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Kansas 'Swat' Perpetrator Had Already Been To Prison For Fake Bomb Threats (go.com)
More details are emerging about an online gamer whose fake call to Kansas police led to a fatal shooting:
- "After phoning in a false bomb threat to a Glendale, California TV station in 2015, Tyler Barriss threatened to kill his grandmother if she reported him, according to local reports and court documents." -- The Wichita Eagle
- "The Glendale Police Department confirmed to ABC News that Tyler Barriss made about 20 calls to universities and media outlets throughout the country around the time he was arrested for a bomb threat to Los Angeles ABC station KABC in 2015... He was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail, court records show." -- ABC News
- "Within months of his release in August, he had already become the target of a Los Angeles Police Department investigation into similar hoax calls... LAPD detectives were planning to meet with federal prosecutors to discuss their investigation..." -- The Los Angeles Times
- The Wichita Eagle reports that even after the police had fatally shot the person SWauTistic was pretending to be, he continued his phone call with the 911 operator for another 16 minutes -- on a call which lasted over half an hour.
- Brian Krebs reports that police may have been aided in their investigation by another reformed SWAT perpetrator -- adding that SWauTistic privately claimed to have already called in fake emergencies at approximately 100 schools and 10 homes.
Just last month SWauTistic's Twitter account showed him bragging about a bomb threat which caused the evacuation of a Dallas convention center, according to the Daily Beast -- after which SWauTistic encouraged his Twitter followers to also follow him on a second account, "just in case twitter suspends me for being a god." Later the 25-year-old tweeted that "if you can't pull off a swat without getting busted you're not a leet hacking God its that simple."
Barriss remains in jail in Los Angeles with no bond, though within three weeks he's expected to be extradited to Kansas for his next trial.
Unfortunately research has shown that its not the severity of the punishment that deters individuals from perpetrating those crimes, its the certainty of being caught. This individual knew the repercussions both legally and socially if he was caught, but he did it anyway because he was sure he could get away with it. He wasn't wrong either. Although he was caught, the current 911 system in this country makes it incredibly easy to hide your tracks. Various VoIP and online telephony services along with VPN's and fake registration info can make investigations much more challenging. In addition to that, 911 operators don't currently have the tools at their disposal to be absolutely sure where a call is coming from, especially in the cases of VoIP and mobile calls. We could do a lot more to stop this sort of criminal behavior before it even happens by making it a certainty that this kind of activity will be detected swiftly and dealt with.
There are much older societies, with bigger government than the US that have even more laws, but don't end up with the police slaughtering people left and right. There's a seemingly unique quality to US policing that results in more officer-involved shootings. Maybe it's the number of weapons in private hands, which means US police have to go into every encounter with a civilian as if it were against an armed combatant. Maybe it's just that policing in the US is a more macho, militarized affair.
I honestly don't know the answer. Maybe there's something unique about the US that makes us more likely to be violent.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Murder charges are not strict liability - you need to be able to show the accused intended the death. It's not enough for the accused to have merely caused the death through reckless stupidity
Quote: "Many states use the California definition of implied malice to describe an unintentional killing that is charged as murder because the defendant intended to do serious bodily injury, or acted with extreme recklessness." Calling a SWAT team to a home pretending that there is a hostage situation is extreme recklessness. If it ends with a person being dead, it is murder.