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Call of Duty Gaming Community Points To 'Swatting' In Wichita Police Shooting (dailydot.com)
schwit1 shares a report from The Daily Dot: A man was killed by police Thursday night in Wichita, Kansas, when officers responded to a false report of a hostage situation. The online gaming community is saying the dead man was the victim of a swatting prank, where trolls call in a fake emergency and force SWAT teams to descend on a target's house. If that's true, this would be the first reported swatting-related death. Wichita deputy police chief Troy Livingston told the Wichita Eagle that police were responding to a report that a man fighting with his parents had accidentally shot his dad in the head and was holding his mom, brother and sister hostage. When police arrived, "A male came to the front door," Livingston told the Eagle. "As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon." The man at the door was identified by the Eagle as 28-year-old Andrew Finch. Finch's mother told reporters "he was not a gamer," but the online Call of Duty community claims his death was the result of a gamer feud which Finch may not have even been a part of.
UPDATE: The New York Daily News reports police in Los Angeles have now arrested 25-year-old gamer Tyler Barriss, who the paper describes as "an alleged serial 'prankster'..."
"Barriss gave cops Finch's address, mistakenly believing it belonged to a person he had feuded with over a $1 or $2 Call of Duty wager."
UPDATE: The New York Daily News reports police in Los Angeles have now arrested 25-year-old gamer Tyler Barriss, who the paper describes as "an alleged serial 'prankster'..."
"Barriss gave cops Finch's address, mistakenly believing it belonged to a person he had feuded with over a $1 or $2 Call of Duty wager."
To make it clear, the man who was shot by police was not the intended victim of the swatting, and had nothing to do with either party. The police just rolled in and picked off the first guy they saw.
I noticed in the reuters report the following :
“As the incident unfolded, a 28-year-old male opened the front screen door and stood in the doorway or just outside that doorway,” he said. “Officers gave him several verbal commands to put his hands up and walk towards them.”
A police officer opened fire, shooting once, after the man quickly raised his hands and appeared to point a weapon at the officers, Livingston said.
I wonder if any body / dash cams were working...
Link :
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
Whoever made the call, as well as the officers who couldn't be bothered to Not shoot someone.
With their record, does anyone actually Call the police anymore for real calls anymore?
Seems like when people call for service, they're calling to be murdered...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
So the man at the door might be a hostage, which the police knew, were present. This is a total lack of concern for other people in the apartment.
I live in the UK and, I just don't hear of stuff like this happening regularly (police shooting people coming to the door) when guns are involved. I don't understand why it's a problem over there.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Amazingly, there won't be any riots, nor TVs stolen from stores that are broken into during the riots.
I wonder if any body / dash cams were working...
Given that the linked article includes body cam video, I'm going to guess the answer is "yes".
Hey, we don't even RTFA! You want us to watch the f-ing article too now?!!
No. You live in a sick fucking country. Other countries in the developed world are not like this.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
By what WITCHCRAFT doest thou know yonder article contents?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
1. When the cops tell you to do something, you do it. The place to argue is in court, not when confronted with (a) police officer(s). The dead guy would probably have been fine if he did this (excluding a ND by the cops).
Even the cops aren't saying that he did anything wrong. Their statement is literally that he came to the door and one of the officers shot him. You're a cop sucker.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The guy put his hands up when told to. Apparently he did it too fast, which looks as though "he's got a gun". This attitude of "cops should be treated like kings", which is essentially what you're arguing, is the problem here. Cops aren't soldiers. If the person is not complying, that is not a reason for killing them.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
So you're saying, if I'm at home and there's a knock on the door, and a guy in a police uniform there tells me to do something, and I ask "why?", that justifies me being shot dead on the spot?
I am SO happy I do not live in a country where that is even a remote possibility. And I fear for people like you who consider that perfectly normal, even expected.
Two points:
1. When the cops tell you to do something, you do it. The place to argue is in court, not when confronted with (a) police officer(s). The dead guy would probably have been fine if he did this (excluding a ND by the cops).
Erm, he did. He answered the door, from the body cam video, he raised his hands when told to.
The caller ID thing is neither here nor there, the phone company will record the actual caller for billing purposes. Finding the real source number will be no problem.
But if the police try and pin this entirely on the prankster, that would be a travesty of justice. The police are completely culpable here, the officer who shot was not fit to carry a weapon.
Let's start with the government, just to show good faith.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The police just shot a completely innocent person and are trying to blame this on swatting and deflect attention from themselves. The media is happily helping them. US police officers are very jumpy, with some justification, but I suspect the training and the way the entire situation was handled was done incorrectly. The officer that fired the shot is at fault, but I will bet that the entire chain of communication escalated the threat and down played the fact that it was just a call.
If you have never had a non-friendly interaction with the police and the police suddenly tell you to do something, you aren't going to do it. You are going to wonder what is going on. It's perfectly reasonable for Finch to not raise his hands. It's likely a situation he ever thought he would be in.
In some places in the USA blacks are taught how to interact with the police to avoid being shot. Maybe they need to extend that training to visitors and the general population.
I'm a white Canadian. I've twice had American police officers reach and hold their guns (not point) when interacting with them. Once at a traffic stop when I was looking for something the officer asked for and once when a black friend and I ran up to a police car to ask for directions. My youngest son at 9, also had an ill advised interaction with a SWAT team. As a frequent visitor to the USA, a couple hours learning how to interact with the US police would definitely have been useful.
1. In cases where people riot over a police shooting, the person shot is usually not complying with police orders. Rule 1: do what the person with a gun says.
2. The issue here is that people are swatting, not that the swat team shot someone. Those teams are brought into the most volatile situations and must be on a hair trigger if they want to go home each night. Because of this, if they think they see a gun, you will be shot. Rule 2: if a swat team orders you to put your hands up, do it slowly and deliberately.
The real issue here is swatting. This is not a prank. It has always been deadly and it is only luck that nobody has been shot until now. I hope they catch the person that did this and put him/her in prison for a long time.
BULLSHIT
In this case, they had no verified information that they were actually in a volatile situation, and they shot a guy from 200 feet away without verifying he was armed.
The JOB of the police is to PROTECT people, not create a "volatile situation" on their own simply because some jackass gave them bad information.
They didn't even bother to verify the information they were given.
Some guy walks out onto his porch, and they shoot him from 200 feet away. Didn't bother to verify if he was armed - they were TOO FUCKING FAR AWAY TO DO THAT.
The fact that "swatting" is even possible means the police are TOO READY to be all butch.
Government in the US is out of control - literally.
Don't watch that article! It turned me into a newt!
#DeleteFacebook
The guy put his hands up when told to. Apparently he did it too fast, which looks as though "he's got a gun". This attitude of "cops should be treated like kings", which is essentially what you're arguing, is the problem here. Cops aren't soldiers. If the person is not complying, that is not a reason for killing them.
Yet sadly they are being armed with ex-military equipment*. I have no idea why a podunk police force up the road from me, and in a rural area has need of a mine-proof vehicle (which they proudly showed off at the state fair)
* and while the current POTUS might think this is a good thing, it has been going on for a while now.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Nope, the person who pulled the trigger is the murderer. And you're a boot-licking swine.
The cops were 50+ yards away from the front porch.
"A police officer opened fire, shooting once, after the man quickly raised his hands and appeared to point a weapon at the officers"
Bullshit. Unless that officer was using a pair of binoculars. Stupid, panicky pigs.
Douche bags being reckless with other people's lives
Criminals thinking that what they did isn't that bad.
Militarized Cops - sure of their own righteous AND the villany of their target - over-reacting and shooting an innocent man
The various businesses saying "it's not our problem" rather than preventing anonymous calls to police/spoofed phone numbers.
People going "how horrible", but not really objecting or demanding action, because of how rare it is.
Neither political party taking appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again, because hey, no one really demanded action.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
He was probably a Call of Duty player.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
2. The issue here is that people are swatting, not that the swat team shot someone
Strange, I think they're both issues.
I mean, someone just got killed for the horrendous crime of answering the door and raising his hands when instructed by the police.
Rule 1: do what the person with a gun says.
Looks like that just isn't good enough in the US. Rule 0: Be the one with a gun, and tell the police to send someone unarmed in to arrest you peacefully.
The JOB of the police is to PROTECT people
If only that were actually true...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html
Where I live, swatting fails because they check where you're calling from. If youre a kilometer away or much more, they sarcastically ask why you think you know what happens elsewhere.
First of all, everyone knows that it's the Shine that lets you know whats going on so far away. Secondly, a good Swatter would use a VOIP system that lets him put whatever caller-id info he wants. He'll put the victim's number and address into the E911 fields.
The issue here is that people are swatting, not that the swat team shot someone.
And the award for the most asinine comment of the day goes to: AC (That AC, boy he's really racking up the awards folks).
Tell that to the man's family. An innocent man was shot in the head for absolutely no reason.
SWATing should be a felony if it's not already
militarization of our police is a a much larger problem
But an innocent man was shot in the fucking head for no reason, and SWATing and trigger happy special ops wannabe police officers led to it.
Swat guys will not ring the door before taking sufficient cover, or else they are doing it wrong. And if they have decent cover, they have absolutely no business being on a hair trigger, shooting when they think the guy might be reaching for a gun.
Also: police work isn't even in the top 10 of most dangerous professions, so there's not that much call in general to shoot first before assessing the situation when dealing with a CIVILIAN (not a "perp", not a criminal, bt a suspect at best). Or perhaps being a cop in the USA isn't all that dangerous because they are so trigger happy. Don't get me wrong, being a cop is a difficult job and I have a lot of respect for the people who put themselves on the line every day. But being a cop, putting yourself on the line means just that: you take risks in order to protect the populace. If you are dealing with a member of the public, their safety comes first, not yours. Be careful but keep the damn gun holstered until there is a reason to draw it... like they do in normal countries.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And so did a buddy of mine. Both white. Both in relatively affluent areas. Both times for absolutely no good reason (there was no justification for them pulling me or him over and no tickets issued). Neither of those areas ever had a shooting happen towards a police officer. And, this was many years ago, like 30 years. The cop had his firearm pointed at my head from behind me while I was talking to the another police officer through the window. So, I am sure I was quite close to getting killed had I made a move that they considered 'threatening'. Once you have an experience like that you will never forget it and you won't spout your mouth off as 'police are justified' and all that bullshit. So, cops have always been inclined to pull their weapons for no good reason. You know the saying, 'If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?'. Well, I think that is the main problem here. Police are trained to resolve issues through force and that's what they know how to do so they do it. I know my stories are anecdotal but they have created a deep mistrust of police and most authoritarian symbols which I make sure to convey to anyone who will listen.
Something is wrong with the way Americans train police. I don't think they know this, but American police are the butt of jokes around the world. They're not real cops.
Most of them are former security guards and prison guards who think their guns are toys, like this acquitted Philip Mitchell Brailsford piece of shit who forced a guy begging for his life to play "Simon Says", pumped five rounds into him, and then typically claimed self defense like an American policeman will always do.
Cops with prior military training don't act like this at all. Maybe you would be better served by unloading your current "police force" and starting anew with recruits who have been trained to respect weapons and understand that they serve the public, not the other way around.
> 1. When the cops tell you to do something, you do it.
Five cops burst into your room on an otherwise regular boring day in your regular boring life where shit like this NEVER happens. You are scared out of your mind. One of them yells "Don't move!" and at the same time another yells "Get down on the ground, NOW!" You can barely hear the instructions from the noise all five are making. What is the correct course of action here?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Rule 2: if a swat team orders you to put your hands up, do it slowly and deliberately.
Do it slowly and you get shot for not following orders, do it quickly and you get shot for scaring the cops.
Really, if a SWAT team is unexpectedly yelling at you, barking orders, is your FIRST instinct going to be to raise your hands SLOWLY?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
This was a really stupid prank and hopefully they catch whoever did it. But one thing I've always wondered about police work in general is this...especially in SWAT situations, why is there such a level of fear? SWAT teams are wearing bulletproof vests...they might get hurt but won't die from gunfire. The other thing is that any criminal is massively outgunned by a SWAT team. They should go into these situations feeling determined they can win, not scared!
I just don't understand why the first reaction of a cop is to pull out their gun and start firing before figuring out what's going on. Just stopping for a few milliseconds would fix a lot of problems.
Those teams are brought into the most volatile situations and must be on a hair trigger if they want to go home each night.
So, send in a robot or drone, and assess the situation with no risk to human life. Swatting will fall out of fashion very quickly if the prankster/troll risks jail, and all it accomplishes is law enforcement sending a flying camera to peek through the target's windows for a few minutes.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
*Knock knock* "Yes hello, is there a hostage situation at this house? I drew the short straw so have to come here to your door to take your word for if there is any problem here that requires our assistance."
Is that what you are seeking?
Yes.
In civilized countries that's how it works. Know what? It actually works, too. See, one thing you don't want to do - ever- is inject more "energy" into a situation. If there's nothing wrong going on, a simple query keeps things civil. A few questions and the homeowner is fairly likely to invite one or more officers in to confirm there's no hostage situation. No yelling, no screaming, no sudden gestures, no escalation. On the other hand, if something wrong is going on, there's some risk - yes - but there's a much better chance of talking it down.
Going apeshit is for military actions, not police actions.
"Oh no... he found the
From someone in a country with proper gun control:
Looks like an assassination.
The guy is SO FAR from everything, he has no clue you're referring to him. He's opened his door, there's a bunch of bright lights all down the streets hundreds of yards away. People are yelling and shouting, he can't tell what's being said. Nobody is close enough to do anything BUT snipe him from a distance, so they can't judge what he's doing anyway.
Hint: Innocent people do things that you might not want them to do. "HEY YOU! DON'T MOVE!" (turns behind himself, turns back with his finger pointing to his chest, shakes head, shrugs shoulders, maybe takes a step or two back.)
Aggressive stance, my fucking arse, you can't see a thing and neither would the cop have (don't forget, you can analyse and replay!). Unless he clearly pulled an object and aimed, any other police force in the world would be knocking the shooter off active duty immediately and probably pressing charges / initiating internal action. There's literally no way to tell what's going on from that distance. There's no way a shot should even have been fired, even a warning shot, certainly not a killing shot.
I've seen UK police deal with the same - but actually a genuine shooter - situation in a residential area. They turn up. They're told there's hostages and a shooter. They clear the street, back further than those police cars are parked. And the knock on the door of the house. And they are by the door and up close unless they have specialist weaponry prepared way in advance (e.g. very prolonged incident). Nobody just pulls a pistol and shoots from that kind of range, you have no idea the guy is even the shooter and not a hostage or - gosh - random innocent civilian as in this case.
And you don't put people in the position where they have a choice about complying. You are feet from them, with a weapon, aimed at their body, and three others are walking up behind before they know what's going on. For God's sake, America, stop the shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude of your police.
Hell, let him get a shot off. Nobody's near, right? You're all behind cover. Let him actually fire, or turn back to the house before you think about pulling a trigger.
I literally cannot find bodycam footage of an armed incident with UK police that isn't close-up and personal. And for them, "armed" more usually means a guy with a knife, guns are rare so dealing with them is even more unusual and unexpected.
But you don't just shoot a guy from that range with any weapon... you have literally NO IDEA what he's actually doing. Horrible situation, to have to approach someone potentially dangerous? Gosh, if only we had a force of people expressly trained to do just that.
You guys SERIOUSLY need a full review of police procedure and re-training, with weapons taken from anyone who fails it.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
That was: Suicide vests, height of multiple other attacks, knives, vehicles, potentially any other weapon, attacks on civilians actively in progress and confirmed, civilians trying to distract / fight the attackers, major incident, middle of central London. Three armed officers, in, within feet, close enough to touch them, take them all down, no police hurt, nobody else hurt except those with weapons.
"By law, the police shooting of suspects has to be independently investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission."
By law. For every single shot. You pull the trigger only to kill. That's it. A guy on a porch 100 yards away with nobody else visible isn't someone to kill without question.
Something is wrong with the way Americans train police. I don't think they know this, but American police are the butt of jokes around the world. They're not real cops.
In order to become a cop in America, you need a grand total of two years of community college, and to pass some extremely pathetic tests. In order to carry a gun as a cop in America, you have to pass some extremely pathetic qualifying exams, which are often cheated upon with the participation of management. In cop school, they're teaching recruits that there is a war on cops, even though this is the safest time in history to be a cop in America, and they are killing citizens in record numbers.
Everything is wrong with the way Americans train police.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They were also told it was a 1 story house. From the moment they rolled up and found a 2 story house, they should have been questioning the information they were given.
A police officer opened fire, shooting once, after the man quickly raised his hands and appeared to point a weapon at the officers, Livingston said.
That's what the police always say when they kill an unarmed civilian by mistake. But don't worry. Like in almost every case where a cop shoots someone without real justification, when it goes to trail the cop will just say he feared for his life and the odds are that the jury will buy it. And if you want to feel even worse about this, right now the caller is only looking at misdemeanor charges because, as he correctly stated on Twitter, calling in a false report is a misdemeanor and he didn't make the cops show up en masse nor did he make them pull the trigger. The DA may be able to creatively charge the caller with some contributing cause to a death, but I wouldn't bet that a jury would convict on it.
What we really need is for police departments nationwide to come up with a better way to investigate this stuff within reason so they don't just go in with guns blazing waiting for an innocent person to twitch so they can shoot him or her. There was a case a few years ago where an informant gave the police a wrong house number for a drug bust and police broke down the door of the house with the number they were given, a startled homeowner pulled a gun when seeing a bunch of strangers rush in and said homeowner was shot dead by the cops. Nobody got charged with anything in that one.
+1 I think there has been a concerted effort to persuade 'civilians' that being a cop is the equivalent of being in the military in terms of danger. Any level of response is justifiable when your life is 'continuously under threat.' What you see on TV is not representative of the average police officers daily life.
I just parsed the 2016 statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS):(https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshcfoi1.htm) and figured out that the fatal injury rate for 'Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers' is 14.6 (the rate is a bit complicated, but weighted by total hours worked by total employees in that profession, to make jobs comparable)
Police work: @14.6 - slightly less, but roughly equivalently dangerous to Cement Manufacturing, Construction Laboring, working in Fish-Farming, Landscaping.
Professions that are 50%+ more likely to kill you than police work: Farming/Ranching (23.1), truck driving (24.7), steel-working (25.1), refuse collection (34.1)
More than THREE TIMES as dangerous as being a police officer: Roofing (48.6) and Aircraft pilots (55.5) (presumably a lot of private pilots crash?).
The most dangerous jobs in America today? Being a commercial fisherman (nearly six times as dangerous as being a cop) and Forestry Logging (more than NINE times more dangerous).
In case you're thinking it's a sample-size thing: in 2016, (according to the BLS), 108 police officers were fatally injured doing their job. 101 roofers, 91 loggers, 570(!) truck drivers.
So let's take truck driving, a considerably more dangerous profession than being a police officer, as an example. By the way, you 'need' truck drivers - it's how the food gets to your supermarkets and the medicines to the hospital. Truck driving, unhappily, causes some 'civilian' deaths, for a bunch of reasons: job stress, some bad training, some drivers don't take the mandatory breaks, maybe some use stimulants, whatever. How about we all look the other way when that happens, because, hey, it's a dangerous job, man? A lot of those truck drivers die on the job, y'know: you'd have to be one to understand.
I believe we should hold police to a higher standard than truck drivers, not a lower one. Being in danger is no excuse at all for being sloppy.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Some people believe in fairy tales.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or send someone round the back to listen/peep through a window. Or, you know, sniff. Because they'd also been told the place was doused in gasoline. You'd be able to smell that a block away.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Police are unnecessarily jumpy these days it seems... "Better him than me" (even a bulletproof-jacketed me, with backup present). Whatever happened to backing down? To taking cover, to de-escalation, to providing space for cold blooded moves (as opposed to hot-blooded)? I wonder how much police pride is involved in all this?
Also, I wonder how the dispacher's words contribute to this? Do they say 'shots fired' as a statement of fact, or do they use words like 'unconfirmed' or 'alleged', especially if there is only one, unknown, witness reporting the incident.
Also, bring the other coward to justice, the one who gave the fool doxxer the fake address.
I have never understand how plea bargaining is not interfering with the course of justice.