"Doug Bates and his wife, Stacey, were in bed around 10 p.m., their 2-year-old daughters asleep in a nearby room. Suddenly they were shaken awake by the wail of police sirens and the rumble of a helicopter above their suburban Southern California home. A criminal must be on the loose, they thought."  Source

"Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house." Source

"...an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems." Source

The biggest difference today is that 911 calls are coming from cell phones, computers and landlines. A computer's geographic location can be spoofed or disguised by the attacker. Voip phone systems are part of this problem. On voip systems the caller's address are entered or given verbally by the customer. The reason for this is because voip stands for Voice-over-Internet protocol. Voip is a protocol optimized for voice to travel over the internet. When voip systems were new there was no 911 service. Now there is; but the challenge is accurately reporting the location of the 911 call.

Mr. Bates and his family were victims of what has now been coined as SWATTING. Essentially, swatting is the act of spoofing the actual location of the 911 call.

Criminals have been employing disguises to mask their true identities for centuries. Criminals also use false names when dealing with the police. The internet has given many criminals a magic cloak of invisibility. Everyone needs to get a hold of their local politicians and demand the 911 systems get upgraded before innocent people are hurt by police.

What is being done right now to upgrade the 911 systems?

"Canada's cellphone companies have been given a year to upgrade the country's 911 system, and to install technology that can locate wireless 911 callers within as little as a few car lengths in some cases." Source

This is what the CRTC has said regarding 911 calls.

"The primary means of identifying the location of a 9-1-1 caller is by verbally determining the caller's location; if a 9-1-1 call is disconnected before the operator can verbally determine a caller's location, the operator must attempt to call back in order to determine the caller's location; and the registered service address should be used only when the 9-1-1 caller cannot communicate his or her location or when a 9-1-1 call is disconnected before the 9-1-1 caller's location can be determined, and the operator cannot re-establish contact with the caller." 

Telecom Circular CRTC 2008-2

I cannot believe there are people out there that get a kick out of putting lives of innocent people at risk. The 911 systems around the world need to be upgraded immediately before innocent people get injured by police officers doing their job in good faith. Swatting is a dangerous game that should never be played.