Why is swatting a thing only in North America?

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.

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...

• The most guns (it is the only country which boasts more guns than people).
• The most households with guns.
• The most unregistered guns.
• The highest gun homicide rate.
• The most lax gun licensing laws.
• The fewest restrictions.

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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 germany, 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.

• Sentencing in the Drachenlord case.
• Unknown perpetrator in Bavaria.
• Unknown perpetrator in Saxony-Anhalt.