[flukus]

I'd imagine gun control/culture plays a big part in it. Police have a right to look after their own safety and in a country with so many guns floating around that means swat teams become necessary.

In countries with no guns and/or better gun control the police don't even need to be armed with deadly weapons.

[rwz]

No, I get the necessity of deployed armed SWAT units every time there's a risk of gun violence and stuff, I don't understand why an anonymous call warrants such a response.

I wonder if there's some kind of metrics available breaking down how often an anonymous calls amount to something real vs abuse of system.