Germany, where of all three examples given did not result in anyone being put at risk by armed police officers storming at house. I have had to use google translate, I include those links, the originals are in the answer below:

2015: “Meanwhile, two plain-clothed police officers and two other uniformed police officers with bulletproof vests made sure that my information was correct and that no one in my apartment was in danger,” said Rimpl. His wife was completely intimidated. “Luckily my five-year-old son didn’t notice anything.”

2017: “Swatting doesn’t work here like it does in the USA,” says Huber. In this country, massively armed SWAT teams do not storm a house straight away. “A patrol always stops by here first.” That's why swatting is not so popular in Germany. Until now.

2023: Because the emergency services had to assume a real danger, there was a large-scale operation. Residents had to come out of their house with their hands raised.

user103496
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User65535
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    I suppose others use precise location detection for emergency services requirement, which solves the problem of sending emergency services in the wrong direction. – dEmigOd Jan 14 '24 at 11:57
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    I don't think swatting is much of a thing in Canada. Not least because there are no dedicated SWAT teams, in the US sense of the term. The incident cited is hardly all that convincing either: she got arrested, is about it. There are incidents of police brutality and there are cases where the police use of force is controversial and leads to death. But they were not, to my knowledge, linked to swatting. Swatting needs to combine both a fake danger claim and an overeager police that leads to escalation. You need to come up with a better detailed case for Canada. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Jan 14 '24 at 16:48
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    Careful with those rankings. If we look at absolute values, the US has 4/100k gun homicides putting it with states like Dominican Republic. Canada has 0.73, 5 times less. Sweden, just two ranks lower, is at 0.47, 8 times less. And Sweden is one of the highest in Europe. Most of Europe is in the 0.15 and under, 25+ times fewer than the US. – Schwern Jan 14 '24 at 20:33
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    @dEmigOd Even many parts of the US have precise enough location information for calls to validate this. The thing is though, there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons for an emergency call to be coming from an apparently different location than the caller is reporting the emergency at, especially for hostage situations, which are usually what people making a swatting attempt report. – Austin Hemmelgarn Jan 14 '24 at 20:50
  • @DJClayworth - your edit substantially changes the meaning of OP's question; would misconceptions not be better challenged in an answer addressing them? explain why an assumption or assertion is wrong so as to dispel it, don't pretend that they didn't say it – bertieb Jan 15 '24 at 00:09
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    Seems to me that the simplest way is to edit out the error, just like we would with a spelling mistake. All the answers have gone with explaining why it's a thing in the US, and not bothering to correct the assumption that it is in Canada. I'm not going to write an answer duplicating their work and adding the facts about Canada. – DJClayworth Jan 15 '24 at 00:18
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    @DJClayworth that's up to the authors of answers to judge, but it seems to me that an edit that substantially changes the querent's question is prima facie "going against the author's intent"; and I'm not sure a deficiency in current answers is a good reason to change the question's subject – bertieb Jan 15 '24 at 00:24
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    @DJClayworth An answer about Canada would be very helpful. It's not necessary to duplicate the other answers, you can reference them. Answers do not have to be complete, especially with such a large topic as this, they can be partial answers. This allows people to use their specific expertise to contribute without needing expertise in every facet of the question. As for the edit, it is not on the scale of a typo; correcting assumptions is part of the point of answering. – Schwern Jan 15 '24 at 01:01
  • Not worthy of an answer on its own, but it happened in Belgium last week: there was a dispute about seats on a travel bus. So one pair of travelers called the cops on the others saying they heard them make "plans for a terrorist attack". As you can imagine, there was quite a big show with lots of guns and flashing lights. The whole bus was emptied at gunpoint and swept for explosives afterwards. – Opifex Jan 15 '24 at 13:14
  • "By 2019, there were an estimated 1,000 swatting incidents domestically each year, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League" - The "Drop the ADL" campaign ... consisted of an open letter and a website ... stated that the ADL "has a history and ongoing pattern of attacking social justice movements led by communities of color, queer people, immigrants, Muslims, Arabs, and other marginalized groups, while aligning itself with police, right-wing leaders, and perpetrators of state violence." – Mazura Jan 15 '24 at 16:13
  • @Schwern Careful with those rates; EU is going down and US is going up. As of 2021 the US is up at 6.4 firearm related homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, about 50 times higher than the EU average of 0.13. For more perspective; in 2021, the total number of firearm homicides in the EU was lower than the total number of firearm homicides in the single city of Memphis, Tennessee. –  Jan 16 '24 at 23:21

3 Answers3

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Lots of people with lots of guns and not a lot of training nor restrictions, plus lots of gun violence, plus an increasingly militarized police force.

humorous image of guns

Guns. Lots of unrestricted, unregistered guns.

And unlicensed, untrained owners.

As a supplement to Philipp's answer, it's important to understand just how much of an outlier the US is with regard to gun ownership and gun crime. The OP mentions gun homicides by rank and concludes the US is not that different from Canada or Sweden. But the absolute numbers tell a different story.

Highest value in bold. Highest in Europe in italics. Homicide data is from 2020.

Country Region % of Households Per person Homicides per 100k people % Unregistered Notes
US N. America 42% 1.2 4.05 99.7% Regulations
Montenegro Europe ? 0.39 1.91 58% Highest gun homicide rate in Europe, < 1 million people
Albania Europe ? 0.12 1.43 81% 2nd highest gun homicide rate in Europe
Malta Europe ? 0.28 0.78 19% 3rd highest gun homicide rate in Europe, < 1 million people
Canada N. America 15% 0.34 0.73 84% Regulations
Sweden Europe 16% 0.23 0.46 15% 4th highest gun homicide rate in Europe Regulations
Italy Europe 12.9% 0.14 0.17 77% Regulations
Finland Europe 38% 0.32 0.09 14% Regulations
Germany Europe 12.5% 0.20 0.06 63% Regulations
Switzerland Europe 29% 0.28 0.10 66% Regulations

I've included the ranks to show even the highest outliers in Europe don't come close to the US. For completeness I've even included tiny countries like Malta and Montenegro which have less than 1 million people, but they're hardly representative of Europe.

Compared to Europe and Canada, even the outliers, the US has...

While individual countries come close in individual areas, only the US has this combination.

If the police visit a home in the US, there is an almost coin-toss chance that home has guns. An unknown number of guns of an unknown type with likely an unlicensed, untrained owner.

The militarization of US police

Traditionally, the US police were not a paramilitary unit. A few spectacular incidents in the 60s, 70s and 80s (ex. the North Hollywood Shootout) lead some departments to maintain a special Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) to deal with particularly heavily armed suspects (glossing over a lot of history there), but your average officer was not covered in tactical gear nor trained on assault weapons and tactics; threat of violence was not the first choice.

Then in the 80s came the War On Drugs and 9/11 brought the War On Terror. These events lead to increased cooperation between the US Federal government and local police; anti-drug and counter-terrorism laws relaxed the restrictions on police giving them easier access to violent options, and US Federal money and military hardware is transferred to local police. Local police were now well-armed, and expected to deal with terrorists and violent, well armed gangs.

Conclusion

Which brings us to the current state of policing in the US today where threat of violence is often the first choice. Lots of homes with guns. Lots of police with guns. Police training increasingly focused on use of force. These are among the reasons why US police are more likely to treat a household as potentially armed and dangerous and respond to a call with a SWAT team.

Schwern
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    Good points in what I think is the best answer on this question so far. It is however missing a minor point about accountability, judicial review, and qualified immunity. And seems to miss a sentence to bring it all back together to actually answer the question e.g. "In the US swatting has a significantly different effect than it does in other countries, while in Canada it can be seen as a cultural export of the US, due to the cultural and geographical proximity" – Peter Jan 15 '24 at 00:09
  • @Peter The question touches on many complex topics in multiple regions of the world. A supplementary answer covering your points would be useful. – Schwern Jan 15 '24 at 01:07
  • You forgot to take into account that Switzerland is a highly armed country with very low gun accidents. I was told the biggest accidents they have is suicide. –  Jan 15 '24 at 01:28
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    +1 Neo! Excellent to mention the North Hollywood Shootout. At that time, the intervening police did not have the necessary heavy weapons to take the 2 bank robbers. Hadn't happened before, ever. Now every small town needed its own SWAT studs! Even before then US was over the top compared to Canadian or European cops. In 1994 as a tourist I ended up with guns pointed at me for not stopping and not having lights on at dusk. I just didn't get a cop car 10+ car lengths behind me had anything to do with me. Euro cops would have tailgated with their lights, easy. US cops are paranoid as eff – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Jan 15 '24 at 04:14
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    @user48650 Switzerland is a less interesting data point than you might imagine. In terms of guns per capita it's lower than Finland and Canada, and has a lower percentage unregistered guns than Canada. So far as I can tell, It's a less remarkable data point than other data points that are included in the table, by any metric I've found data for. – James_pic Jan 15 '24 at 10:14
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    @user48650 Switzerland is an odd duck here. Military service is still mandatory for young men, and at the end of military service one may opt to keep their rifle at home, and therefore many men have an automatic rifle at home. The main difference with the US, however, is that (1) those are registered and (2) said men do not have the ammunitions, which are strictly kept by the military. So lots of powerful guns in theory, sure, but a gun without ammunition is just a clumsy club. – Matthieu M. Jan 15 '24 at 10:32
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    Another issue with the SWAT teams is that they're not actually deployed for situations requiring that degree of firepower, and instead, historically, SWAT gets deployed for drug offenses. I suspect that it's a combination of arguments of potential "drug dealers with uzis" (despite that most drug busts are more about marijuana) and that the shock and awe of heavy weaponry might be more effective for preventing targets from disposing of the drugs. – Sean Duggan Jan 15 '24 at 19:36
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    If I read the sources right, it should be noted that at least the German numbers include hunters, collectors and sport-marksmen besides private handgun owners. While a gun is a gun, hunting and sports-weapons are rather different from what you would expect to find in a houshold in the U.S.A., I guess. If I read that right, the number of private handgun owners (read: pistols and the like) in Germany is more around ~5%, rather less than that. – Bobby Jan 15 '24 at 19:46
  • @Bobby I thought about adding a point about the types of guns and ammo, but it's a lot of work to do that for all of Europe and US states objectively and well sourced. – Schwern Jan 15 '24 at 21:25
  • @MatthieuM. I included Finland to illustrate the point that it isn't just gun ownership, it's all the factors. Switzerland, and most of the Nordic countries, are similar. They have a healthy gun culture and, being small nations with land borders with historically hostile neighbors, an armed and trained and well organized citizenry for national defense. – Schwern Jan 15 '24 at 21:31
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    @Bobby: I believe Finland may be somewhat similar. A lot of hunting rifles there, due to potentially dangerous wildlife (mooses AND white bears). Hunting rifles are quite different from handguns or military rifles in that they generally have only one or two shots in them. – Matthieu M. Jan 16 '24 at 08:08
  • @Schwern When you updated the SWAT abbreviation, I think you forgot to add a word like ‘team/department/unit’ after it. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 16 '24 at 11:59
  • Not that the post here draws much attention to it, but off the top of my head, that 38 % of households in Finland having guns sounds rather excessive. According to the Ministry of the Interior, there are 1.5 M registered weapons in the country and 430k license owners. Against approx. 2.7M households in 2017, that would make about 16 % of households with guns. That is if each household only had max one license holder, which likely isn't the case, so the actual number should be somewhat lower. – ilkkachu Jan 16 '24 at 15:05
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    I'm noting this because there's that legendary statistic from 2007 where something like 800k unregistered weapons were invented to exist in Finland without any meaningful proof, and it appears that has slanted the impressions people have about the issue. The date mentioned on the linked page is 2005, so the numbers probably aren't from the same survey, but then again the link to the source there is broken so it's hard to check. (Of course the Intermin statistics I quoted don't count unregistered weapons, but their number is generally estimated to be rather low.) – ilkkachu Jan 16 '24 at 15:05

  • Sweden: 3rd highest gun homicide rate in Europe

    The linked statistics are pretty odd, neither UK nor France is in the list, making me wonder what it actually means to be "3rd highest".

     – PureW Jan 16 '24 at 23:04
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    Very topical article from USA Today: 2023 was the deadliest year for killings by police in the US. Experts say this is why. It hints at exactly the things outlined in this post. – Greg Burghardt Jan 17 '24 at 16:32
  • @PureW Technically 3rd is Malta, but it's so tiny I excluded it. UK and France are in the More Details table. 0.02 and 0.12 respectively, but that isn't for 2020. The point is to show that even the highest outlier rates for Europe are still well below the US. – Schwern Jan 17 '24 at 20:26
  • @ilkkachu I'm able to get the archived source info and yes, the data is coming from different decades. Gun data sucks. – Schwern Jan 17 '24 at 20:46
  • @Schwern, somewhat curiously, it has numbers from 2005 to 2017 for the total number of guns, but numbers from 1989 to 2005 for the proportion of households with guns. Curiouser, the latter has gone up over time, which seems odd against the general understanding that single-person households have become more common over time. Those are likely in cities and wouldn't seem to exactly match the usual profile of hunters owning guns. (Might be that the number of 1 p households started rising significantly only after 2000, I can't remember. Seems odd anyway, but looking into it would be more work.) – ilkkachu Jan 18 '24 at 08:07
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As the answer by o.m. explains, this is no longer a phenomenon that is exclusive to the United States.

The reason why it works so well in the United States in particular, is a police force that is both very well armed and able and willing to respond to emergencies.

Other developed countries have police that will respond to emergency calls in a much less aggressive manner. They can afford to, because other developed countries don't have a firearm in 42% of all households. Shootings are much less common, so police officers will usually not approach every situation with the expectation that someone will draw a gun and shoot them. So kicking in the door with drawn submachine guns will be their last resort, not their first response. They won't do that when their only reason to assume that the suspect might be armed and dangerous is some anonymous call.

There are of course countries with similar or even higher levels of gun violence. But most of those have a police that is much less well-funded and well-organized than the average US police department. Or have already lost all control over some regions to more or less organized crime. Which means they will often not respond to emergency calls as quickly or at all.

Philipp
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    The point I tried to get across in the question is the fact that in Canada shootings are not much more common than in Europe, but swatting in that the victim is at risk of police violence exists in Canada but not Europe. This seems to indicate that it is not solely the rate of gun violence that is the difference. – User65535 Jan 14 '24 at 13:29
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    I think you could go into more detail with your statements by showing examples of one officer at the scene has the situation control, another shows up and almost immediately shoots and kills the suspect, and the initial officer gets punished for not shooting the suspect sooner. An example is an officer who didn't shoot and kill a suicidal suspect was fired for not doing it. https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/us/wv-cop-fired-for-not-shooting--lawsuit/index.html – Joe W Jan 14 '24 at 16:12
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    If anything Canadian controversies sometimes trend the other way, when police are killed due to not having been sufficiently prepared. Police has little day to day reason to expect deadly intent from members of the public. This is, again, not to claim that Canadian police doesn't get criticized for excessive use of force, up to people getting killed. Only that it rarely happens in a swatting context. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Jan 14 '24 at 17:38
  • kicking in the door with drawn submachine guns will be their last resort, not their first response — do they actually do that outside of movies? – gerrit Jan 15 '24 at 09:17
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    @gerrit Yes, that actually happens in the United States. – Philipp Jan 15 '24 at 10:22
  • @User65535 Make no mistake, shootings are extremely much more common in Canada than in Europe. Your choice of Sweden as a reference is rather unfortunate, as gun violence has been rapidly increasing among immigrants there. In 2021 the EU average was around 0.18 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, whereas Canada was at 0.78, over four times higher. Sweden is at 0.43, still only half of Canada. The US was at 6.3 in 2021, a war zone in comparison. –  Jan 15 '24 at 23:07
  • In Sweden, gun violence is a lot more common in specific areas. Police do prepare differently when responding to reports in those areas. But it doesn't help swatting unless the target happens to live in such an area. – jpa Jan 16 '24 at 13:37
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As absolutely as you state it in your premise, the premise is wrong. Swatting does happen in other countries. It may well be that it happens more often in the US, or that US media is more likely to report incidents, or that incidents in the US are more likely to become dramatic and newsworthy.

In , there has been the case of an abrasive youtube personality whose swatting made the back pages of nationwide media. In crime statistics, swating gets no separate entry. It might be prosecuted as part of §145 StGB, which also covers the destruction of warning signs and rescue equipment (like lifebuoys at the riverside). This makes finding swatting statistics difficult.

o.m.
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    I had not heard about this. Is this the correct story? It sounds very different from the NA ones, and does not sound like it put the victim in significant danger "In Germany, there will be no military gear cops kicking in you door guns drawn, but it caused huge chaos. Dozens of emt and police cars showed up because of a gas leak report." – User65535 Jan 14 '24 at 12:40
  • I have added "by police violence" to the question, I had thought that was explicit in the term swatting. – User65535 Jan 14 '24 at 12:43
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    @User65535, that's a different one. Swatting does happen from time to time, and it is dangerous in Germany, too. It just seems less dangerous because of different cultural expectations on the use of force by police. – o.m. Jan 14 '24 at 17:24
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    Too much "may" and "might" and no citations. The one case cited in Germany might be the exception that proves the rule. – Schwern Jan 14 '24 at 20:25
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    You really need to add some sources. Being from germany, I cannot remember any case of swatting as it would be understood in the US. Yes, you can call the cops on someone else, and yes, thats a nuisance -- but thats not swatting. – Polygnome Jan 15 '24 at 00:46
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    @Schwern, three examples. That's more than one exception, less than the wave in the US. – o.m. Jan 15 '24 at 05:39
  • @Polygnome, see the third link I added. – o.m. Jan 15 '24 at 05:39
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    @Polygnome The article on the Drachenlord case explicitly mentions the word 'swatting' and explains it because aparently it is so rare that they assume their readers are not familiar with it. Note also that the youtuber Drachenlord was the victim of the swatting, not the perpetrator. – quarague Jan 15 '24 at 07:31
  • @o.m. Thank you for adding sources. However, it's three over eight years. Technically correct that it happens, but does it compare to the US where (one quick example) "In less than a single week in April [2023], universities including Clemson, Florida, Boston, Harvard, Cornell, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and Oklahoma, as well as Middlebury College, were targeted by swatters." – Schwern Jan 15 '24 at 21:46
  • @Schwern, I made claer that it is less of an issue in Germany. Three examples show that it does happen, and there is no specific coding for §145 in the official statistics. – o.m. Jan 16 '24 at 05:31
  • "Why is swatting only a thing in North America?" What does it mean to say that something is "a thing" or "not a thing"? It means it's a prominent, significant, or well-known occurrence, or else not so. If I say "Pineapple on pizza is not a thing in Brazil" that does not mean nobody has ever put pineapple on pizza in Brazil. It means pineapple on pizza is not a commonly found thing, not something frequently seen, not something one expects to find ordinarily in Brazil. (I am making no claims as to whether this is actually the case in Brazil, its purely a hypothetical example.) – barbecue Jan 16 '24 at 20:51
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    @quarague I am going to throw it out that as an American... I didn't know what swatting was until I saw this question. – Questor Jan 16 '24 at 21:30
  • No internet linkable sources, and not exactly the same in the sense of the kind of danger people are put in, but certain kinds of information can be given anonymously to the respective authorities in Germany. I read years ago that the local veterinary office estimated about 1/3 of the information about animal maltreatment/bad keeping conditions they got were not about anything wrong with animal welfare but people leveraging the authorities for private feuds. I recently talked to someone from a county food safety office who said they have lots of those cases as well. – cbeleites unhappy with SX Jan 16 '24 at 23:09
  • I may add that while such denunciations don't put the victim into any substantial risk of harm through police violence, there is economic harm even if the victim did not violate any regulation: these authorities have the right to do inspections, and if they receive information they usually have to make an inspection - this can take substantial amounts of time, private animal owners may have to leave work immediately in order to make the inspection possible etc. (and particularly the vet office denunciations will create a lot of trouble and suspicions in all directions in the neighbourhood) – cbeleites unhappy with SX Jan 16 '24 at 23:21
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    @cbeleitesunhappywithSX, in the third case I linked, the victim said that the cops said that the records of criminal complains about fake pizza orders caused the copy not to batter the door down, and to merely search the premises -- the police were willing to risk their lives on the possibility that this was yet another hoax. As to how such risks are judged, see the answer by Philipp. – o.m. Jan 17 '24 at 05:24