Slashdot Mirror
Kansas Swatting Perpetrator 'SWauTistic' Interviewed on Twitter (krebsonsecurity.com)
"That kids house that I swatted is on the news," tweeted "SWauTistic" -- before he realized he'd gotten somebody killed. Security researcher Brian Krebs reveals what happened next.
When it became apparent that a man had been killed as a result of the swatting, Swautistic tweeted that he didn't get anyone killed because he didn't pull the trigger. Swautistic soon changed his Twitter handle to @GoredTutor36, but KrebsOnSecurity managed to obtain several weeks' worth of tweets from Swautistic before his account was renamed. Those tweets indicate that Swautistic is a serial swatter -- meaning he has claimed responsibility for a number of other recent false reports to the police. Among the recent hoaxes he's taken credit for include a false report of a bomb threat at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that disrupted a high-profile public meeting on the net neutrality debate. Swautistic also has claimed responsibility for a hoax bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the Dallas Convention Center, and another bomb threat at a high school in Panama City, Fla, among others.
After tweeting about the incident extensively Friday afternoon, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by someone in control of the @GoredTutor36 Twitter account. GoredTutor36 said he's been the victim of swatting attempts himself, and that this was the reason he decided to start swatting others. He said the thrill of it "comes from having to hide from police via net connections." Asked about the FCC incident, @GoredTutor36 acknowledged it was his bomb threat. "Yep. Raped em," he wrote. "Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that," he wrote. "But I began making $ doing some swat requests."
Krebs' article also links to a police briefing with playback from the 911 call. "There is no question that police officers and first responders across the country need a great deal more training to bring the number of police shootings way down..." Krebs argues. "Also, all police officers and dispatchers need to be trained on what swatting is, how to spot the signs of a hoax, and how to minimize the risk of anyone getting harmed when responding to reports about hostage situations or bomb threats."
But he also argues that filing a false police report should be reclassified as a felony in all states.
After tweeting about the incident extensively Friday afternoon, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by someone in control of the @GoredTutor36 Twitter account. GoredTutor36 said he's been the victim of swatting attempts himself, and that this was the reason he decided to start swatting others. He said the thrill of it "comes from having to hide from police via net connections." Asked about the FCC incident, @GoredTutor36 acknowledged it was his bomb threat. "Yep. Raped em," he wrote. "Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that," he wrote. "But I began making $ doing some swat requests."
Krebs' article also links to a police briefing with playback from the 911 call. "There is no question that police officers and first responders across the country need a great deal more training to bring the number of police shootings way down..." Krebs argues. "Also, all police officers and dispatchers need to be trained on what swatting is, how to spot the signs of a hoax, and how to minimize the risk of anyone getting harmed when responding to reports about hostage situations or bomb threats."
But he also argues that filing a false police report should be reclassified as a felony in all states.
"I didn't kill anyone because I didn't pull the trigger"
Wow. No, you just fooled a bunch of heavily armed people into thinking they were going to be confronting an armed and dangerous person who had already killed one person. No way could you have POSSIBLY predicted that situation could potentially lead to a death.
This idiot should be locked away for a very, very long time to think about what he did.
On a separate note - the cops need to be royally reamed. They know swatting is a thing, they know getting the address wrong is a thing... yet they roll up and without any confirmation of what's going on they shoot the guy who answers the door. FFS, no hostage-taking murderer with a gun is going to open up the front door to the police without a hostage in front of them anyway.
10:1 the shooter had bad trigger discipline. Odds are even better that what blame the cops can't avoid will be so thinly distributed that pretty much no punishment results despite the fact they killed one of the people they're charged with protecting.
Probably didn't work out who it was.
This kids fucked. But he's *very* damn lucky Swatting isn't a felony, because Felony + Someone dies is enough to trigger a capital murder case in some states. And even if thats not the case wherever he is, theres a good chance all the cops would need is three felonies and the kid goes away for the best part of his life.
Oh, he'll be doing big time though, count on that much.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The cop who shot and the swatter should share a general populaiton cell for 20+ years for complicity in the murder.
Swatter obviously created a dangerous situation, but this danger was exacerbated by the typical behavior of American cops.
Cops were supposed to be professionals. Instead, they were trigger-happy to save their sorry hides and murdered an innocent man. The cop who shot has blood on his hands and should never be forgiven or seen as anything but a murderer.
The emergency dispatcher who didn't ask the right questions to determine if it was a prank is also somewhat negligent. The call was to the city hall, not 9-1-1, and described a different home than where the murder took place.
He begs to be made an example of, and it should be done pour encourager les autres.
We cannot have that in civil society.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The killing today in Colorado of a sheriff's deputy responding to a domestic violence call highlights the challenge faced by law enforcement officers.
A thousand cops being killed does not justify a single innocent person being killed by cops.
If they cannot do their jobs without being killed or killing innocents, it's time to replace the police. Close it down and create a new police force based on police in countries where crime is at a similar level but the death toll in police confrontations is much lower.
I don't like advertising this guys channel but as its relevant here is an interview a youtuber called Keemstar did with SWauTistic hours before he was arrested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Actually, as TFA points out, filing a false police report (which is esssentially what swatting is) *is* a felony in some juridictions but a misdemeanor in others. It's clearly a misdemeanor in California, but AFAICT can be either a misdemeanor *or* felony in Kansas depending on the severity. Since someone got killed, I'd guess this could fall into the felony category, in which case "Swautistic" could be going away for quite some time if prosecuted and found guilty in Kansas.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
The felony murder rule is:
When a person commits a felony, and as a result someone dies, it's murder.
A classic example would be a robbery. John and Rob plan to rob a convenience store. Rob shots the clerk. John claims "I didn't mean for anyone to get shot - I was just doing an armed robbery". John is guilty of felony murder because a) he was committing a felony and b) it resulted in death. There is a presumption that you know felonies are dangerous, and that you shouldn't commit felonies. So although John didn't WANT someone to die, he was criminally reckless by committing armed robbery, which he knew *could* result in death.
Another, perhaps more interesting example:
John and Rob plan an armed robbery of a convenience store. When they pull out their guns, an armed civilian behind them shots Rob, who later dies. John is once again guilty of felony murder. He didn't plan for Rob to die, but he did know that committing armed robbery could get someone killed.
And the unfortunate cop who pulled the trigger. 4 lives minimum, ruined.
The cop won't be punished. He'll be treated as a victim in this. The swatters will get good lawyers who will find some loophole in the law. The guy who answered the door is the only life that will have been ruined.
Uh, no. Police work is not all that dangerous of a job. Cops who die on the job mostly die from car accidents because they drive like idiots, or from heart attacks from all those donuts.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Americans had guns for more than two hundred years, but militarization of the police is a phenomenon that started with the war on drugs. Let's place blame where it belongs.
The "kid" is a 25 year old man-child.
The solution is for the cops to calm the heck down. Violent crime is at an all time low but the cops keep becoming more and more violent. We aren't In a warzone. Police shot and killed per year is at it's lowest since the early 1900s despite the obvious population increase. Far more die of heart attacks on duty. Maybe lay off the donuts AND the assault rifles.
Yes cops are people too, the problem is they aren't punished like people when they make mistakes, particularly mistakes that result in people dying. When you make the cops above the law and allow them to make these mistakes without punishment you create situations where the police shoot first and explain it later.
As in all police shootings the police reported the killed innocent reached for his waist band. Of course no weapon was found and he didn't actually reach for his waist band. Because of this a bad cop will remain on the force, a cop that shot first and killed an innocent father.
Cops need to be held responsible for their actions in the same way a doctor is held responsible when they make mistakes that result in someones death. In fact cops are about the only profession in the country where they can kill people through negligence and aren't punished for it. That's wrong and you should admit it.
That's because it is. In fact, to quote the US government's own National Institute of Justice, and confirmed by a fair bit of research, "The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment." It's not the severity of the penalty, but the likelihood of it occurring.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.