Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

I've made this comment before but technology could help here. If the call was tagged as landline, cell, or VoIP along with approximate location info it would help a lot.

A landline call tagged as "same town" or cell call tagged as "pinged tower near reported location" could be treated more seriously than a VoIP call from "Fly-by-night VoIP Gateway Plc".

No, just no. The solution here is to not show up guns a-blazing. The reason why swatting exists is because it seriously harms the victim.

This is no more complicated than grade school playgrounds: don't give the bully what they want.

"No, just no"? Really? Do you think we're in some Realtime Strategy Game where we have to choose one option and then press "end turn"?

This is really off topic, but you are confusing real-time strategy with turn-based strategy.

The phone system is sufficiently easy to spoof this kind of info, even if the dispatch does receive it (which they probably already do) it doesn't mean that the origin is reliably accurate. Furthermore, there is no way to be sure that police actually pay attention to the signals they have available.

They like opportunities to play with their tech toys and rough up some "suspects." A compelling story about someone in distress is the perfect excuse, whether the message comes in via VOIP, TOR or 4chan.