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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...
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.
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".
I think its simply because all the cops there are armed, and are taught that all situations they go to are life-threateningly dangerous (due to everyone, particularly criminals, having firearms themselves). As a result, cops in the USA have to be much more alert and ready to shoot to defend themselves.
the trouble then comes when you have so many cops which means that many of them will be relatively poorly trained. None of them get the kind of intensive firearms training a UK armed policeman (say) would get, because it wouldn't be possible to train them all to the required level.
I doubt this case was a SWAT team member shooting, but one of the beat cops who was there to provide support and was shitting himself that the suspect would come out guns blazing.
Either way, I doubt its possible to really improve the situation in the US, you have too many cops, too many guns, and as a result you have quantity over quality. These kinds of incidents are likely to happen occasionally (and they do occur less frequently that you are led to believe by the media as the media just loves to report them all).
in this case, lets hope the gamers are made an example of, big time. The cops should be finding them, prosecuting them, parading them before the media, keeping the whole "no more of this, we will come for you" message out there for the rest of the children who might think its a good idea to do this.
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.
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.
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
I live in Northern Ireland, a part of the UK that is friendly to firearms. All the police here commonly carry firearms and have the same risks. I own firearms, my neighbours own firearms etc.
We have more police officers in Northern Ireland than some States do... (more than Delaware, yet you still see more police shootings there).
Something just genuinely doesn't seem right.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Whoever made the call, as well as the officers who couldn't be bothered to Not shoot someone.
And this should be trivial.
The stupid kid that requested the swatting call posted on his twitter account "That house I had swatted is on the news"
The other stupid kid he was arguing with also posted screenshots of his direct message with the first stupid kid, providing the address as his own and telling him to come try something.
Twitter should have all of that logged along with their home or cell IPs, which would lead back to a name on an ISP account with an address.
Their gamer tags were also used and shown, which should similarly point to connection logs with IPs.
Only the 3rd stupid kid who actually placed the 911 call himself may possibly have not left a call or voip trail.
But seeing as this will be a murder charge, and they will soon if not already have in custody the kid requesting the swatting, I highly doubt that kid won't drop the swatters name and info if for no other reason than hoping he gets a less harsh sentence.
You know nothing will happen regarding the cop though.
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.
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.
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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