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Swatting 19-Year-Old Arrested in Las Vegas
Ars Technica reports that a Las Vegas teenager is in custody for multiple instances of swatting:
Brandon Wilson, who goes by the online handle "Famed God," was arrested Thursday in Nevada and faces an extradition hearing to determine whether he should be sent to face hacking and other charges. Illinois prosecutors said there was evidence on his computers about the July 10 swatting incident, in which he allegedly reported a murder to Naperville's emergency 911 line. The SWAT team responded, but the call was a hoax. The Chicago-Sun Times said that, in addition to the Naperville incident, the suspect's computers held evidence "of similar incidents across the country."
I wish the same standards are followed when people report "someone suspicious" [one person holding a toy gun inside a Walmart was killed by police because someone called in; a small kid playing with a toy gun was killed by police because someone call in and also mentioned that it was 'likely a small kid with a toy gun']. It is scary to imagine how much social engineering is possible to get others into trouble.
I wonder how things go if in future there is some "meta-swatting" involved? Someone hacks one person's computer to hack into other computers, and the police aren't tech savvy... Or someone uses an impressionable kid to work as a mule.
I don't think it's attempted murder. More like reckless endangerment.
http://definitions.uslegal.com...
Reckless endangerment is a crime consisting of acts that create a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person. The accused person isn't required to intend the resulting or potential harm, but must have acted in a way that showed a disregard for the foreseeable consequences of the actions. The charge may occur in various contexts, such as, among others, domestic cases, car accidents, construction site accidents, testing sites, domestic/child abuse situations, and hospital abuse. State laws and penalties vary, so local laws should be consulted.
-Dave
As a non-American, I don't really understand US gun culture very well, but: if there is a likelihood of someone brandishing a deadly weapon, wtf don't police come in with full body armour?
The guy can be rushed, and if it turns out the gun's a toy / he wasn't going to use it, nobody dies - but if they're shot at, no big deal, and he faces justice.
I understand that some weapons are so powerful that body armour won't help, but how common are they?
Body armor is great at stopping shots to your chest, but come on. Sure, in Hollywood shots to a limb are shrugged off like they're bee stings, but that isn't how it is in real life. One of my favorites was in CSI: Miami, Horatio gets shot in the gut, but sticks his hand on the wound and walks around toting his pistol and saving the day.
Gunshots are no joke. One to to your leg can cause lifelong disability. Or how about to one's face? Ouch. I would never want to rush an armed opponent in the hope that his shots will only hit my body armor.
Gunshots are no joke. One to to your leg can cause lifelong disability. Or how about to one's face? Ouch. I would never want to rush an armed opponent in the hope that his shots will only hit my body armor.
No kidding. Public media tends to overstate the effectiveness of body armor.
Little primer people, and yes, I've worn body armor before, the lvl IV military stuff with plates.
1. Over half of police killed by firearms WERE wearing body armor. It's not like the ancient stuff that provides whole body protection, you have a front piece and a back piece that protects your chest. A hit to the head, or in from the side, and you're still possibly dead.
2. Police body armor is drastically lighter than the stuff I wore. A rifle round will generally go right through them, as will a shotgun slug* at close enough range.
3. Part of being lighter, even being shot with a handgun will result in injuries, and they'll probably want to get you checked out in a hospital. But said shot can disable you and make you less able to fight back until the attacker manages to line up a shot to the head, neck(from which you'll bleed out or suffocate), or bypass the armor from the side.
4. Are there other civilians around? if you have a perp that you're afraid is going to start shooting, the officer is more protected than the others still around.
They used to call them 'second chances' - you already lost your first chance(don't get shot), they provide a 'second chance' at stopping the round from killing you.
*results WILL vary depending on numerous factors that I won't get into here.
I don't read AC A human right
Another thing a lot of people don't realize. If you do get shot wearing a "bulletproof vest", it doesn't just make all of the energy of the bullet go poof. It will keep the bullet from penetrating and making a hole in you, at the cost of burns and sometimes broken bones for high powered rounds. I'd rather have a broken rib than a bullet in my chest though.
I understand that some weapons are so powerful that body armour won't help, but how common are they?
Extremely, most any rifle. Body armor generally protects against pistols and shrapnel, but not rifles. Military body armor may include special ceramic plates that cover a small area and these can stop hunting rifles and what the average soldier carries.
Yeah, that's part 3: "even being shot with a handgun will result in injuries"
I've heard it being described as 'being punched once, full force, in the chest by Mike Tyson"
I don't read AC A human right
>. Perhaps I underestimate the power of the average handgun. As for the face, are there no effective bulletproof visors?
Remember the tip of the bullet is around 2mm or so. Imagine you have a stout nail. You place the nail against a piece of glass and hit it with a hammer, hard. You want glass thick enough to take that without breaking. There's not all that much POWER involved, but it's concentrated in a small area.
Bullet-resistant Lexan is something like two inches thick, so not only is it heavy but it a curved piece would refract quite a bit. Think "coke bottle glasses" times ten. So you've got a flat piece of material hanging off your face blocking your peripheral vision and it weighs as maybe half as much as a gallon of milk. That's not I what I want to wear in a fight.
The thing about guns and power levels is that to do their job they have to RELIABLY go through a leather jacket, the clothes underneath, three inches of fat and muscle, then somehow do enough damage to stop someone within seconds. That means that they MIGHT go through all kinds of things and still do enough damage that you die eventually.
To understand why there is not a full suit body armor, you have to understand what body armor actually is and what it does. A 'bullet-proof vest' is a multi-layered fabric composed of Kevlar and other fabrics, with a pocket in the center of the front and the back that mostly covers just the heart, and into this pocket goes a ceramic and steel composite plate. The fabric of the vest is designed to take the force of the bullet that hits it and spread it out. So instead of a massive amount of energy concentrated on a point around 2-9mm in size, it gets diffused into the surrounding layers of Kelvar (instead of your flesh). And even then, you still get hurt, very badly, because it cannot stop all of the kinetic force of the bullet, it jsut spreads it out over a large area of your body. Broken ribs, bruised and ruptured internal organs, even spinal injuries are common when getting shot in the vest and that's when it works and stops the bullet from going inside you!
Why the plates then? Because the fabric mesh is often not enough to stop even handgun caliber rounds at close range. The plates are insurance, they will stop most small arms fire, though rifle rounds quickly overpower even full steel plates. Thus your heart is not likely to damaged in a firefight if you are wearing your vest. Its not foolproof at all and it definitely is not bullet proof.
The giant bulky armored suits you see the explosives guys wearing? That's not bullet proof either and its the closest thing we've got. That suit is protection against a detonating device because the detonation is usually unshaped. Even it will at best stop small arms fire, still has vulnerable gaps, and its heavy, and extremely hot. Its utterly un-tactical. If you want to see it in action, there is footage out there of a bank robbery in California from the 90's I think where a couple of guys in them held off police for a long while, tore the cops up badly but they were finally taken down due to exhaustion, vulnerability and the fact they were just too slow to actually get away.
The less than lethal devices in an officers arsenal are unreliable. Not in that they may misfire, though that is certainly true as well. Mace/CS Spray for example is a terrible weapon to rely on. Its a spray, in mist form or stream, that travels through the air to splash onto a target. It can splash back onto the officer at extremely close range. Heavy winds can make you miss your target, hit an innocent, your partner, other officers, and even yourself. Also, a certain (small)_ percentage of the population is flat out immune to it, and even if the target is not, its not debilitating, its just a massive irritant. Police train to work through the pain and distraction and civilians can too. Even alcohol can make a person not feel the sting, and that's a legal substance. Get into narcotics and its a crapshoot if it'll do anything at all other than make it more difficult to apprehend the target. (oh yeah, that stuff is liquid and gets on everything. good luck wrestling that dude to the ground and not getting it all over yourself if it didn't work.)
Tasers. ugh. Boon and bane in a single device. Injuries from tasing are common as they cause an adult human being to freeze up tight and fall over from a standing position. The effect of them is very powerful, but not that difficult to recover from, especially if you are full of adrenaline. So they come with multiple charges to make him get on the ground again. But, the more juice you pump through someone, the more likely it is for side effects to arise. (like death) Getting hit with multiple tasers at once is not recommended if you want a living suspect, they have a limited range as well, but that range is better than Mace and is like a leash for a target, as long as the barbs are in and the device has a charge, it can zap him again if needed. They can miss the target, they can hit too far apart to be effective, heavy winter coats can stop them. They are not a great solution, but they are what we have now. And using a taser on someone pointing a gun at you or anyone else...all your muscles spasm when you get juiced, there is a high chance the firearm in the targets hand will discharge and injure or kill someone.
Can you give an example of swat being used to apprehend a non-violent person?
Gibson Guitars. Gibson imported wood guitar components that we legally harvested and legally exported. Eventually the US gov't admitted Gibson did nothing wrong. However to investigate Gibon's possible improper importation of wood a heavily armed SWAT raid was conducted to seize their paperwork and the wood in question.
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
Can you give an example of swat being used to apprehend a non-violent person?
Here you are. Don't be offended if I don't wait for you to finish reading, it's going to take you a long while.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
There a dozens of examples of innocents losing their lives at http://www.cato.org/raidmap
Don't like libertarian nutters, then how about some left wingers with basically the same story (and a book to sell of course): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
as an example: http://wap.alternet.org/civil-...
Maybe cops should learn some restraint in their use of force?
They clearly could use better training. I was reading in the newspaper about a cop shooting. It was recorded on video and shows the cop repeatedly shouting "Don't move!", "Put your hands up!" "Don't move!" over and over again. The guy put his hands up and the cop shot and killed him. The cop says he's not a fault because he told the victim not to move.
There's another video on YouTube of a guy getting shot at a gas station after the cop shouts "Don't move!", "Show me your ID!", etc.The guy went to get his wallet and got shot because he moved.
Perhaps the cops could be trained to not give contradictory commands? How does one put their hands up without moving? If I were cynical I'd wonder if these cops just felt like shooting someone and so gave contradictory commands to "justify" doing it.