Oh, I'd really like to know where they got that number from first.
If it includes the salaries of the officers involved, by allocating the man-hours consumed by each response, then that number needs to be lowered.
I'll accept the fact that vehicles consume gallons per mile in gas, and that private residences have to repair busted down doors and damaged sheetrock, and maybe if some other expendables were used, if say some shots were fired and it cost 50 cents in bullets, but the officers would have been on the clock anyway (overtime or no), and the taxes are already budgeted for salaries.
Did the counties get sued by the swatted? If that's the source of the number, maybe he owes a large percentage of that, but then again, maybe the lawsuit has a point and how swat teams respond to prank calls should be changed?
Every time first responders of any kind are deployed there is an inherent risk to their lives.
First responders have to drive fast to get to their destination quickly. SWAT teams are heavily armed and accidents do happen. Innocent bystanders could get shot, pets could get shot, other officers could get shot in a confusion. They might get called out on a prank call but end up finding a sovereign citizen freeman-on-the-land at home who hates the government and is willing to get into a firefight anyway.
All these things are potential liabilities on the department, not to mention the danger of having your entire SWAT force deployed to a prank call while there's a real incident on the far other side of town and not enough time to get there.
So yeah, we can argue about the cost as long as we want, but at the end of the day the primary cost on the minds of the police departments are these dangers, and the actual price tag quoted by them must take these into account.
That's exactly why they should be more circumspect when busting down citizens' doors. It's just irresponsible to allow this kid to cause this much damage.
$10k for a major incident sounds in the right ball park including what a couple of SWAT fire teams plus say another 8-12 ordinary coppers to form a cordon.
Plus there might have call out off duty cops on overtime to cover and then there is the paperwork and reports which will have to be written up and analysed.
Plus there is the cost of damage to property, disruption to traffic and so on.
Here is why that won't happen: It makes the PDs look incompetent and liable for running dangerous heavily armed raids on private homes without sufficient care taken to avoid exposing innocent people to violence and potentially deadly errors.
As good a place as any to drop Mr Balko's opus: "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" which is all about this kind of madness.
If it includes the salaries of the officers involved, by allocating the man-hours consumed by each response, then that number needs to be lowered.
I'll accept the fact that vehicles consume gallons per mile in gas, and that private residences have to repair busted down doors and damaged sheetrock, and maybe if some other expendables were used, if say some shots were fired and it cost 50 cents in bullets, but the officers would have been on the clock anyway (overtime or no), and the taxes are already budgeted for salaries.
Did the counties get sued by the swatted? If that's the source of the number, maybe he owes a large percentage of that, but then again, maybe the lawsuit has a point and how swat teams respond to prank calls should be changed?