Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

He's probably not facing anything resembling 20 years. Charged as an adult under the fact patterns we know about, I get something like 15 years. But he's being charged as a juvenile.

It seems like he was a child when he made most of these calls.

Regardless, this is unlikely to be much of a deterrent. The police need to be held accountable at some point.

The police didn't hurt anybody in this case, despite this person's attempt to make them do so. What are you holding them accountable for?

I never said the police's problems were on display with this case. In fact i think the case is largely meaningless to the topic. the threat of swatting is going to remain until the police can be brought under some kind of democratic control.

I don't know, you brought it up. I'm asking: in this case, what do you want them held accountable for?

In criminal law, attempted crime is treated the same as successful completions. That’s because we don’t want to encourage people to make attempts: many such attempts could be successful.

Imagine a world in which someone is trying to murder you or your children. You know who they are, and you even have incontrovertible evidence they are doing it. Yet they get off scot-free every time because their bullets missed the mark.

(This is covered in the mandatory first-year criminal law course in law school, BTW.)

Yes, I agree. The SWAT-ter attempted to kill people. The police did not. I'm not sticking up for the accused; I'm saying the facile "this is a police problem" argument doesn't apply in this story.