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Vancouver Area Teen Sentenced To 16 Months For Swatting
An anonymous reader writes: A 17-year-old from the Vancouver area in Canada has been sentenced to 16 months in youth custody and 8 months under supervision in the community after pleading guilty to 23 charges including criminal harassment, public mischief, extortion and uttering threats. The teenager was responsible for a number of swatting calls across the United States and Canada — mostly of female gamers. The judge told him, "It appears that when real life became too hard you retreated into the online world and became increasingly socially isolated. While you may think you enjoyed greater success in the online world, that success was an illusion. You were left with severely limited social skills and a significant educational deficit."
Awesome! Now throw that sociopathic fuckface from Finland in jail too.
It was probably King Frosturd
My sentence would have been life.
A life of swatting.
He'd know it's coming. Over and over again. He just would never know when. He'd be asleep at 3 AM, and BAM! Door kicked in, flashbangs detonated everywhere, guns pointed in his face.
He'd find it hilarious, I'm sure, whilst everyone's favorite tacticool occifers would no doubt appreciate the training exercise.
Thanks for posting, I'll have to look at it when I have a chance.
Please bear with me, I'm speaking from a US point of view.
I don't want to completely condemn anyone to not being able to get a job because of a felony over being "a really stupid kid". Everyone has stupid moments, but most people can learn from them.
I also don't want people who are un-rehabilitable released back into the general population.
The number of times this kid swatted other people leads me to believe that he falls into the latter of the two groups.
I do think that there are other side conversations about the militarization of SWAT teams that can be had as well, but that's not the focus of this story.
TL:DR: There's a boatload of moving parts to this, but the punishment doesn't (in my mind) match the crime.
To all you whiny losers complaining about SJWs and otherwise defending your right to be childish assholes ... this is the kind of childish bullshit you are supporting.
But you idiots will continue to act as if you're supposed to be behaving like douchebags and blaming everybody else who calls you on it.
Pathetic punks and pillow biters, thinking they're standing up for anything other than being a childish moron.
"Hello, 911?"
Here we go again!
That's because you don't understand Canadian law. That is actually a fairly harsh term for a young offender in Canada.
The other option would have been moving him to adult court. That's a pretty big uphill battle for the prosecution, as they would have to prove how society would be better served potentially throwing him in jail until 27.
He's a stupid kid, and really needs to be treated as such.
Just because your mother allowed you to live in the basement until you were 50, you still need to get out into the big blue room with the bright light and interact with normal people who don't know about Slashdot.
Sounds like a very reasonable and level-headed judge, making him completely ineligible for appointment to a higher court.
I do think that there are other side conversations about the militarization of SWAT teams that can be had as well, but that's not the focus of this story.
Correct, but the militarization of SWAT and police in general SHOULD be the focus of the story. These little assholes wouldn't be swatting if it didn't evoke such a massive response from police.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
I'm sure the kid gives >= 2 shits about what that judge has to say about the whole deal.
Just pronounce the sentence, call the next case, and then shut the hell up.
That's the textbook definition; he delights in the suffering of others.
He needs extensive mental evaluation and should probably be watched carefully once his sentence is up. These people are dangerous by their very nature.
Wow, so when he turns 18, he will just make sure to cover his tracks by using a burner phone.
Sad thing, even though the Canadians gave him a wrist slap, it is far worse here in the US. Here, the police here don't bother even going after swatters, and because of the different population dynamics (especially in hellholes like Chicago suburbs), you never know if the door-kickers are SWAT, or some gangbangers looking to "blood in" and execute everyone in the house to earn their "soldier" status.
Yea, Americans have NO conception of time whatsoever. Most of my countrymen would happily send somebody to prison for 10+ years for even minor offenses. Punch somebody while you are both drunk? 5 years. They have no idea how long 5 years, how insane a punishment is, how badly their lives will be permanently destroyed, how many friends and family they will lose, just how much time really costs somebody. 16 months during that developmental period is a HUGE chunk of his life. You can recover from a SWATing in a few weeks, months if it hit you particularly hard. But 16 months in jail is basically making sure the rest of his life is seriously restricted and damaged. But for that many swattings? Sure. It fits. I even thought this one was a little light.
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Treating stupid kids as stupid kids is far better than the zero-tolerance approach often used.
However, once they decide they want to commit adult crimes, they should have adult consequences. A felony conviction for swatting following someone for the rest of their life seems pretty fair.
Public execution recorded and shared across the interwebs. That way all know this fate could await them should they SWAT.
You can recover from a SWATing in a few weeks...
Unless you are fucking DEAD.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm Canadian, but cannot claim to speak for the country, only my own Canadian-derived viewpoints.
I, too, do not want to see someone capable of being rehabilitated denied the opportunity for a better life (ie: job, hobbies, freedom, personal fulfillment).
I, too, do not want people who are un-rehabilitable released back into the general population.
I, however, feel that I must give the court-appointed psychologists the same level of initial trust that I would extend to the courts in judging this fairly. Since I'm not a psychologist, I would choose to depend on the above experts determinations of the offender's mental state post-treatment (as I am presuming from other past experiences in the Canadian legal system that the offender will be subject to such treatments) to determine his future freedoms and limitations. As such, I cannot prejudge his fitness at this point.
I would agree there are many discussions that should be had about the relative militarization of the police.
TL:DR: Article light on specifics to relative ability of treatment for the offender, so I must rely on the determination of the courts.
PS: The commenting style is deliberate, but not intended as mocking. I mean to highlight the relatively small differences between sample USA and Canadian viewpoints that may aid a further discussion on the differences between the USA perception of justice and the Canadian viewpoint.
His problem isn't that he's a stupid kid, his problem is that he's a narcissist. That's a personality disorder, jail time isn't going to fix it. He needs to admit that he has a major personality problem (which, as it turns out, isn't all that common for a narcissist to do) and then seek help through therapy (also not all that common). If he doesn't take the steps necessary to back away from that cliff then no amount of jail will "rehabilitate" what is wrong with him.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
They hate all of us and want us all put in prison. That is why their kind does this. They hate us.
Because swatting sounds a lot like attempted murder to me.
Correct, but the militarization of SWAT and police in general SHOULD be the focus of the story. These little assholes wouldn't be swatting if it didn't evoke such a massive response from police.
Did you read the list of offenses this kid did? If you think he did all than just because SWAT teams react, and he is not the one that is primarily accountable.,., .well, I'll just have to assume you are the kid's mother.
I don't know all of the details, but 16 months seems like a slap on the wrist for a "prank" that can get people killed. Like, you know, in real life. For ever. No do-overs, no saved games.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
what if he only spends one night in jail, but it was one of those pound-me-in-the-ass places. I think everybody would agree that it is a fair outcome.
He suffers from severe narcissism which describes more than half the people on Slashdot. Will except me! I'm awesome!
You can recover from a SWATing in a few weeks, months if it hit you particularly hard. But 16 months in jail is basically making sure the rest of his life is seriously restricted and damaged.
Really? Being the victim of SWATing seems like it could cause lifelong psychological damage - let alone the danger that you're sending HEAVILY ARMED people over to someone's house. I think 5 years would be a better sentence for him. Sounds like he's already pretty damaged anyway. "the judge noted a psychiatric and psychological assessment that she said painted a picture of a deeply troubled young person who is a high risk to reoffend. The report suggested the teen has minimized his crimes and blamed the victims, showed no remorse and was motivated in the pleasure the trouble he inflicted on his victims.The report described him as having an emerging narcissistic personality disorder."
SWATTING isn't a light offence. When you do this there is a very real possibility that someone will end up dead because a cop gets excited, or a homeowner is armed and decides to start shooting. This should be treated as a very serious crime, and if anyone is killed, the person doing the swatting needs to get a murder one charge slapped on them.
Moreover, this kid didn't do this once, but many times, demonstrating that this isn't a spur of the moment 'crime of passion', but that he possess a consistent and dangerous disregard for life. I am all for lighter sentencing for a lot of things, but this is something that you need to come down heavy on people for. Grafitti is stupid teenage hyjinx. SWATTING is really dangerous behavior.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I'm all for a massive reduction in police militarization and very nearly eliminating SWAT teams given how rarely they're used for what they were originally intended for. That being said, the problem with using this issue as a lever is that there will always be some fringe situation that calls for a swift armed reaction of some sort. These kids can literally say whatever they want, so there's always going to be a way to provoke a dangerous response as long as there's any conceivable situation that warrants that response. This is just one of those cases where there should be a panic button. It should be really difficult to hit and you should punish the living shit out of people who treat the panic button like it's a toy.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I think both issue need to be addressed.
The severity of punishment for calling in fake hostage situations should be sever to act as a deterrent, but considerably more important is effective enforcement. People have to think that if they do this they will get caught. Otherwise even a death sentance won't actually be an effective deterrent.
Simultaneously, the police need to reign in SWAT protocols. It is completely unacceptable to be kicking in doors of innocent people, so much so that in the US it's even in the fucking Constitution that the cops need to get a warrant first. Now, figuring out how to desitngruish between genuine threats and fake ones without compromising respnce time in the real cases is a hard problem, but if the cops can't figure it out their only other choice should be to disband their SWAT teams.
16 months in prison will help him improve his social skills no end.
If you're going to "militarize" any part of the police force, the SWAT is the place to do it. Those teams exist specifically to deal with threats outside the normal tactical capabilities of law enforcement, which may include confrontations with well-armed gangs or home-grown crazies. In those instances, it make sense for the SWAT members (who are supposed to be trained to a level beyond your normal patrolman) to have a wider variety of options and hardware at there disposal.
Now, the militarization of the regular police force is something else entirely. Patrolman Krupke doesn't need an automatic rifle with gee-whiz optics and an up-armored assault vehicle just to patrol the neighborhood beat.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Here come the SJWs again, oppressing male gamers! Feminazis get offended by anything.
So a bunch of heavily armed people knocked down all the doors in your house, shot your dog, and handcuffed you and your family; quit being such a PC whiner.
Correct, but the militarization of SWAT
It was center stage for a bill Obama tried to pass recently (not sure if it passed as I didn't follow it)
and police in general SHOULD be the focus of the story
Both the offender and the authorities need to be the focus of the story. It's a two fold issue.
You can keep blaming the ashes for making a mess but the fire is what made the ashes in the first place. It's like blaming gun manufacturers for mass shootings. I'm not suggesting the authorities are innocent but the source is still the source of the fire. The authorities could take a very hard stance on this and say that unidentified individuals cannot initiate a SWAT call. Is there statistically a downside to such a hard stance?
Canadian SWAT isn't the same as US SWAT so there's 2 separate views of the same issue. Canadians still have a positive view of their authorities. It's not so much the case in the US.
These little assholes wouldn't be swatting if it didn't evoke such a massive response from police.
First off, he doesn't really know what the actual response is because he's not there to witness it. This kid has many other issues beside swatting so I doubt the lack of response from police would have changed his abuse behavior.
i wrote this to be snarky, but thinking about it more, I think this makes a lot of sense. the damage of the swatting is not a broken door. It's the shattered feeling of safety you feel in your own home. you used to feel safe sitting on your couch playing videogames. Now, at a very fundamental level, that feeling is gone. This can take years to overcome.
I hear this is similar to the damage from being raped. So... while it's illegal to sentence someone to be raped, for whatever reason it's not illegal to sentence him to a prison where everybody knows that people are raped every single day. America!
So I think we all agree. Just one night, it happens a few times, then he's out and can lead a productive life. Everybody wins!
My only annoyance with the whole internet abuse counter-attack (Gamergate, etc.) is that those who were targeted by the abuse went and painted the entirety of the population of male gamers as sociopathic misogynists and giggled while the innocent were lumped in with that horrible stereotype.
Just like pre-internet days, the nerds get abused for being nerds.
This case is exactly what needs to be the standard response. (1) Someone reports abuse. (2) Investigation. (3) Abuser found. (4) Abuser tried and convicted. The end. No making a career based on accusing all male gamers or the entire video game industry or the entirety of "science" for the abuse of a few people perpetrated. Just report, investigate, find, convict, close the book.
We don't need social martyrs, we need good police work and good courts.
for you anon and all the canadians out there, know this: your justice system rocks! your judges write clear and often pithy case rulings. not so in the US, where tehy can be booooring. I'm not saying anything on the outcomes, just how you get there.
I'm 58 and grew up just outside of Phila and can remember the TV commercial, Do you know where your children are? Well I think those commercials should run again but just a little different. Do you know what your children are doing online behind that Closed bedroom doors? Just an Idea. My daughters has her PC in the main living room. No TVs or PC in bedrooms allowed.
Jack of all trades,master of none
>You can recover from a SWATing in a few weeks, months if it hit you particularly hard.
Yeah, sure. Unless a friend or family member or pet gets shot/tazed/bludgeoned by the idiots who kick your door in. Unless your apartment/home is damaged enough to require immediate repairs or catches on fire because lolflashbangs. Unless someone is recording what happens on a cellphone and you get fired from your job because lolviralvideo paints you in way that could somehow by some asinine twisted logic paint them in a negative light.
Or, you know, if you get shot to death in a hail of hundreds of rounds because you (naturally and correctly) reacted to your door getting kicked in by drawing a home defense firearm.
Fuck that noise. This is too mild of a sentence for the crime, and that dude will most likely be doing the same shit again a few months after he gets out.
Sentence him to live 16 months in Quebec.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Swatting means there is one party with guns drawn, and another party, likely surprised, with guns drawn, with a potential aggressive intruder in the house.
Plain and simple, you have heard of suicide by cop? Well, this is homicide by cop. Hitting the wrong house has gotten police, as well as innocents killed.
I really am beginning to dislike people who call swatting, "just fun and games". This isn't just running LOIC on the middle school's website because someone doesn't like a teacher. People do get shot and die in these encounters. Innocent people on all sides. Those 12 gauge, three-ball rounds, and .40 ACP hollow-point rounds are not toys.
Making light of attempted murder is pretty low. Either one doesn't know enough to realize the death toll done by this, or one is on the side of the swatter, thinks it a sick joke.
In many cases, the swatting calls involved a bomb threat, or a fake hostage taking, where the caller threatened to kill police or the specific target.
In one case, he called in a bomb threat to Disneyland that shut the theme park down.
In other instances, when the victims [mostly females] didn't acknowledge friend and follow requests or send him things that he wanted, such as photos, he would harass them and their families.
and
In her decision, the judge noted a psychiatric and psychological assessment that she said painted a picture of a deeply troubled young person who is a high risk to reoffend.
The report suggested the teen has minimized his crimes and blamed the victims, showed no remorse and was motivated in the pleasure the trouble he inflicted on his victims.
While police militarization and no-knock warrants are indeed a problem, solving it would make no difference in altering this kid's behavior. He's a criminal who apparently had no remorse for his actions. He's gonna offend again.
This pathetic loser dweeb got what he deserved. Fucking parasite sack of shit.
I'm as annoyed as anyone by shrill, hysterical SJWs but this piece of scum apparently conflated "people online annoy me" with "I'm going to escalate to potential violence in real life".
Swatting is nothing less than attempted murder. People have been killed in "wrong address" SWAT raids in the past which is effectively what this is to the people being targeted. Having armed people hyped up on adrenaline (and roided up in many cases - http://www.nj.com/news/index.s...) and expecting trouble force their way into someone's house can go badly in many obvious ways, a lot of which end up with the someone dead.
Now this particular kid seems to have some large mental problems and years in prison is unlikely to help him a lot (though it will prevent him from killing someone via a SWAT raid because they didn't friend him on facebook for a those years).
The problem is, though, that SWAT teams are being utilized in doing what should be a routine police work, like serving an arrest warrant on a known nonviolent drug offender. It's a game of budgetary use-it-or-lose-it and police departments are very reluctant to give up their toys.
That police forces are too often becoming quasi military is a real, huge, valid issue, and it concerns me, but it is not the issue here.
Don't step on the baby.
Can you cite a law anywhere in the US where a first offense physical assault is punishable by 5 years in prison? I dare ya!
And when I say cite I mean cite. Not what you heard your brother's sister's uncle's borther-in-law's best-buddy-from-the-navy-20-years-ago's son supposedly got.
Or have PTSD from nearly being made dead. People who claim that an armed paramilitary raid of your home is no big deal obviously haven't had it happen.
so he has been sentenced for swatting? not squatting? lol can someone send the swat team here to stop the heroine production? http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/09/us-managed-to-make-afghanistan-the-worlds-top-heroin-exporter/
oh really? http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Pretty sure his development is already screwed up.
It should not be possible to make 911 calls and spoof the source as somewhere else. I'm sure "swatting" never occurred as a potential threat to anyone when the 911 system was being built, but it's pretty dang obvious now, and the vulnerability needs to be closed before some idiot's use of it gets someone killed. (Or someone else killed... have there been any deaths caused by swatting? I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't recall one.)
Such a backwards, awful point of view to have. In the US we have this concept of 'cruel and unusual punishment'. Inmates, while in the care of the state being raped in prison absolutely falls into that category -- the fact that our prison system tolerates that kind of behavior is terrible.
>You were left with severely limited social skills and a significant educational deficit.
What? Swatting aside, since when has limited social skills been a crime?
Were this a 30 or 40 YO, I'd say toss him into some place with high thick walls. For a very long time. But this is a kid, and kids are pliable enough to learn. Even kids as stupid as this one. Heck, kids who have got sucked into third world warlord conflicts, and who have committed horrendous crimes - in person - have been known to be capable of rehabilitation. This one may be too. I don't buy the throw away the key philosophy when it is a kid. Regardless, this is not a victimless crime. He should be directly under an adult responsible thumb for a very long time, be responsible for building a worthwhile life as the judge indicated, and as a condition of parole or release, not have access to computer or smart phone or even dumb phone, for a long time. He needs to live an analog life.
Don't step on the baby.
Everyone in this room is now dumber after seeing your actions....you are awarded no points...and my god have mercy on your soul.
I do think that there are other side conversations about the militarization of SWAT teams that can be had as well, but that's not the focus of this story.
I don't think that's really at play here. Let's play devil's advocate and pretend the SWAT team had never been developed; now call the police and tell them that someone is in the process of murdering your neighbor. What do you suppose happens? They come to your neighbor's house with firearms drawn and immediately force entry into his home. They won't have all of the expensive tactical gear but do you think that's really going to alter the "experience" for your neighbor by any appreciable degree? Do you think there's much difference between looking at the business end of a .38 Special vs. an AR-15?
The militarization of the police is a worrisome trend that I've discussed before but I don't think it has anything to do with swatting. If the police think that someone is in the process of being murdered they're going to respond quickly and aggressively. There's really no good solution here; I don't think you want the police to discount such reports.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Tell that to the baby who essentially ate a flash grenade.
Yes, this kid was wrong. But we should examine the root cause of how a kid can pick up a phone that essentially deploys a military unit. How is that response valid? Shouldn't they vet the situation more before deploying a military force?
Examine the content and credibility of the phone call first. Maybe just knock on the door for a first check with conventional police officers. Only if they confirm a valid threat, with an active hostage situation, then you deploy a negotiator, and then if that fails, you consider deploying a force unit response.
The ridiculous disproportionate response, from phone call right to military force, is what should be punished and the leaders who making these decisions are enabling and creating this problem.
Really? Being the victim of SWATing seems like it could cause lifelong psychological damage - let alone the danger that you're sending HEAVILY ARMED people over to someone's house.
I wouldn't put a specific term on SWATing, I'd just treat it as what it is - attempted murder. Unless it is successful. In that case it is murder.
Meh. I got bigger problems to worry about than whether criminals keep their anal virginity.
I too am very interested in your closely held Canadian secret to recovering from death in such a short time period. In the rest of the world we haven't even figured out how to recover from death *at all*, let alone in weeks or months like you claim is possible.
Stating that swatting isn't a big deal falls flat on both ends of the argument.
In 2008 an investigation into no-knock swat raids showed that 80% of such raids in the previous 10 years were based on factually wrong information. Of the 146 no-knock raids during that year, only 49 or about 33% resulted in any charges what so ever, and of those 49 only 2 (TWO) resulted in a conviction and prison time.
Of those two, one was due to the officers finding 50 grams of weed in the swatting victims home, while the original charges were that the person had shot hostages.
The other of those two was the famous Marvin Louis Guy case, who is in prison for shoot three of the swat officers who invaded his home and shot at him and his wife first.
The prosecution has sought the death penalty against him and is still on death row to this day.
You are essentially saying that 16 months of jail time is TOO MUCH for being directly responsible for at least 23 instances of attempted murder.
Being the direct cause of having loaded weapons pointed directly at another human being who did no harm or crime to anyone, where only the purest of chances resulted in missing, is something that should not be taken lightly.
http://reason.com/archives/200...
http://thefreethoughtproject.c...
http://xbradtc.com/2014/08/08/...
https://www.google.com/search?...
I've rented apartments to several felons, mostly those convicted of violating protective orders. As in their separated wife made a booty call unexpectedly and then reported the incident. Jail. Also the three-timer DUIs. Those I actually love, they all have given me their pastor's name and the meetings they go to.
They are all incredibly appreciative of a clean place to live, no BS.
This kid might, maybe, petition for court for expungement in several years, but I doubt he can convince a judge he's just stupid kid.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Murder and attempted murder typically get you 20 years to life in the US, or lethal injection if you live in Texas. They don't give a shit what your prior history is for that.
SWATing is not a physical assault, it is attempted murder. It is not a fist fight. It is best compared to blindly firing a gun into a crowd of people. You are not directly aiming at any one person, but your reckless disregard leads any reasonable person to expect great bodily harm or death may result. Try acting that out in an locale in the US and you will be looking at an attempted murder charge if you are lucky and no one dies.
For my money, anyone over 13 years old is aware of their actions and if they are defective enough to SWAT once, let alone multiple times, they should be incarcerated indefinitely in a mental health facility and banned from any phone or internet connected devices for life. There are some people that need to be removed from society to protect everyone from their defective behavior.
Meanwhile, in Finland, a thug gleefully admits to more than 50,000 counts of criminal hacking, etc and get...2 years probation.
-Styopa
"For my money, anyone over 13 years old is aware of their actions and if they are defective enough to SWAT once, let alone multiple times, they should be incarcerated indefinitely in a mental health facility and banned from any phone or internet connected devices for life. "
There are no more mental health facilities the way you're thinking of them. All the institutions closed in the 80s and 90s. Now, you pretty much need to be Hannibal Lechter to get a mental health inpatient bed; you need to be so dangerous to yourself or others that the only choice is to keep you locked up and attempt to treat you. Prison is the new asylum for most mid-level mentally ill people.
Where the woman has her memory wiped every day and wakes up to some kind of everyone-has-gone-nuts scenario and runs for her life in terror, over and over again. Everyone else is an actor or an audience member but her.
Yep, this in particular...
...reminds me of Animal House - "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Not a lot of Republicans in Canada...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'm not sure that I agree. Take those situations which truly merit an immediate armed reaction. Consider the harm that results from the delay required to confirm these situations somehow before going in. Compare that with the harm done by swatting. Is the death-or-two per year from swatting [1] larger or smaller than the possible deaths from waiting a minute or two [1] to chat with the neighbours for confirmation before breaking down the door on some vanishingly rare scenario [2]?
[1] Caution: number extracted from rectal cavity. May not be accurate.
[2] Ran out of numbers.
Oh yeah sure, he was forcing the police to kill people. Oh wait, if US cops weren't so careless with other people's lives SWATing wouldn't actually be that dangerous (and more of a nuisance) and most pranksters wouldn't be swatting (just like far fewer people are doing SWATing in countries where they actually have a higher quality police force).
The real problem is your cops are too dangerous to others because they are too cowardly to put their lives on the line to serve and protect as they are supposed to as cops.
Yes I'm a coward too, but at least I don't take public money to pretend to be a cop.
"SJW" doesn't mean anybody who is for social justice. I'm for social justice! I want people to stop hating and harassing each other.
"SJW" is the term for those who do bad things in the name of social justice.
I have tried to trace the use of SJW ("Social Justice Warrior") as a pejorative.
It seems to be entirely a geek creation and all but unknown before 2011. But one that has proven very useful to the bloggers of the National Review and those farther to the right.
Well as I'm sure you've figured out, ''sjw'' stands for social justice warrior. Back when I and a few others started this tumblr several years ago, ''sjw'' seemed, to us, to be more of a criticism on people who used social justice to further their own bigoted ends, push already marginalized people out of their own spaces, and dominate discussions with bigoted rhetoric.
In the years since this blog died out, ''sjw'' came to stand for anyone who supports social justice, a favorite go-to insult for white male nerds/libertarians/redditors. This blog is now followed by people with that attitude, and still gets asks of that nature. Hence the (partial) reason why I no longer update, even though I've somewhat returned to tumblr.
vice-ci7y asked
Google Trends: social justice warrior
Hey, I'm definitely morally opposed to excess police use of force and militarization, it disgusts me on a very deep level. But that is the action of the SWAT team not doing their homework, not paying attention, going overboard, etc., not the person who called them. The fact that SWATting is even possible is horrifying and disgusting.
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Actually I have. My home was raided in June of 2010 because I was involved in a protest of Koch Industries. A boycott to be specific, but they accused me of being a part of a DDOS. I had PTSD for a while, but most of it was linked to my complete ignorance that our police and federal police were pretty much the most corrupt entity ever, and sadistically violent. So I'm well aware that it is a big deal, but I wouldn't send somebody to jail for swatting somebody for more than a month or two.
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Canada is very forgiving to juveniles (Youth Criminal Justice Act). They cannot be identified, their records will be expunged after several years, and this should not haunt him the rest of his life. It is not the same in the United States.
That is the SWAT team's disgusting militarization, abuse, horrible culture and corruption. The fact that a swatting is dangerous is a sign of illegality within our police culture and pure evil in our police culture, not in those who do something stupid and evil from a distance who don't personally see the effects.
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Fair point.
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Um.... it was the FBI who caught this kid to begin with, which means your assertion that police in the US don't go after swatters is completely untrue.
Bloody lenient. Swatting can potentially kill people.
I suppose his victims should be glad they weren't black.
It's a game of budgetary use-it-or-lose-it and police departments are very reluctant to give up their toys.
How about they're not allowed to use any equipment that we're not allowed to own without extreme justification? All the normal cop gear is stuff we can have... did they make body armor illegal yet? But anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But this is a kid, and kids are pliable enough to learn. Even kids as stupid as this one.
You assume he is merely being stupid. It appears (from the evidence), that he's exhibited a long pattern of narcissistic psychopathic behaviour. This is a totally orthogonal axis of behaviours to simply being stupid.
Well, yeah, ya do. There are a lot of people in (especially US) prisons who are there for non-violent crimes - embezzlement, drug possession, etc. To allow people to be subjected to rape dehumanises them. Jail is supposed to punish but it's also supposed to rehabilitate, something US prisons are notoriously shit at. You don't fix someone by raping them. Why spend all that money locking someone up if you're going to release them more broken than when you put them in?
No. The reason swatting is dangerous is because of those things.But that is irrelevant to the person doing the swatting - they are employing that dangerous instrument the details of why it is dangerous don' t matter in the slightest.
Just like if he was to shoot someone himself, the details of how and why a bullet damages a person is irrelevant to the crime itself.
If he was to pay some bikers to break into the victims house and hold them at gunpoint for a while, the social and economic reasons for the existence biker gangs would also be irrelevant.
Not a lot of Republicans in Canada...
They just call them Tories in Canada (aka Parti conservateur du Canada) and apparently there are quite a few of them...
Until they day you get accused by someone, and put in prison while trying to prove your innocence. Or if it happens to someone else who only got freed after a year when their lawyer finally gets round to lodging an appeal. Or when it happens to your son or daughter who should have been fined for jaywalking, but had the misfortune of encountering a judge who gets paid by the privatized prison company for each new client. We're not just talking about criminals - which may include people stealing a slice of pizza and Charles Manson, so the word is pretty much meaningless to me - but also a lot of people who'd never be in prison in any other country in the world in the first place. The mentally ill, for instance. Or the retarded - who get locked up a lot.
The prison system not just locks up criminals, it also creates criminals, and the more dehumanizing the treatment, the worse the monsters that come out. Even, or especially, if they were completely innocent to begin with. It has been a long standing observation that victims of torture (which is what we are discussing here) are more resilient to psychiatric damage if they were "guilty", i.e. worked for the resistance, or actually committed crimes. Not so the innocent - they get hit the hardest.
Just today I read a story about a leading member of the Lords Resistance Army on trial for war crimes. He started out as an innocent boy that got kidnapped. And turned into a monster. He slaughtered a lot of people before they caught him.
The prison system in the USA creates more monsters every day and thereby perpetuates itself to the point where it is both the biggest and most unsuccessful prison system in the world. It may also be the most expensive. So I would worry about prisoners undergoing torture. Because it's part of a huge problem the US society has to solve.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Throw him in big boy prison if he wants to be a tough guy swatting people. The kid got lucky that he's not 18. A few months in gen-pop being traded like a pack of Pokemon cards would teach him a valuable lesson
If the police think that someone is in the process of being murdered they're going to respond quickly and aggressively.
Fortunately I live in The Netherlands, where police will happily wait outside for backup while people inside are tortured to death(*). A much more reasonable response that prevents a lot of unnecessary deaths!
(*) True story: http://www.mamjo.com/forum/ind... (Dutch)
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
play 3 or 4 rounds of Russian Roulette.
Every time he swatted, he exposed innocent civilians to the possibility of being shot by a police officer storming into their homes. Every time he swatted, he also exposed police officers to the possibility of being gunned-down by an innocent homeowner who happens to be armed and who thinks he and his family is being attacked by unknown assailants.
It is more than appropriate to expose a person to the very real threat of imminent violent death in the guise of a game after that person has played the "game" of exposing others to the same sort of risk. I suspect this little dirt bag would, at a minimum, soil himself if so sentenced even though he probably laughed his butt off as he swatted his victims.
Misuse of SWAT assets is a separate issue from militarization. The former is a procedural problem that city and state governments around the United States should be addressing. SWAT team members should be pushing back against being used for every stupid thing that comes to the mind of the police chief.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Correct, but the militarization of SWAT and police in general SHOULD be the focus of the story. These little assholes wouldn't be swatting if it didn't evoke such a massive response from police.
Did you read the list of offenses this kid did? If you think he did all than just because SWAT teams react, and he is not the one that is primarily accountable.,., .well, I'll just have to assume you are the kid's mother.
Hmm... *re-reads post* nope, at no time did I excuse this kid's actions. The point I was making (since you appear to fail at reading comprehension) is that swatting wouldn't exist if not for a relatively easy to exploit system. Sure, this little psychopath found other ways to inflict misery on others (hence the use of "little assholes") but the fact remains that something needs to be changed WRT griefing by police.
I suspect that it won't be the police that reform it, either. Swatting gives them a good excuse to use all that military equipment.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
"For my money, anyone over 13 years old is aware of their actions and if they are defective enough to SWAT once, let alone multiple times, they should be incarcerated indefinitely in a mental health facility and banned from any phone or internet connected devices for life. "
There are no more mental health facilities the way you're thinking of them. All the institutions closed in the 80s and 90s. Now, you pretty much need to be Hannibal Lechter to get a mental health inpatient bed; you need to be so dangerous to yourself or others that the only choice is to keep you locked up and attempt to treat you. Prison is the new asylum for most mid-level mentally ill people.
You're right. But I think they just throw the "dangerous" ones in solitary, so nothing will get you into a mental health facility anymore. I put dangerous in scare quotes because anyone with a pulse can be put into solitary for what seem completely arbitrary reasons. On any given day, 80,000 US prisoners are in solitary. 25,000 are in long term solitary confinement. It's cruel, it drives normal humans insane and should be unconstitutional.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
civilized human beings do not do these crimes, and people who do are not civilized.
It's not that American have no sense of time... it's that many of us see it as a serious problem to infantilize people and a societal failure to embrace wonton childish abusive behavior. It's a relatively modern and stupid idea that there is such a thing as a "teenager" who has no responsibility. Young people through most of human history started having family responsibilities as soon as they were old enough to stand still and hold something. By the time a kid was something like 8 years old, he or she was expected to be somewhat responsible. By eighteen, large portions of the human race were married and making their own way in the world, even already being parents themselves. There is simply no reason why we must accept that modern society must tolerate dangerous irresponsible actions from people between the ages of 12 and 20, and excuse them while they rob, maim or kill other people.
16 months in prison is NOTHING. Lop off the puke's grubby little hands which he clearly has found no other use for other than trying to get other people killed, and possible self-abuse. Even if he got nobody killed, he exposed people to that risk, multiple times, for his own amusement. Such a monster who satisfies his base evil desires by exposing innocent people to the risk of death deserves to have his life utterly destroyed....and if THAT is to the amusement of anybody else, like his cell mates, then he should certainly understand it and embrace it, right?
Punch somebody while you are drunk? I'm fine with life in prison. First, you are a complete moron if you get drunk in the first place. Second, if you choose to get drunk you have accepted responsibility for anything you do while in that state. Third, if you show a propensity to get drunk and slug people then you might do it again at any time and therefore cannot be trusted around normal civilized human beings. Real mature adult human beings are responsible for their own acts and do not go around victimizing others. I have never been drunk, have never known any relative to get drunk, have no friends who I have ever seen drunk, this idea that it's OK or normal to get drunk is a completely alien concept, heaping an assault on top of that is all the more dysfunctional.
I'm fine with mercy for a person who truly accidentally harms others while not intending to harm anybody; there should still be significant punishment so that the offender learns to be more careful and so the victim feels justice has been done.
Severe punishments? Why do we think a perpetrator of an INTENTIONAL offense should suffer LESS than his victims? This only provides a green-light to further bad behavior.
That has happened here too (Columbine being the most infamous example) but as "active shooters" have become a bigger perceived threat the training of North American law enforcement has shifted towards a more aggressive response. That's probably for the best, dead is forever, ruptured eardrums and broken doors can be repaired.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That is cruel and unusual.
You clearly said that we should deflect focus from what this kid did and his punishment (which is the story), and by doing so we inevitably avoid the discussion of this kid's particularly offenses and punishment. To me, that reads like an accountability diversion. If you meant that we should ALSO focus on the swat teams IN ADDITION to this kids offenses, then you could have stated it that way.
So he's like most #gamergate folks. Got it.
Body armor is legal but expensive for regular citizens with a couple exemptions. Some jurisdictions ban felons from owning body armor, which is interesting for some rap artists with records and active threats against them. I believe that in those cases they can appeal that rule.
I don't read AC A human right
if you put 'em down, they'll never do it again. Problem solved.
Chimpanzees have a right to be stupid. Squirrels have a right to be silly. Human beings are different and have a duty to be responsible. Human beings are fully-capable of exercising self-control starting at a very young age (you can prove it by telling a little kid you'll give him or her something they really want if they can sit still and be quiet for five minutes). Swat boy was perfectly capable of not launching the police at his victims. He chose poorly. Execute him.
I propose that you volunteer to be SWAT's next "accident"
It is a win-win.
actually think that decent law-abiding people should be protected from violent evil people who have just proven they cannot be trusted.
Tell me, why is it morally-superior to unleash a proven bad guy onto society and enable yet another innocent person to be victimized? Is a second victim less of a victim? How about the third victim? Is it morally superior to let a felon out to re-victimize people for the seventh time (as was the case with the recent illegal alien felon who murdered a woman in San Francisco). Why is is morally superior to side with criminals instead of with the law-abiding peaceful citizenry????
You get pithy case rulings in the USA as well, and boring ones in Canada. It's the exceptions that we hear about...
I don't read AC A human right
CONSERVATIVE and REPUBLICAN are not synonyms, and haven't been for a while.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Is Canadian SWAT anything like it is depicted in Flashpoint? They actually ask questions before shooting.
If so that should be the minimum standard for any SWAT team.
When I started watching it, I thought it was a parody, I didn't catch that it was actually set in Toronto until later in the pilot episode.
US cops have long given up the pretence of "keep the peace".
If it wasn't for that annoying, mousey power ranger, it would be a great show.
Couldn't agree more. Can't believe how thoughtless people can be. I would consider even a few months to be a fairly serious penalty. I know someone who was dealing with a minor larceny charge while on probation. Likely the judge would have given him a few months, but I bet he'd be out in 1wk - mo. Dude was seriously talking about how he couldn't go back to jail (he'd been in for a few days before). Like contemplating leaving the country or suicide levels of anxiety. I know he was over reacting, but try sitting in a small room all day, staring at the wall and imagine doing that for weeks, months, years. Prison is a more extreme punishment than people think, without even considering safety issues, because of the amount of time youre exposed to it. I'd almost compare it to Crucifixion although I know that's hyperbolic
They want to be able to go outside and walk at any time without being "randomly" attacked by bored urban non-white youth.
You will still be attacked by bored urban white youth.?
Ship him to the U.S. and he will fit right in with all the CEOs!
i see judges in Canada write in a much more appoachable style, while US judges stay at arms length. Here's a great example about a civil suit between neighbors. :http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2014/2014onsc3061/2014onsc3061.html
I highly recommend you take a 5 min work break and read this. it's only a couple pages. pull quote:
In my view, the parties do not need a judge; what they need is a rather stern kindergarten teacher. I say this with the greatest of respect, as both the Plaintiffs and the Defendants are educated professionals who are successful in their work lives and are otherwise productive members of the community. Despite their many advantages in life, however, they are acting like children. And now that the matter has taken up an entire day in what is already a crowded motions court, they are doing so at the taxpayer’s expense.
Ah! You must be from one of the western provinces of our charming utopia.
Send him to Alberta, where all the Harper retards-like are.
I hear they likes guns a lot too.
I have one word for that judge's decision:
Zing!
I don't read AC A human right
Do you think he would have called them if he expected them to knock politely and have a simple conversation with the home owners?
He knew what type of force would likely be used and called for that specific reason.
Canadian SWAT teams (and police in general)are quite different from their American counterparts. However this kid called SWAT teams in both the US and Canada so some portion of his victims were Americans dealing with American SWAT teams.
Flashpoint is fiction but it is based on the Toronto SWAT team. Canadian police are much different from the Americans however that doesn't mean that they always do things the way it's portrayed on flashpoint. As a general rule Canadian police are more likely to ask questions and observe a situation before rushing in guns blazing but that's never a guarantee
If you have a gun in your hand when SWAT smashes your door with a battering ram, its highly likely that you will not be given the opportunity to drop it, as you will be hitting the ground at approximately the same time due to multiple injections of 5.56 rounds.
If you're lucky they will hit you with a flash-bang and you will drop it.
How does the "leading member of the Lords Resistance Army" being kidnapped as a kid and "turned into a monster" have anything at all to do with the modern prison system and how it "creates more monsters every day"?
At some point you need to realize that everyone's got a sob story. Some of them turn into monsters through those experiences, some of them turn into Batman. People are people, and many attempts to "make them better" fail pretty hard. Anyone who thinks they can just wave their hands and make all the problems go away if only everyone would just do what they say is completely ignorant.
This guy caused a lot of serious grief to innocent people. I wish they were tougher on him.
One big reason swatting happens is that it is so easy to spoof caller ID. There are companies that you can pay that will just set it to anything; that's one reason swatting happens so much.
We should make technical changes in the phone system to make it hard or impossible to spoof caller id, while keeping the ability to have your caller id hidden.
And we should also stop those companies from setting caller ID to anything you want as a paid service. You must have noticed that when you get the spam credit card calls that they often have bogus caller ID. We need to fix this system.
A vidiot
so you are saying that in the US your cruel and unusual punishment rules prevent you from sentencing people to US prisons?
I don't think that's right
thank you for this
Which is why there are 2 different views of the issue.