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Kansas 'Swat' Perpetrator Charged; Faces 11 More Years in Prison (latimes.com)

Jail time looms for 25-year-old Tyler Barriss, whose fake call to Kansas police led to a fatal shooting:
  • Barriss was charged with involuntary manslaughter, and if convicted "could face up to 11 years and three months in prison." He was also charged with making a false alarm, which is considered a felony. The District Attorney adds that others have also been identified as "potential suspects" in the case, but they're still deciding whether to charge them.
  • Friday Barriss gave his first interview to a local news outlet -- from jail. "Of course, you know, I feel a little of remorse for what happened," he tells KWCH. "I never intended for anyone to get shot and killed. I don't think during any attempted swatting anyone's intentions are for someone to get shot and killed..."

    Asked about the call, Barriss acknowledged that "It hasn't just affected my life, it's affected someone's family too. Someone lost their life. I understand the magnitude of what happened. It's not just affecting me because I'm sitting in jail. I know who it has affected. I understand all of that."
  • Barriss has also been charged in Calgary with public mischief, fraud and mischief for another false phone call, police said, though it's unlikely he'll ever be arrested unless he enters the country. Just six days before the fatal shooting, Barriss had made a nearly identical call to police officers in Canada, this time supplying the address of a well-known video gamer who livestreams on Twitch, and according to one eyewitness more than 20 police cars surrounded her apartment building for at least half an hour.

247 of 428 comments (clear)

  1. What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I never intended for anyone to get shot and killed. I don't think during any attempted swatting anyone's intentions are for someone to get shot and killed...

    You called in a situation that led to the police sending in armed, trigger happy troops. These guys are under immense pressure, expecting to have to deal with hostages, armed kidnappers, and whatever else. What the hell did you think would happen - the police would knock on the door politely, walk in calmly, and sit down for some milk and cookies?

    You didn't think. You just went and pulled the trigger, not caring about the potential consequences, acting like it was all a game.

    Sure, the Kansas police bear a part of the burden - the training of their SWAT teams (and other SWAT teams around the country) is far too militaristic, and they call them out far too quickly (although in fairness, that's not always obvious until after the event.) But the bulk of the burden of this "incident" (for lack of a better term.. maybe "debacle"?) falls squarely upon the guy who made the false report, and the culture that considers SWATting to be a "harmless prank".

    Maybe this will be a wake up call, and SWATting will cease to be a thing. But somehow, I doubt it.

    1. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Please quit making excuses for those psychos, okay? Now when the guy walks out onto his porch and he is a fat guy wearing nothing but shorts and you are with 20 other guys, you are ALL wearing enough body armor to pass a Robocop look alike contest, are armed to the teeth with both lethal AND non lethal weaponry AND have bullet proof shields that can take a 12 gauge shot dead on and despite all that you feel so threatened by a fat guy in a pair of shorts you feel you have NO other option but lethal force? Your cowardly ass doesn't need to be doing that damned job!

      I mean for fucks sake people the biggest gun one could possibly hide in those shorts still wouldn't have even scratched the paint on all that armor, yet despite outnumbering the guy 20 to 1, having armor and bulletproof shields AND enough firepower to rival most third world army battalions they STILL can't simply repeat a command or use a fucking taser or bean bag round? Really? Give me a fucking break! THIS, this right here, is what happens when you give a bunch of poorly trained yahoos army surplus hardware and if you can't keep your collective shit together despite having such a lopsided advantage and use one of the mountains of non lethal options at your dispoal? Then someone needs to call a spade a spade and tell these dumbasses to go into another kind of work, because they suck at their jobs worse than a porn star on a Bang bros set!

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    2. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by samkass · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Prankster"? That doesn't even begin to describe the act of getting armed police to think a life-or-death situation is going on, and that the perpetrators are your target. Even the best police occasionally make mistakes, and anyone who sets someone else up to be at the receiving end of a situation where deadly force is authorized has a reasonable chance of getting his target killed. The caller was the murderer and the police were his weapon, just as if he had hired a hit man.

      --
      E pluribus unum
    3. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Swatting is just plain retarded, I don't understand how can someone find it a 'funny prank'. Everything has limits and you don't joke about life threatening situations or stuff that can cause harm to others. During my studies I managed to spend a couple summers in the U.S. and I had a great time with fellow students, but I never understood some of their pranks (albeit by far not as dangerous as swatting) - it just wasn't funny for me. To me as an outsider it seems more like a cultural thing - there are just too many individuals lacking discipline or common sense to understand where are the boundaries.

      On the other hand American police is also world famous for employing some lethally dangerous morons. There just too many reports when innocent people were shot just because they made a bad move/reaction (maybe due to panic) when police guns were pointing at them. I don't think bulk of the burden is on the teenager - after all cops are individuals accountable for their own actions (they are not like a gun/knife operated by the teenager). They know swatting is happening, and they should keep that in mind while doing their job (sure, it makes it much harder, but deciding when to pull the trigger is the key of their training).

    4. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by johanw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Even the best police occasionally make mistakes

      Yes, but with the US police "mistakes" seem to be the norm and it is news when one of their innocent victims does not even gets hurt.

    5. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      the police would knock on the door politely, walk in calmly, and sit down for some milk and cookies?

      Well yes, that's how hostage situations are diffused in much of the rest of the world. The fact that swatting is a thing just shows how fucked up your police are in the first place.

    6. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

      Maximum penalty for that one - classify swatting as attempted homicide or homicide depending on the outcome.

      That would cut down the numbers quite fast. And no repeat offenders.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    7. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No.

      It's absolutely the troll's fault. This is what they want to happen, every time.

      If they were really concerned about someone's life, they would be calling in pizza's and chinese takeout, because at least then a business is out at most 25$. But again, if you send a Pizza to a drug dealer's house by accident, you may end up having the delivery person killed. However that is a much much lower possibility than a SWAT TEAM shooting all the residents of a building because they think someone inside has a bomb.

      The police/swat teams's culpability here is limited to bad policy or bad training. Whoever pulled the trigger, at most, should be assigned to a less stress-ful position (eg desk duty)

    8. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Calydor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Comparing it to hiring a hitman is actually the best analogy I've seen in all this mess.

      If you hire a hitman, you are guilty of the murder. So is the hitman. You are BOTH guilty. In the same vein, both the *spits* prankster AND the officer who fired the killing shot are guilty.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    9. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For murder there must be intent or premeditation.. I doubt the policeman knew he was sent to kill an innocent man. Manslaughter would be a more appropriate charge for him.

    10. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by msauve · · Score: 2

      You're wrong. He killed the guy, as he was the proximate cause of the death.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    11. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But the bulk of the burden of this "incident" (for lack of a better term.. maybe "debacle"?) falls squarely upon the guy who made the false report,

      Bull. Fucking. Shit. The bulk of the burden falls directly upon the cop who pulled the trigger. A lesser share of it goes to the piece of shit who called the cops. An even lesser share of it goes to the piece of shit who gave someone else's address when asked for his own. The cops were locked and loaded, the guy who called the cops pulled the trigger, but the guy who gave someone else's address to someone who wanted to have him killed pointed the gun.

      But you can never, ever take the ultimate responsibility out of the shooter's hands. He has the ultimate responsibility to prevent an unwarranted shooting, whether he is a cop or not. Anyone who cannot handle that responsibility should be disarmed immediately. That goes with the territory.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    12. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Kjella · · Score: 1

      because they suck at their jobs worse than a porn star on a Bang bros set!

      In other words they suck worse than a professional expert on sucking? That wasn't a very successful insult... suck more perhaps.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    13. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Besides, at that point the guy coming out of his house is not a criminal, not a "perp", but a member of the public. They have no idea what the guy is up to or if he is even armed, and his live comes before those of the responding officers. If the guy makes what they think might be a threatening move, their option is to take cover, maybe tase him, not shoot first on assuming the worst case scenario.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    14. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      He didn't pull a trigger. He killed no one. The cops did.
      It shouldn't be possible for cops to slaughter you in the middle of the night because they were trained to be cowards. They are completely off their mission.

      No, they aren't "completely off their mission" but messed up their mission. It's still the swatter's fault that they were expecting to deal with an armed killer situation.

      Now if the swatter had called for a pizza delivery service and the pizza delivery guy drove over someone in the driveway: that would have been different in that this consequence was not among the foreseeable ones. But if you call for a team of armed shooters giving them a life-and-death description to work with, someone getting killed is quite definitely part of the consequences foreseeable as possible.

    15. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Cederic · · Score: 1

      What did I think would happen? Luckily the summary offers an answer:

      more than 20 police cars surrounded her apartment building for at least half an hour

      Oh look. Identical fucking situation but instead of murdering some poor sod on his own doorstep the police used some fucking intelligence instead.

      Sorry, no, that's not what I think would happen. I think the US police would go in gung-ho and murder some poor cunt because that's how fucking stupid they are.

    16. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Biogoly · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wish I had some mod points for ya. This Barris guy is an idiot and deserves jail time and monetary fines (which unfortunately will never be collected from his NEET ass), but he certainly is not a murderer. I'm completely gobsmacked by how many people are willing to defend these jackboot gestapo squads. I mean, this was a residential neighborhood in Kansas for chrissakes and they approached the situation like they were clearing a block in Fallujah. Did they even do a minute of surveillance?

    17. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by echnaton192 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh no. I agree, undertrained, underpaid and trigger-happy american police forces played a big role in this.

      But this guy swatted multiple persons in multiple states! Even if our police is far less trigger happy, I am quite shure that you could get someone killed if you repeat the swatting often enough.

      This guy played russian roulette with other peoples lives countless times.

      - He should have been stopped long ago.
      - Police should be able to detect spoofed or suppressed caller IDs.
      - Police should de-escalate a hostage situation, not fire shots into unarmed people.

      But this was murder: Not only did he know that the US police forces are badly trained and militarized, so he was able to see the danger he was putting his victims into. He did it repeatedly so even by european standards I would argue that eventually, he will get someone killed or badly injured.

      He knew that but did not care - he even went to jail for swatting and continued. He knew of the danger. He did nothing to defuse the situation, he did everything to let the danger appear imminent. Now he got someone killed.

      He is a murderer. No police failure could change that.

    18. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by quonset · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's still obviously much more the police's fault than his.

      Hogwash. The responsibility for this man's death lies solely with the criminal who made the call. It's called proximate cause.

      But for his phone call, the police would never have gone to the residence and interacted with the man.

      This murder lies solely with the criminal whose panties got in an uproar and who thought he'd be tricky and get back at the guy. Congratulations, he played himself.

    19. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Phillip2 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Well, if you point a gun at someone, then pull the trigger, that is premeditation. So the issue is not murder or manslaughter, I would have thought. The policeman would claim to be operating in the course of protecting someones life (including his own).

      All the discussions here seem to be whose fault it was. Clearly, the caller has some responsibility, and also the police. But, at the same time, there has to be the issue of the gun obsessed violent society. Always easy to pass the blame on to other people.

    20. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by geekmux · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's still obviously much more the police's fault than his. They straight up murdered someone without even giving him time to react. A judgement was made based on incomplete information and a person was executed. Police being willing to murder someone over mere suspicions is the real issue. This idiot prankster should be punished but the murder of this man is a symptom of the way police are trained/operate. Now, they are trying to displace responsibility and clean their hands. In the end, the prankster didn't pull the trigger and there is no reasonable world in which one should expect to be killed by police over a prank phone call.

      Absolutely agree. Putting the spotlight 100% on the prankster is creating the perfect storm in which to simply bury the actions of SWAT behind the hype of a swatting story. I sure as hell hope not, as the family DESERVES a fair investigation of ALL parties involved. The prankster certainly had a part in this and earned his punishment, but he wasn't the one who pulled the trigger and ended an innocent mans life.

    21. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      Where is the fun? I mean, if you burn down a house you at least get to watch it burn, but when you SWAT someone, you rarely get the chance to be there to see them beat the guy down.

      Even if you ignore legality and all, it's not even FUN.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    22. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The Police should bear ALL of the responsibility for the killing. They did it. The charged man should bear ALL of the responsibility for the false report. He did it.

      See? Simple, factual, sane and correct.

      There should be plenty of room in the penalties available for false reports to satisfy the public need for punishment. The confusion that charging him with manslaughter creates will just make noise so the police can avoid their responsibility.

      The public in general will listen to that noise so they can avoid their responsibility. The police in the US can be a major problem and that fact is so different than how things "should" be that the surviving public just can't come to grips with the reality.

      First step. Don't let the police confuse the issue and facts. The police killed the man. The young man made the false report.

    23. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      What the hell did you think would happen - the police would knock on the door politely, walk in calmly, and sit down for some milk and cookies?

      Umm... yes, that's how you deal with hostage situations in most other parts of this planet. You knock at the door, you tell them to surrender and that there's someone here willing and able to talk to them if they want to so they could find a way out of the mess.

      Remember, you're standing behind a bulletproof shield while saying that. Unless the guy inside has a bazooka, you can still afterwards go in and gun everything down in sight should he actually be dumb enough to open fire. Because then you also have EVERY justification to level the building and then some.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    24. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by geekmux · · Score: 1, Informative

      "Prankster"? That doesn't even begin to describe the act of getting armed police to think a life-or-death situation is going on, and that the perpetrators are your target. Even the best police occasionally make mistakes, and anyone who sets someone else up to be at the receiving end of a situation where deadly force is authorized has a reasonable chance of getting his target killed.

      Speaking of being rather dismissive, an "occasional mistake" ended a mans life. I hope that the hype surrounding the concept of swatting doesn't bury the fact that a family deserves some answers for that fuck-up. Society has grown tired of finding the "occasional" happening perhaps more than necessary.

      The caller was the murderer and the police were his weapon, just as if he had hired a hit man.

      OK, enough with the ignorance already. Every US military leader would not take kindly to being labeled a mass murderer, and they certainly have engaged vast armies of "weapons" authorized to use deadly force. Also intent matters, which is exactly why he's being charged with involuntary manslaughter and not murder.

      To be clear, I'm not defending his actions one bit, and punishment should be served. That's not an excuse to escape reasoned thought and common sense.

    25. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He didn't make a 'prank call', stop calling it that. Read what he said to the emergency operators. He was convincing enough to get them to think this was a time critical situation. That they hadn't gotten time to ask around.

      If someone call in a bomb threat and say that the bomb will detonate in 45 minutes and gives enough information so that everyone involved takes the threat is serious enough, you are not going to want the responders to take a few hours to get a second or third source to verify the threat. You want them to take it seriously enough to act right away.

    26. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Uhhh you obviously haven't sen any of the bang bros starlets "work" because unless you want to look like you were slobbered on by a St. Bernard with a drooling problem? I really wouldn't call the results "a job well done" if you know what I mean.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    27. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by geekmux · · Score: 1

      The prankster certainly had a part in this and earned his punishment, but he wasn't the one who pulled the trigger and ended an innocent mans life.

      Culpability isn't a limited resource. The swatter is 100% responsible for calling a heavily armed force in and pretending a live-and-death situation, thus being fully responsible for an outcome that will occasionally occur in this situation. If you pull the trigger on someone with a single bullet somewhere in six chambers and the gun does kill him, of course you are not just 16% responsible for his death.

      That does not change that the policeman is 100% responsible for not being up to the requirements of this situation. There must be consequences for both, but the fault of the respective other does not lessen each of the involved person's blame in any manner.

      Your argument about culpability tends to fall flat when we have a legal system that has added aiding, abetting, and accessory as methods of differentiation that also tend to influence punishment. Another example of how hollow that can be is looking at the lack of charges against a bartender who aided the patron who ends up taking a life after driving drunk.

    28. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      How many times has Barriss called in a fake emergency? How many time has someone gotten hurt? You are an idiot.

    29. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And don't forget a modern SWAT unit has rubber bullets, bean bag rounds, tasers, flash bangs, they have tools up the ass that don't kill yet despite having more armor than a fricking knight AND shields that will take anything.he.could.possibly.be.carrying. their first reaction is to shoot the guy in the face?

      They are either trigger happy killers or they are cowards, neither should be in law enforcement. I mean he has a pair of shorts, they have 20 to 1 numbers AND top to bottom armor...and they couldn't find anything less than a shot to the face a reasonable response? Really? The fact that anybody is sticking up for these clowns makes me want to puke, I don't care if the guy who called it in said he was Hannibal the cannibal there is NO EXCUSE for going lethal force in this situation, none!

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    30. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by gnasher719 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's still obviously much more the police's fault than his.

      You're a fucking idiot. This brainless psychopath sat at home and decided to have fun by sending the police into a situation where the expected a dangerous armed person holding hostages. Without him doing this, the police would have stayed at their police station and nothing would have happened.

    31. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      He didn't pull a trigger. He killed no one. The cops did.

      Although I think you are a fucking idiot for thinking like that, let's assume you are right and this case was the cop's fault.

      Can we then agree that any slashdot reader in the future who has read that the cops are mindless killers, and who makes a swatting call, is now fully aware that he or she is sending mindless killers to a person's home, and is therefore guilty of premeditated murder?

    32. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Memnos · · Score: 1

      I think there is plenty of fault to go around to all parties in this -- the police and the SWATter. The actions of the police, at least the officer who fired and perhaps others, rise to the level of manslaughter. Calling in the police under the pretext the SWATter used should be a felony, and any deaths that resulted from that should be considered felony murder. The police higher up in the administration, and the department as a whole, should be civilly liable in a wrongful death claim. In other words, the SWATter was an amoral shithead who committed a felonious act and got someone killed, the cop who shot him was a fucking incompetent who had no business wearing a badge and may not have gone in intending to kill someone, but did. And his superiors and the department were grossly negligent because they put cops on the street who were not trained well enough to deal with a situation like this in any other way going in on a hair trigger. There's no need to single out THE individual at fault here -- there's several. The fault of one does not exonerate the others.

      --
      I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
    33. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1, Insightful

      But this guy swatted multiple persons in multiple states! Even if our police is far less trigger happy, I am quite shure that you could get someone killed if you repeat the swatting often enough.

      Get someone killed? Yes. Kill someone? No.

      He is a murderer. No police failure could change that.

      No, he is not a murderer. He is an accomplice or accessory to murder. The cop who killed the victim is a murderer.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    34. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are nearly a million police officers in the US. How many of these sort of mistakes do you hear about every day? The number of officers making mistakes is a tiny fraction of 1%, and most of those officers making mistakes don't do it often. Yes there are bad apples out there, but the overwhelming majority of officers are not. And I would not say it is "the norm". If you say that, then you'd have to say that Americans killing/raping/robbing other Americans is "the norm" too. It's not. It's a fairly rare exception.

    35. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      OK, enough with the ignorance already. Every US military leader would not take kindly to being labeled a mass murderer,

      ...but most of them absolutely are, because they were not fighting a war to protect people, but to protect profits . Who gives a fuck how they feel about being called what they are? Ignorance is no excuse, either. It's your responsibility to do your homework before killing people.

      Also intent matters, which is exactly why he's being charged with involuntary manslaughter and not murder.

      That's wrong, though. His intent was to get someone killed. He should be charged with first-degree murder, since it was "willful and premeditated with malice aforethought." Or with being an accessory or accomplice to same, as I have argued, although I am fast coming around to the idea that the cop is the accomplice (and guilty of voluntary manslaughter) and the SWATter is the murderer in the first degree. He planned the murder (via SWAT team) and then carried it out. The only reason anyone SWATs anyone is because they know that it is dangerous, and that the danger goes up to and includes the death of the victim (and possibly innocent bystanders, maybe even babies.)

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    36. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      It's still obviously much more the police's fault than his.

      No, it's not.

      Password requirements on banks can be lax (I don't think any have ever asked me to change my password,) because bank fraud is a serious felony, it doesn't happen enough to warrant that level of inconvenience. Similarly, printing fraudulent currency is a serious felony, so it doesn't happen, in spite of it being really easy to do.

      We live in a society where certain conveniences exist as a byproduct of the implementation as opposed to a zero-trust paradigm wherein whatever-can-be-done flies.

      One of those conveniences is that a person in a hostage situation can call the police and have it resolved. The caller assumes responsibility my making the call, and it's not a lot of responsibility, it's simply enough to say they are calling for a legitimate reason and understand the seriousness of the situation they are trying to resolve.

      If someone takes advantage of the implementation (in this case that the police will use whatever means they deem necessary to resolve a fucking hostage situation with minimal risk to the hostages) it is 100% on them.

      It's not the fault of the police that the presumed hostage-taker stuck his head out of the door and offered a clear shot. It's not the fault of the guy who got shot. It's the fault of the guy who made the fake call for help.

      The real world has real consequences, what people do impacts other people more often than not, and we have a process in place for removing bad actors from society.

      There's no difference between a cold blooded killer who strangles people and a cold blooded killer who shots people aside from Mr. Colt having made all men equal.

      There's no difference between a cold blooded killer who strangles or shoots people and a cold blooded killer who manipulates others into doing it for them.

      Just because this retard got participation trophies his whole life and in turn grew up with an ego far exceeding his own standing in life and thought himself justified in lashing out when another retard he'd never even met did something to "cross" him in an online setting, he doesn't get the vindication of having any part of what happened as a result offloaded onto another party.

      The police were doing their job, they were resolving a hostage situation. The person who made the false report is guilty, not them.

    37. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yet another "Bad Apple" apologist. You, and ever other person defending the cops no matter what, ALWAYS fall back on using the phrase "there's a few bad apples".

      The complete saying is "A few bad apples spoil the barrel." The whole point is to recognize that one or two instances of rot will poison the whole thing. Great, there's some "bad apple" cops. GET RID OF THEM. VIGOROUSLY FIRE THEM. Those small handful of shitty officers have such an enormously-out sized negative effect on The People's respect for the rule of law that I can't find the words to describe it.

      And for the love of god, stop defending them to the exclusion of logic and reason.

    38. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by bryanp · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No, this is not a good analogy. Swatting was recognized as a prank before this incident. And intent matters.

      Anyone who has ever thought of swatting as a prank is an idiot who should be removed from the gene pool.

      Intent matters you say? The intent of swatting is to send an armed force to someone's house, believing they may have to kill someone. Swatting needs to be stomped down on hard. Ruin some lives. Make an example of them. Make others think "Hmm, maybe I should just stick to posting shit on 4chan."

      --
      "An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
    39. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by mysidia · · Score: 1

      In the end, the prankster didn't pull the trigger and there is no reasonable world in which one should expect to be killed by police over a prank phone call.

      Exactly. That's why the police/man who pulled the trigger ought to get Life imprisonment, and the person who did the SWAT'ing should get 20 years.

    40. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by bryanp · · Score: 1

      He didn't pull a trigger. He killed no one.

      Sounds like Felony Murder to me. Here's the classic example for those who have forgotten:

      My buddy and I decide to rob a bank. We have no weapons of any sort, we're going to fake it. I stay in the getaway card outside. My buddy goes in, tells the clerk to give him the money. The guy standing in line next to him panics, has a heart attack, and dies. The getaway driver (that would be me) is guilty of Felony Murder.

      --
      "An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
    41. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      By that reasoning, the cop wasn't the murderer either. The guy was killed by a bullet that wasn't even attached to the gun he was holding at the time.

      This is the point I keep going back and forth on. But no, your post has clinched it for me. The cop is the murderer. Because the whole point of sending a cop and not a cruise missile or a manhack or a doberman is that he's supposed to be capable of not firing the gun.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    42. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Suppose that there is a real situation with a dangerous armed person holding hostages, and I call the police but there is a typo in the address that I give. Suppose that the police does their SWAT thing at this wrong address and kills someone innocent. Who's fault is it now?

    43. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by mysidia · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's called proximate cause

      Only in a Civil case.

      The responsibility for this man's death lies solely with the criminal who made the call.

      Obviously not..... there's something wrong here, that a random person anywhere in the world can make a caller-id spoofed VoIP call to a police department anywhere in the US: impersonate the addressee/target, conjure up a pretend emergency, and incite sufficient panic that the police go on a shooting spree and kill people.

      How about: The simplified proximate CAUSE of the death is unreasonable actions by the police, which the SWATter could not have entirely anticipated, But the police in this situation Violated their Duty to serve and protect the public and killed innocent people. What about that? Where are the consequences for that, for the officers' gross misconduct?

    44. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by jerry33 · · Score: 1

      In what utopian country do the police "ask the neighbors, eye witnesses, anyone if they saw or heard something. were there other complaints related to the victim or his address" ? Not America, where the police barge in shoot the pets and people and then figure out what's happened knowing that they are very unlikely to be reprimanded. It's gotten to the point where many people are more afraid of the police than they are of the criminals--especially if those people are in a minority group. A sorry state. The only fix is to disarm about 90% of the police because most problems that the police deal with do not require firearms to mitigate--and then rigorously train the 10% that are authorized to carry firearms. Of course because the amount we pay the police is pathetic, it should be no big surprise that the police force acts the way they do.

    45. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Solandri · · Score: 1, Troll

      The SWAT team was told not only that was there already a fatality and a hostage situation, but that the house had been doused in gasoline. So the fact that the victim answered the door in his shorts and apparently unarmed didn't eliminate the perceived danger. It also took flash bangs and tasers out of their toolbox (those can ignite gasoline fumes). Rubber bullets and especially bean bags do not work as well through a glass patio door. They also thought time was a factor as other random occurrences can ignite gasoline fumes. Barriss deliberately manufactured a fictional situation in which the police's "safe-or-urgent" setting was slid all the way to the "urgent" side.

      You're trying to analyze the situation as a "police kill an innocent" vs "police don't kill an innocent" trade-off. It's not. It's "police don't kill an innocent" vs "police allow an innocent to be killed" (in a real hostage situation because they're acting too carefully).

    46. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1, Informative

      Yes there are bad apples out there, but the overwhelming majority of officers are not.

      Unfortunately, the "overwhelming majority" is overwhelmingly likely to cover up for the bad apples.

      There are nearly a million police officers in the US. How many of these sort of mistakes do you hear about every day?

      In answer to your question, We hear about police shooting unarmed civilians at a rate of more than one per week. In 2015, US police shot 94 unarmed civilians. In 2016, the number was 51 and in 2017, it was 68.

      If you could add in the number of "armed" civilians that were shot where the "bad apple" cop placed his "drop weapon" next to the victim, and where his "good apple" partner backed his story, that number would go way up.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    47. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by echnaton192 · · Score: 1

      This is not how it works. His call was the conditio sine qua non the shooting would not have happened. He knew of the danger his criminal actions posed to other peoples lifes, he simply did not care.

      He did it for thrills and for money.

      He killed this guy by proxy, but he still killed that guy.

    48. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by starblazer · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Well, if you point a gun at someone, then pull the trigger, that is premeditation.

      Unless the SWAT officer left the station "OH BOY I GET TO KILL SOMEONE TODAY!!!!" it's not premeditation. They are trained to be quick with the trigger because if they aren't, they may be the ones dead. Add adrenaline and stress to the mix and the trigger finger may get a little too quick, which is what happened here.

      ... But, at the same time, there has to be the issue of the gun obsessed violent society.

      That and the fact that the local police are becoming more militarized. I get it, Chicago may need a SWAT team or two, but podunkville police with a town population of 10k doesn't need an armored assault vehicle.

    49. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Ichijo · · Score: 1

      Should all swatters be charged with attempted murder even when nobody was injured or killed?

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
    50. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Should all swatters be charged with attempted murder even when nobody was injured or killed?

      Yes. That was an easy one! If it's not appropriate, then let them bargain their way down to whatever is.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    51. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by BronsCon · · Score: 2

      We know of one call he's made in the US and one in Canada. Since we're talking about how police operate in the US, only one of those is relevant; so, the short answer is, here has been only one call that we can assume unless he admits to more, and someone has gotten hurt one time. His call-to-death incident rate is, as far as we can reasonably know, is 100%.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    52. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Sweet logic. Now apply the identical argument to Muslims.

      Muslims are not paid (by taxpayers) to protect us (the taxpayers).

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    53. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by arth1 · · Score: 1

      Speaking of being rather dismissive, the term was "Even the Best Police occasionally make mistakes" which is to say

      Which is to say that since the majority of the police cannot logically be "The Best", mistakes must be far more common than just occasional.

      If the police poses a threat to innocent people, something needs to be done.
      I am never more in fear of my life than when I see a police officer, and that should not be the case.

      As said, a few bad apples spoils the barrel, and the barrel is not in a healthy state. The whole barrel needs to go.

    54. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by arth1 · · Score: 1

      So, according to you, the guy who actually pumped bullets into an unarmed man is in no way responsible for killing him?

      I hate binary thinking like this. It's not an either/or. Adding blame to one side does not remove an iota of blame from the other side. Culpability and guilt are not finite resources that must be assigned to one or the other.

      The caller did his crimes.
      The 911 operators did their crimes.
      The cops did their crimes.
      Let all of them be judged for what they did, not what someone else did, and without attempting to assign "the" blame. There's enough for all of them.

    55. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They are trained to be quick with the trigger because if they aren't, they may be the ones dead.

      And that would not be a worse outcome than a dead innocent non-police.

      Police, firemen and emergency medical personnel used to be expected to put themselves in harm's way to protect people. Protecting themselves was secondary to protecting innocents. They took oaths on doing so, and people were proud of them for it.
      When did this change?

    56. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by eclectro · · Score: 1

      He is a murderer. No police failure could change that.

      And why the charges are woefully inadequate. He needs to be charged like a murderer.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    57. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by sjames · · Score: 2

      Some things actually call for a much lower error rate. Operating a nuclear plant, flying commercial jet, killing people with your gun, etc.

      In two of those 3 cases, any incident results in a thorough investigation and changes to procedures and practices to make sure it doesn't happen again. In the third, it gets swept under the rug.

    58. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      In the early 90's, I worked in IT with a guy who was an EMT. He got out of that job because the risk of contracting AIDS on a daily basis by trying to treat knife/gunshot wounds by infected people was just getting too great.

    59. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Greyfox · · Score: 1

      No, he thought exactly that and boasted about it online. Now that he realizes he might face consequences for his actions, that's what he's remorseful about.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    60. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The SWAT team was told not only that was there already a fatality and a hostage situation, but that the house had been doused in gasoline. So the fact that the victim answered the door in his shorts and apparently unarmed didn't eliminate the perceived danger.

      They killed the hostage. In any reasonable police training exercise they would have been failed as shooting an unarmed person who answered the door. Do you know who is forced, at gunpoint, to answer the door unarmed in hostage situations? Hostages.

      Rationalize and lie best you can. Those police have a murderer hiding behind the law and some of them know it.

    61. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by sjames · · Score: 1

      Firemen and emergency medical personnel seem to still do that.

    62. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      You haven't actually read Judge Dredd, have you?

      --
      No sig today...
    63. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Barriss told them that he had doused the house with gasoline. The cop didn't shoot for fear of his own safety, he shot because he believed the guy may have been planning to burn the whole house down (which would have killed the hostages that they believed were in it).

      Did the guy come out of the house holding a signal flare or lighter? No? Then why are so many people repeating this excuse?

    64. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Which does the law always punish more severely?

      The person who isn't the cop. Unfortunately.

    65. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      You're a fucking idiot. This brainless psychopath sat at home and decided to have fun by sending the police into a situation where the expected a dangerous armed person holding hostages. Without him doing this, the police would have stayed at their police station and nothing would have happened.

      YOUR fucking idiocy. The cops rolled up and shot the first guy the saw within seconds. Note that in this pranker's history of making false calls, not one person got shot in their underwear after coming out with their hands up. Cops get false or misleading calls all the time, and manage to do it without getting their guns off. Especially when the description given of the house completely doesn't match the one the cops are facing. At a distance. With body armor and shields capable of taking direct shots.

    66. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by arth1 · · Score: 2

      Firemen and emergency medical personnel seem to still do that.

      Firemen, at least, yes. And people like Medicines Sans Frontiers.
      And I am proud of them. They willingly put their lives on the line so all of us can have better lives.

      I'm sure there still are policemen who would do that too, and not just look out for #1. But they seem to be few and far between these days.

      I have no respect for police anymore. None. I have fear.
      That is not the way it should be, and it is not my fault.

    67. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by HiThere · · Score: 2

      I agree that it doesn't appear to be premeditated homicide by the police, but manslaughter seems too mild a term. What do you call murder by premeditated incompetence?

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    68. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Millennium · · Score: 1

      When a hitman kills, we hold the person who hired him to be equally culpable in the killing: in essence, a second perpetrator. Should it he any different for someone who essentially tricked the police into acting as his hitman?

    69. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Millennium · · Score: 1

      He tricked the police into acting as his personal assassins, showing depraved indifference in doing so. He should he prosecuted as such, as should all SWATters: murder when someone dies, attempted murder in other cases.

      And no, I don't care if you find it funny to watch SchrÃdinger's Snuff Films on Twitch.

    70. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 2

      My observation of two people I know who became police officers is that the job and their colleagues changed them from nice people into utter bastards who prejudge everyone.

      1% is bullshit. There might be 1% who maintain a reasonable outlook and don't prejudge people and situations. But the rest do not. They didn't get into the police by getting straight As.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    71. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      Sweet logic. Now apply the identical argument to Muslims.

      Muslims are not paid (by taxpayers) to protect us (the taxpayers).

      Well some are.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    72. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by grumpy_old_grandpa · · Score: 1

      > When did this change?

      Maybe around the time Dave Grossman, Blackwater and others started to train domestic police to use military combat tactics?

    73. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      The police should protect the public first. They should protect themselves second. I think sometimes they have this backwards.

      And the courts at the moment are biased towards the police. There's a "test" that involves what the "reasonable officer" would do. In the Supreme Court decision the juries should take into account the split moment thinking. which means juries are being instructed to focus on that primarily, and it's far too easy to sway a jury to stop thinking about what happened before and after and instead only think about "what would a reasonable officer do in that moment when he saw the suspect's hands move?" And then sway the juries into what a "reasonable officer is".

      I think this is wrong. Sure, that is certainly what an average officer would do in the situation, but average is not the same as reasonable. A reasonable officer would be better trained, and would use some brains and judgement (that is what "reasonable" means). It's time for a jury to decide that the officer was not being reasonable in some of these shootings. Citizens should not have to live in fear of the people responsible for protecting them.

    74. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Brain surgeons are people too, and they make mistakes. Why blame them when they sneezed at the critical part of the surgery?

    75. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      At the very least they should be charged with assault with a deadly weapon, which is a felony.

    76. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Juries are given certain instructions. Those instructions might need to say "what if it was your mother that was shot, how would you feel?"

      I've been on a jury, and I'm amazed at how many people instantly and reflexively assume the police are always right. The evidence may be flimsy and torn apart, but someone will say
      "the police arrested him, they must have had a good reason" and refuse to budge from that position.

    77. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Sure, soon the firemen won't go out on calls, because it's too dangerous. Police will respond to 911 calls saying "have you asked the intruder to leave nicely?"

      We pay these people for a certain job, and that's to protect the public. And it's a very very good job if you can make it past middle age. It's an amazing retirement plan for many cities.

    78. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Swatting is a prank in the same way that disconnecting someone's brake lines is a prank.

    79. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Kohath · · Score: 1

      He's a murderer AND the police are also guilty of murder (or at least manslaughter). AND the training officers and higher-ups are probably guilty of negligence or some other gross failure in their duty.

      There's no "police forces played a role" unless you consider being the trigger man in a murder "playing a role".

      US police are a clear and present danger. You keep to yourself and stay out of bad neighborhoods, you're mostly safe from criminals. But the police stalk us all on the highways everyday — and they could decide to be "in fear for their lives" and kill anyone at any time.

    80. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by arth1 · · Score: 1

      As any copy will tell you, better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

      You miss the point. Better for whom?

      We didn't get a police force to better protect the police. If that's what they're good at, we're better off paying protection money to private thugs, who at least has an interest in not cutting off their income.

    81. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by green1 · · Score: 1

      While the Calgary police are generally pretty good at not over reacting to these sorts of situations, and are far less trigger happy than their American counterparts, the situation also was not the same.
      The difference in Calgary was that the victim was warned by someone else who found out about the swatting, and she was able to call the police herself to warn them. The police were therefore on alert that this may be a prank and able to approach it differently, as well as work through it with her on the phone before approaching. The perpetrator of the swatting also didn't include the bit about gasoline and such, so a small bit of the urgency was removed from the situation in comparison to the US incident.

    82. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by aussie_a · · Score: 1

      Of course the prankster should have known that the police would kill the first person they saw when he made the phone call. All Americans should know that any lineman they see is potentially moments away from killing someone and should react accordingly.

      The police have no fault in this situation. Everyone else should know what they're like.

    83. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Unfortunately, the "overwhelming majority" is overwhelmingly likely to cover up for the bad apples.

      My cure for the "blue wall" problem would be to take police malpractice judgements directly out of the police retirement fund, rather than the city's general fund. Good officers would then rush to turn in the bad apples.

    84. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Unless the SWAT officer left the station "OH BOY I GET TO KILL SOMEONE TODAY!!!!" it's not premeditation.

      In a recent case here in Arizona, this phrase was literally etched into the officer's weapon, and the judge at his trial decided not to let the jury know this, or show the bodycam video of the officer behaving like a psycho, because he felt it might be "prejudicial." The jury decided to acquit.

    85. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      My cure for the "blue wall" problem would be to take police malpractice judgements directly out of the police retirement fund, rather than the city's general fund.

      That's not bad. I like that idea. Even better, I'd like to know why a police officer can retire with a full government pension and collect in their early 40's and then go on to have an entire second career while they're getting paid by the taxpayers for nothing.

      I'm cool with them getting a good pension, but they should have to wait until they are retirement age.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    86. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      I am never more in fear of my life than when I see a police officer, and that should not be the case.

      You do understand that may be completely on you, don't you? Have you sought counseling? Are you engaged in criminal enterprises?

      As said, a few bad apples spoils the barrel, and the barrel is not in a healthy state. The whole barrel needs to go.

      Yes, that is the claim of some activists. It doesn't always work out the way it is expected to . .. or is the outcome exactly what is expected but unstated?

      Baltimore Police Backed Away From a Community That Protested Against Them, and Guess What Happened?

      --
      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
    87. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Millennium · · Score: 1

      watting was recognized as a prank before this incident.

      Indeed it was. This was not only a wrong de ision, it was obviously wrong even the time. It is time to recognize it as the attempted murder it really is.

      And intent matters.

      Malice aforethought matters, and this does not always mean intent. Depraved indifference to the risk to another person's life and limb has been recognized as malice aforethought for centuries.

      This is why the decision to recognize SWATting as a mere "prank" was wrong, and must be changed. Only someone with a horribly depraved indifference to the victim's life and limb would ever go through with such a reckless thing. They are murderers, and should be treated as such.

    88. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 2

      All that may be true, but I still hold that the police shouldn't have shot him. The police are as culpable as the "prankster" in this case, because it might have been a bad communications, misread map, an incorrect address given, or any number of other possible scenarios that got them hot to trot down to said address. Police shouldn't go around shooting people until they've verified the existence of a weapon and an immediate danger to others. Not either or, not suspected, but verified. That is what we pay them for. As for going home after their shift, that's highly desired and the primary reason they should always work in a minimum of pairs and wear bullet proof vests/jackets.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    89. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by uncqual · · Score: 1

      State laws vary on how premeditation is defined for murder. However, in some states,"premeditation" can occur in just seconds or possibly even in just one second. Typically, the time needs to be sufficient to form the conscious intent to kill and then act on it after enough time for a reasonable person to second guess the decision.

      --
      Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
    90. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      I didn't really understand what you were trying to say. Could you wipe the spittle off your chin and try again?

    91. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      Even the USSR and DDR had less police per citizen

      You're kind of a dishonest douchebag, aren't you? While the USSR no longer exists, Russia as of 2011 had 1.28 million police officers, for a population that's only one third the size of the US.

      Of course if you bothered to check global statistics, you would find that the number of police per citizen in the USA is quite normal. But that wouldn't support your idiotic "police state" narrative so it's better left ignored, eh?

    92. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      According to the statistics, it is more likely the police will kill a civilian than a police officer getting killed.

      I should damn well hope so. A police force which is more likely to be killed by criminals than to kill criminals would be one shitty ass excuse for a police force.

    93. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      No, you are wrong.
      The police went in after being told that someone had MURDERED his father and was holding his mother and sister hostage.
      The police went in with the intention of saving the hostages and a male walked out the door and they made a mistake.
      Had the call been real the officer would have been a hero.
      The intent of the SWATER was to commit a felony for money and or the LOLs.
      The officer should lose his job the SWATER should go to jail for a very long time.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    94. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      It's gotten to the point where many people are more afraid of the police than they are of the criminals

      It's gotten to the point where many people are more afraid of vaccines than they are of disease. The fact that many people are afraid of something says nothing about whether those fears are justified. More often it says a lot more about how shitty your educational system and mass media are.

    95. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by Spamalope · · Score: 1

      Your tard helmet is too tight if you can't understand his analogy. I'm sure you're the smartest one on the short bus though, so you've got that going for you.

    96. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Ahem, "getting" the police to kill someone should OF COURSE require much much more than an anonymous phone call. REALLY.

      Let's try this again

      GETTING THE POLICE TO KILL SOMEONE SHOULD REQUIRE MUCH MUCH MORE THAN AN ANONYMOUS PHONE CALL.

      Kansas *and* Georgia disagree:

      https://www.washingtonpost.com...

      The Georgia case is even worse than described if you search for the details.

    97. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Kohath · · Score: 1

      The number of officers making mistakes is a tiny fraction of 1%, and most of those officers making mistakes don't do it often. Yes there are bad apples out there, but the overwhelming majority of officers are not. And I would not say it is "the norm".

      The norm seems to be the "good" officers covering for and protecting the bad ones. And the norm seems to be for police to use violence whenever rather than trying to avoid bringing violence into otherwise non-violent encounters.

      The norm doesn't seem to put the protection of life first. And serving the public seems to rank lower than milking the public for traffic fines.

    98. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      Thanks for your input spammy. You've given me so much to think about.

    99. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by lowkeyknight · · Score: 2

      I'd agree, with the caveat that they should get their pension, regardless of age, if injured on incapacitated in the line, or otherwise medically unfit to work (ether through work related issues like PTSD, or from just plain nasty life shit like cancer).

    100. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by stealth_finger · · Score: 2

      at least reckless endangerment.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    101. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by DeVilla · · Score: 1

      There's no doubt, what this guy has done is very wrong. But say I have a system that will launch a missile whenever anyone on IRC sends a message that says "launch a missile". If someone sends a message to IRC saying "launch a missile, lol", is the only problem here that the person sent the message? I think it's a serious problem to have such a system in the first place.

    102. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by DutchUncle · · Score: 1

      No. The SWATter *could* and probably *did* anticipate unreasonable actions by the police, because he had incited them with a lurid report of violence and mayhem. Yes, the policeman was way too trigger-happy and shot way too early, which is "malpractice" at the least. The swatter deserves death by slow torture.

    103. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by DutchUncle · · Score: 1

      Agreed, there are separate responsibilities. The 911 operators did nothing wrong, from what I've read. They simply passed along the information from, and reactions to, the call. The policeman on the scene did malpractice (at the least) in that he fired at someone whose hands were empty. The caller is the most guilty IMO precisely because he incited a riot - OK, a killing - with no more compunctions than a gamer machine-gunning pixels.

    104. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by DutchUncle · · Score: 1

      I object to the words "prank" and "prankster". Ordering someone a double anchovy pizza is a "prank". Ordering them an armed SWAT team is incitement to riot.

    105. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by ljw1004 · · Score: 1

      The responsibility for this man's death lies solely with the criminal who made the call. It's called proximate cause. But for his phone call, the police would never have gone to the residence and interacted with the man.

      It's not proximate cause. Proximate cause has two requirements -- the "but-for" test you mentioned, and also whether the action is "sufficient", i.e. could it have naturally and foreseeably led to the death.

      On basis of past evidence, NO similar swatting had ever before lead to a death. So it'd be hard to argue proximate cause for manslaughter. Indeed the prosecutors aren't even trying to argue it. They're only arguing felony false alarm.

      Say, imagine you invite someone for a drive in your car, and they get in, and die in a road accident. But for your invitation they wouldn't have got in. And you know there's a 1 in 100,000 chance of a car trip leading to death by accident, which is higher than the chance of death by swatting. So there'd be a stronger argument that you were the cause of the death, then there is that Barris was the cause of the swatting death.

    106. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by orgelspieler · · Score: 1

      Unless the SWAT officer left the station "OH BOY I GET TO KILL SOMEONE TODAY!!!!" it's not premeditation.

      Even leaving the station telling people that wouldn't be sufficient. Not for a cop. They can literally say, "I'm gonna kill this motherfucker" and still get acquitted, as long as the victim is black.

    107. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by mysidia · · Score: 1

      because he had incited them with a lurid report of violence and mayhem.

      It is not unusual for people calling in police for help to panic and overstate situations, and possibly relay some incorrect information --- the call to the police emergency line is not the formal police report, and their job is to respond to the situation objectively -- and not "incited".

      In 99% of SWAT'ing attempts nobody died, and the effect was an annoying prank --- the phony caller Ought to have but MIGHT NOT have considered the risk. Certainly we cannot infer intent to cause physical harm, AND it's a little bit unreasonable to call it reckless as well.

      The reason the SWATer should go to jail for 20 years is for tampering with law enforcement that can cause lives to be lost at other places while they're busy responding to a fake incident, AND not to mention the inconvenience and damages to innocent people -- which I believe the SWAT'er ought to pay a financial penalty to provide reparations for.

      Yes, the policeman was way too trigger-happy and shot way too early, which is "malpractice" at the least. The swatter deserves death by slow torture.

      He shot and killed someone who was not remotely a threat, and you think the LEO might be guilty of ONLY malpractice, what??

    108. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Agent0013 · · Score: 1

      The SWAT team was told not only that was there already a fatality and a hostage situation, but that the house had been doused in gasoline.

      That would be the house that was said in the call to be a different number of stories from the one the police were shooting people at. If you want to believe the other statements, why does the style of house not matter?

      --

      -- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
    109. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by Agent0013 · · Score: 1

      This guy swatted online gamers who streamed their computer desk with them playing online. So you do get to see the beat down, from the comfort of your own home.

      --

      -- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
    110. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by DutchUncle · · Score: 1

      No, I don't think "only" "malpractice", I said WAY TOO TRIGGER-HAPPY. There is ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTION that the "blue wall of silence" that descends after a police shooting is not just reprehensible and conduct unbecoming an officer, but a criminal conspiracy. There is NO QUESTION that policemen should be held accountable for their actions, especially when those actions violate basic protocols that I was taught in *wartime* - IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET so you don't shoot anyone you wouldn't definitely want to shoot (like your squadmates, or the squad off to your flank). From the story as published, there was no need to shoot yet just because someone's hand was near their waist, that's total bullshit - and we can judge from the fact that none of the other officers involved seemed to think there was any need to shoot, and they supposedly had the guy completely covered. This is clearly the failure of judgment of one policeman, and he should be judged for it.

      That said, because we hire policemen to go into dangerous situations for the rest of us, we do need a category like "malpractice", along the lines of a surgeon: the patient dies, though the surgeon had all the best intentions, and witnesses and/or review can't point to any specific thing done wrong that led to the death. But for that to work, we also need ALL policemen to give a complete after-action report and not automatically hide and delay and deny that anything went wrong. The rules that an officer is not questioned for 24 or 48 hours after an incident don't make sense with the lessons of after-action debriefing techniques in other services.

    111. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by sjames · · Score: 1

      Good example. Consider stereotactic surgery and robots that filter the surgeons movements to eliminate errors.

      Meanwhile, police stick with the shoot if it twitches approach even while it has proven disastrous over and over.

    112. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      One call plus one call equals 2 calls.

      I'll repeat:

      Since we're talking about how police operate in the US, only one of those is relevant

      No matter Americans crappy level of education, you should be able to at least get that bit right.

      Apparently, reading comprehension isn't big wherever you're from? Get off your fucking high horse. The comment that sparked the question I was answering was:

      Yes, but with the US police "mistakes" seem to be the norm and it is news when one of their innocent victims does not even gets hurt.

      The call to police in Canada is not a call to police in the US and, thus, does not count toward the total of calls to police in the US. The calls-to-kills ratio for this guy, in the US, which is what we were discussing, is still 1:1 and, last I checked, that is 100%.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    113. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      because unless you want to look like you were slobbered on by a St. Bernard with a drooling problem?

      I totally do, and if you knew what was good for you, you would too.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    114. Re: What did you THINK would happen? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Negligent homicide?

      It is Voluntary manslaughter, "the killing of a human being in which the offender had no prior intent to kill and acted during the heat of passion, under circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to become emotionally or mentally disturbed to the point that they can't reasonably control their emotions." One might argue that the cop was less than a reasonable person, but that still doesn't make it murder in the second degree, "any intentional murder with malice aforethought, but [...] not premeditated or planned." The cop who killed this guy presumably was not targeting him ahead of time; he didn't even know him. I'd argue that the actual crime is somewhere in between those things. A reasonable person wouldn't do that job if they couldn't hold their shit together. But that's not what is meant by reasonable here, which is simply a person capable of reason. It's an unuseful definition in many ways, because a person can be reasonable about some things, and unreasonable about others. Are they therefore a reasonable person, or an unreasonable one?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    115. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by BronsCon · · Score: 1
      Right. Look at the message that's replying to.

      Yes, but with the US police "mistakes" seem to be the norm and it is news when one of their innocent victims does not even gets hurt.

      Since you seem to like bringing in outside facts when it suits you, it's quite likely he's done it before, since we already know of 2.

      That would be why I said "We know of one call he's made in the US and one in Canada." We can assume there were others, yes, but that's purely conjecture. It's a good thing the US legal system runs on provable facts and not just conjecture; only the one provable call in the US will matter in court, so it's only call that's really relevant if we're discussing the trial. Which we are.

      Imagine a system that runs on conjecture... All one would have to do is see you make awkward eye contact with a kid, assume you're a child rapist, and report that they believe you've had inappropriate contact with a kid in the past, no evidence necessary. If they make a convincing enough argument, you go to prison. Is that the system you want? Because that's the system you're advocating for.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    116. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      How quickly you forget. that's two (2) calls right there, 2 (two). Since the US legal system runs on facts, and you just admitted there were two (2) verified cases, proven facts. 2 times, 1 in Canada and 1 in the US = 2.

      He'll be charged based on the US call; he may have violated Canada's laws with the second, but they'd have to try him for that, which they can only do if he sets foot in Canada as that's not something for which we'll extradite someone. He's already been charged in Canada and there are warrants out, but that all means nothing in a US court. That call may or may not be raised to show a pattern of behavior but it is still not relelvant to this discussion. Why? It's simple, actually. You see, what you originally replied to (before I came along) was the following:

      Yes, but with the US police "mistakes" seem to be the norm and it is news when one of their innocent victims does not even gets hurt.

      Now, let me jump ahead and pick apart the rest of your post; I promise it's in the service of making my point and I'll circle back to this once done.

      Not a very good attempt at moving the goalposts to focus on the trial part and not the police part you were arguing before.

      The goalposts are still right where they were; the Canadian call did not involve US police.

      What conjecture? You're the one who originally told us there were 2 calls!

      Actually, no. That was TFS; perhaps you should read it again?

      And back on to my point...

      Since the Canadian call did not involve US police, US police did not have an opportunity to fuck it up; therefore, it is irrelevant to a discussion about the prevalence of mistakes made by US police. He gave them one opportunity to fuck up (that we know of) and they took it. 1:1 = 100%.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    117. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      We are discussing this guy's calls to US police. That we know of, yes, this is the only time.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    118. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Once again, the scope of the discussion includes US police responding to this guy's prank calls. Since US police did not respond to the Canadian call... well... There was one relevant call that we know of; a fact which I point out in the rest of the first sentence you half-quoted. Stop being an obtuse fuck, it's not a good look for you.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    119. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by BronsCon · · Score: 1

      Sorry, I didn't re-read the original comment (from over a week ago) before replying and I recalled putting that detail in the first sentence. Since I did not, replace "sentence" with "paragraph" and carry on. As for the scope, it has been the behavior of police in the US in response to the one call he placed in the US since I made my very first comment in this thread; it's not my fault you continually shift the scope in your head looking for an angle to attack. Any perceived shifting of scope on my part has been my attempt to steer the scope back where it started every time you've shifted it. Quite often, yes, someone will mention an irrelevant detail in an attempt to point out that the detail is irrelevant; the irrelevant detail, in this case, is the Canadian call, originally mentioned in TFS.

      Again, quit being an obtuse fuck, it's not a good look for you.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
    120. Re:What did you THINK would happen? by BronsCon · · Score: 1
      I'm not pretending it's irrelevant; last I checked, Canada is not part of the US. I mentioned the Canadian call in order to honestly answer the following question:

      How many times has Barriss called in a fake emergency?

      I then stated that it is irrelevant in the scope of the post to which that question was asked, which is it as that post stated the following:

      Yes, but with the US police "mistakes" seem to be the norm and it is news when one of their innocent victims does not even gets hurt.

      It would have been disingenuous of me to outright ignore the Canadian call; it would have been likewise to not also point out that it was irrelevant after I mentioned it. In other words, had I not mentioned that call I would have been called out for that instead, probably also by you; but you knew that already, as did anyone with half a brain who's reading this.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  2. Psychopath by The+Evil+Atheist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    His earlier response shows he's a psychopath, so there' no doubt that he's only feeling remorseful "for the cameras", so to speak.

    --
    Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
    1. Re: Psychopath by xenog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, this stood out for me too. The guy is a psychopath. I read some statements he posted anonymously previously, and his mind seems quite warped. He enjoys doing this, putting other people in dangerous situations. I think he wanted samebody to eventually get killed. That makes him a sadist. He is dangerous, and he'll still be dangerous when released from prison. He should remain under surveillance afterwards. These people do not think like regular people do. The way their minds work, they may just as well be another species.

    2. Re: Psychopath by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nah, they're quite normal. He didn't expect to get caught. Now that he's been caught, he's saying anything he thinks might get him out of trouble. It's isn't a mental illness, it's just mental immaturity.

      And yes, I meant that literally - he is acting like a small child. Excuses, begging, fake apologies... It's disgusting to see that in a grown man.

    3. Re:Psychopath by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      His earlier response shows he's a psychopath, so there' no doubt that he's only feeling remorseful "for the cameras", so to speak.

      He said basically "I understand that I'm not the only one who suffered. The family of the victim is also suffering".

      That's a psychopath for you. And when people say they are sorry for the family of the victim, they should first and foremost feel sorry for the victim, who is now lying in a coffin six foot deep.

    4. Re: Psychopath by coolsnowmen · · Score: 1

      The fact is anyone can turn to into mr.hyde, and thinking it can't happen to you or someone you know well is why people always say they are shocked when a neighbor or family or whatnot commits an atrocity.

      Citation required. Everything I've read says psychopathy is basically set before people graduate HS. This is much different to me than, my neighbor could just randomly become a psychopath.

    5. Re: Psychopath by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      Yes, this stood out for me too. The guy is a psychopath. I read some statements he posted anonymously previously, and his mind seems quite warped. He enjoys doing this, putting other people in dangerous situations. I think he wanted samebody to eventually get killed. That makes him a sadist. He is dangerous, and he'll still be dangerous when released from prison. He should remain under surveillance afterwards. These people do not think like regular people do. The way their minds work, they may just as well be another species.

      Then why release him at all?

      His deliberate action caused someone's death, and he knew there was a very high probability it could do so. He's as guilty as someone playing Russian Roulette but with the gun pointed at another person.

      Why should he ever see freedom again?

  3. Good for him! by ls671 · · Score: 1

    Good for him! It makes you worry about the ones smart enough to avoid getting caught although.

    SWAT teams should better confirm their targets anyway...

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  4. And the police by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    As a European the sole focus on the author of the call is really stunning. Itâ(TM)s like itâ(TM)s only his fault and not in any way the fault of your police who tend to shoot way too many innocent people. EU has twice the number of inhabitant as the US and how many EU citizen get killed by the Police? For Germany it is 15x less. why? because in Europe police officer know that there will be consequences for killing an innocent citizen. In US most of the police officer just go away with it.

    1. Re:And the police by gibbsjoh · · Score: 1

      Also as a European, I do fully understand that if a heavily armed team like a SWAT team is sent in, they will be expecting a certain situation. Now, the question is, why were they and not a nomal police unit sent in on the basis of one call? (I'm not saying there wasn't a reason, just thinking out loud.) I agree that the US and other places have issues with police using excessive force but in this case their actions were the result of a multitude of contributory factors. Highly armed response units like this are trained to shoot because generally that's what they need to do.

      --
      -- "...I'm a bad guy because I, well, I sing some rock-and-roll songs." M. Manson
    2. Re:And the police by Oligonicella · · Score: 2

      Did you not read what the content of the call was or does that not factor into your understanding of the situation? They were under the impression that a murder had been committed and hostages were in immediate danger. **THAT'S** why they didn't send only one officer.

    3. Re: And the police by Catbeller · · Score: 1

      Which had nothing to do with armored cops being trained to kill civilians freely.

    4. Re:And the police by Megol · · Score: 1

      Ridiculous! Did you know that the amount of people regularly carrying loaded guns in the US is larger than that in the EU?

      In order to be able to carry a gun on your person ready to use in the EU you have to show that you have a reason for that (under severe threat of deadly violence), you have to be in a position where you have no reason to have constant police protection and you have to be sane, very experienced with handling weapons etc. Very few people will ever get that permission - and rightly so IMO.

      That leaves the people that carry weapons because of their jobs - police, military and some private groups protecting some objects (very limited). The later is generally only licensed to carry less lethal weapons like batons, stun-guns etc.

      "But I've heard that people can own guns even in Europe" you say? Yes but the weapons are to be transported in such a way that they can't be immediately used, they should only be transported when it is required (to /from shops, repairmen, competitions, shooting range, hunting ground) and every gun owner is expected to know and follow the laws. Which includes not transporting loaded weapons, not transporting them ready to use (often trigger locks etc. are expected) and often in a transport case that not only protects the weapon itself but also can be locked and in any delays getting the weapon out and ready.

      Why this wall of text? Because if you don't understand that a police force that have good reason to expect the person they are talking to are carrying a legal or illegal weapon loaded and ready to use also have a lower level before using their own weapons - well...

    5. Re:And the police by Cederic · · Score: 1

      I can understand the heavily armed response, I just don't understand why heavily armed police aren't also highly trained.

      Highly armed response units like this are trained to shoot because generally that's what they need to do.

      No. Normally they need to be present in case a situation escalates, but most of their deployments end peacefully or without shots being fired. They should be trained to shoot only when necessary.

      On this occasion it pretty fucking clearly wasn't necessary.

    6. Re:And the police by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Ridiculous! Did you know that the amount of people regularly carrying loaded guns in the US is larger than that in the EU?

      That's an argument for US police being more careful not to murder innocents, not less careful.

      Legal US carry permit holders have a lot lower rate of killing innocents than police killing innocents. I'd be a lot more comfortable in a tense situation with a legal carry permit holder than a police officer. If a carry permit holder makes a mistake and shoots me, he actually faces some consequences.

    7. Re:And the police by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      The police shoot fewer of you Europeans because you're a bunch of milquetoast, disarmed beta sheep. You are no threat to anyone who is a little better trained in hand to hand and a little stronger. Two cops with a taser can easily deal with any twit with a bat or knife.

      Over in the USA we are all a bunch of bad-asses who have enough guns and ammo to literally kill everyone and everything else on the planet with plenty of ammo to spare. There's a gun for every man, woman and child over here. Therefore, the cops over here are a lot more cautious if they perceive a threat. Most serious criminals are armed with firearms. (this paragraph is tongue in cheek, in case you missed it, though it is mostly true).

      Honestly though, our stats aren't as bad as you make them out to be.

      According to the FBI UCR, the total number of arrests (not traffic stops but arrests) in 2015 was 10,797,088. Out of all those arrests, approximately 965 were fatally shot. Of those, 564 were armed with a gun, 281 had a weapon of some kind, only 90 were unarmed and essentially all of them were attacking officers, resisting arrest or attempting to flee.

      OTOH, there have only been about 54 unjustified police killings in the last 10 years, or about 5 per year So the actual numbers say if you are being arrested, you have a roughly 5 in 11 million chance of being unjustifiably killed by police. I will take those odds any day.

      If you pull a gun on the cops, you are 110x more likely to be shot and killed, which most people over here feel is appropriate.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    8. Re:And the police by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      What you're saying is that lots fewer people in the EU leave their home armed, not that lots fewer people in the EU have guns in their house (although that's likely true also). This is a raid on somebody's home.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    9. Re: And the police by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Civilians in the middle of a criminal action involving the lives of others are stripped of their right to live.

      That includes police, which are civilians. They are not military.

      The cop acted under the premise that there was already a murder,

      Then he acted wrongly on multiple bases; both trusting unconfirmed information, and with an inappropriate response.

      Under those assumptions, he is justified to shoot to kill, even if no immediate threat to himself evident.

      You could literally not be more wrong. The only case in which he is justified to shoot to kill is if an immediate threat to someone is evident, and that was not the case.

      The problem is that they should have confirmed the threat before acting,

      That's a problem with the actions of the police, but it's the problem with your argument. Further, it is the only problem required to torpedo it completely. They should have confirmed the report before acting, because it is not news that people sometimes make false reports to the police. There's several laws which address it for just this reason. But of course, as we all know, most police are spectacularly ignorant of the law, because knowing the law ain't their job. It should be.

      but I doubt that individual cop will get any serious repercussions other than the knowledge he killed an innocent guy for no reason.

      Probably true.

      The POS that concocted the incident, HE is responsible for first degree murder and should be threated as such.

      And the cop is guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and should be treated as such. It's not murder one, or even murder in the second, but it is the wrongful killing of another human being.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. only 11 years.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    for maliciously reporting a fake crime with the intent of fucking that person up by cop proxy.. and then getting someone killed as a result of those actions...

    and he's a repeat offender..

    what.. the.. fuck.

  6. One down, at least one to go by bradley13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, so this douchebag will get what's coming to him. We're still missing at least one person, though: The cop who shot an innocent, unarmed person. You know, the guy who did the actual killing.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:One down, at least one to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > The cop who shot an innocent, unarmed person.

      And the whole chain of command. It's the superior's dammed job to create and maintain an environment where this doesn't happen, and putting limb and life at top priority.

    2. Re:One down, at least one to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      DA said they're still determining if they're going to charge the cop or not, so that's not decided yet. But the caller was an easier decision, I guess.

      I'm still wondering about the guy who gave the caller a wrong address -- did he know the victim? did he know if was a real address? why did he pick that one?

    3. Re:One down, at least one to go by bradley13 · · Score: 1

      DA said they're still determining if they're going to charge the cop or not, so that's not decided yet. But the caller was an easier decision, I guess.

      Person A kills person B. No obvious extenuating circumstances, seeing as Person B wasn't armed, was not threatening Person A, in fact wasn't even near Person A. This should not be a difficult decision - and _would_not_be_ if the guy weren't a cop. The only real question is what to charge him with.

      I'm still wondering about the guy who gave the caller a wrong address -- did he know the victim? did he know if was a real address? why did he pick that one?

      Yeah, that's more difficult, because it really depends on what he knew. What did he think the address was for? Did he really expect a swatting incident? And, as you say, why _that_ particular address. Crawling inside the guy's head to find this out is impossible, so I don't think a criminal charge will stick ("beyond a reasonable doubt"). However, a civil suit seems entirely appropriate, since the standard of proof is lower. He can at least pay financial damages to the family he helped destroy.

      The only one that requires some clarification

      --
      Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    4. Re:One down, at least one to go by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      Ok, so this douchebag will get what's coming to him. We're still missing at least one person, though: The cop who shot an innocent, unarmed person. You know, the guy who did the actual killing.

      Except for the part where he went in expecting a hostage situation and the presumed hostage-taker presented a clear headshot. He's not responsible for that, the guy who made the call is. Living in society carries with it certain responsibilities - like not calling in fake hostage situations. As a result, the police aren't trained for fake hostage situations because they don't happen enough to warrant the hesitation that would result in dead hostages in the 99.9999% of real hostage situations. The guy isn't just a douchebag, he's a cold blooded killer, even if he was too much of a spineless coward to stalk his victim and pull the trigger himself. Being extra pathetic isn't a reason to shift the blame to someone else.

    5. Re:One down, at least one to go by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Except for the part where he went in expecting a hostage situation and the presumed hostage-taker presented a clear headshot.

      Changes nothing. The police force could have had a live feed of the hostage taker eating human babies, and it wouldn't have given justification to shooting an unarmed man who came out with his hands raised up. But to go down this line of attempted apologia - for all the cop knew the man walking out the door was a hostage himself.

      Of course it's not going to happen, but this incompetent cop with an itchy trigger finger needs to spend more time in prison than the prankster, as he's the one who shot and killed an innocent man for no reason.

    6. Re:One down, at least one to go by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Part of the original call was that gasoline had been poured inside the house. If that report was real it wouldn't take a gun to kill three more people, just a little butane lighter; the police knew that.

      Did the man come out of the house holding a cigarette lighter or signal flare he could have used to set the place on fire? If not, all you have here is another bullshit excuse for an inexcusable shooting.

    7. Re:One down, at least one to go by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      I agree. Plus, the police chief and SWAT team leader must be absolute imbeciles to not be cognizant that "swatting" is a thing over the past several years and failed to train their staff to exercise some caution when they have not ascertained the threat. They should be fired.

      That and cops get false or misleading calls all. the. time. Anyone who can't assess the actual situation as it actually happens has no business holding a gun as a cop.

    8. Re:One down, at least one to go by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      Changes nothing. The police force could have had a live feed of the hostage taker eating human babies, and it wouldn't have given justification to shooting an unarmed man who came out with his hands raised up.

      Oh, I see, you're a Hillary supporter.

    9. Re:One down, at least one to go by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Uh, no. But thanks for the most bizarre non sequitur I've seen in a while.

    10. Re:One down, at least one to go by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Except for the part where he went in expecting a hostage situation and the presumed hostage-taker presented a clear headshot. He's not responsible for that, the guy who made the call is.

      That’s absolutely unacceptable. The police are not allowed to exist as a murder squad for anyone who can tell a story to a 911 operator.

      As a result, the police aren't trained for fake hostage situations

      Training isn't the point. If police are trained to be a murder squad for 911 storytellers, then the training officers and the higher-ups who approved that training are also guilty and should also face trial and jail time upon conviction.

      And Kansas should disband all police forces where this it true, to replace them with a corps dedicated to protecting and serving the public rather than on-demand mayhem.

      Being extra pathetic isn't a reason to shift the blame to someone else.

      Blame is shared, not shifted.

    11. Re:One down, at least one to go by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      Uh, no. But thanks for the most bizarre non sequitur I've seen in a while.

      If you aren't aware of Hillary's baby-eating pedo-ring you aren't following modern politics at all.

    12. Re:One down, at least one to go by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      That’s absolutely unacceptable. The police are not allowed to exist as a murder squad for anyone who can tell a story to a 911 operator.

      They aren't, that's why the shitbag who called them is going to jail. Really he should be getting execution, but the system is slow to adjust to changing dynamics.

    13. Re:One down, at least one to go by Kohath · · Score: 1

      That’s absolutely unacceptable. The police are not allowed to exist as a murder squad for anyone who can tell a story to a 911 operator.

      They aren't, that's why the shitbag who called them is going to jail. Really he should be getting execution, but the system is slow to adjust to changing dynamics.

      The officer who pulled the trigger needs to face similar consequences. And everyone else in the chain of command of that department should lose their jobs, unless they can truthfully testify that the trigger man was acting wrongfully against procedure.

      The police were the danger to the public in this case. The caller just pointed the way.

    14. Re:One down, at least one to go by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      The officer who pulled the trigger needs to face similar consequences.

      Not even remotely true. He should, if anything, get grief pay and therapy. He took a life because he was manipulated by a psychopath. He did everything right, he took a shot at someone who every indication he had suggested was a hostage taker who had just moments prior killed his family and may still be armed. You are in fact a shitbag for not only not seeing this, but commenting on it with some obscene sense of moral righteousness, you aren't.

    15. Re:One down, at least one to go by Kohath · · Score: 1

      He took a life because he was manipulated by a psychopath.

      He took a life because he opened fire on someone without assessing the situation. No one else assessed the situation either. They just decided to shoot first and find out what's going on later. They're a menace to society and need to be treated like anyone else who'd go in shooting based on little more than rumors.

      He did everything right, he took a shot at someone who every indication...

      No verified reports. No visible weapon or any other indication of danger. Just a story he heard second or third hand.

      You are in fact a shitbag for not only not seeing this, but commenting on it with some obscene sense of moral righteousness, you aren't.

      I want the police to stop murdering innocent people because they can't be bothered to learn what's going on before opening fire on whoever is in front of them. If that's too much to ask of the police, then society should eliminate the police entirely and replace them with an organization dedicated to protecting life and serving the public.

      Stop murdering people.

    16. Re:One down, at least one to go by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      You have a poor understanding of the intricacies of society and how practical systems are implemented. To do what you suggest would involve all the legitimate hostage situations to result in greater loss of innocent lives. Not all things are black and white, the police aren't universally bad, whatever your Antifa-like mind might think. From a practical standpoint the best solution is simply to treat these "pranksters" as the psychopathic killers they are.

  7. Re: Too harsh IMHO. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    He called the police and described a situation that would likely require deadly force. The poor person answering the door not knowing this could have reached behind himself to scratch his back, but the picture painted to the police led them to believe a gun may be imminently presented.

    While he didnâ(TM)t pull the trigger, and likely the officer did too soon, none of that would have happened without that initial call.

    It would be like tossing your car keys to a friend you know is drunk. He gets into an accident killing a person, and you try to say thatâ(TM)s not your fault at all. Itâ(TM)s not 100% your fault, but it couldnâ(TM)t have happened without you.

  8. Re: Too harsh IMHO. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's an absurd excuse. When numerous armed law enforcement officers show up and have been told there's a dangerous suspect, it's easy to envision that a person might get shot. A prank call is Bart Simpson calling Moe's Tavern and asking for Seymour Butts. This goes well beyond a prank call, especially because he's done it multiple times. Once hes sentenced in the US, I'd like to see him extradited to Canada to face justice there, as well. He might well serve more than 11 years in prison, and I have no problem with that.

  9. what about the officer? by aepervius · · Score: 1

    What about the officer which shot first , like a proper cowboy, without assessing the situation ? He pretty much share the responsibility and his a disgrace to "protect and server"... Scott free like any shooter like him ?

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
    1. Re: what about the officer? by Catbeller · · Score: 2

      Share, hell. He is the sole killer.

    2. Re:what about the officer? by fafalone · · Score: 4, Informative

      He was outside, alone, surrounded by 20 armed officers, all of whom were behind car doors, wearing body armor, at distance. In the half a second it would have taken to confirm if he had a gun, he could have killed.. let's see here... yeah, ZERO people. Reflect on that jackass. Not being sure goes way beyond a mistake, it's straight up murder.

    3. Re:what about the officer? by Uberbah · · Score: 2

      He supposed had the building rigged, and could have killed all of his hostages in a second.

      Then shooting to kill was still an asinine idea, if he was holding a dead mans switch. Just another bullshit excuse for trigger happy cops.

      If he had a gun, he still could have shot someone - a headshot would kill someone easily, even with nothing more than wimpy little 9mm girl's purse gun.

      Not at range at armored cops with bulletproof shields.

      Trying to pretend there is no way he could have been dangerous is silly.

      Trying to pretend there was any justification for this shooting is willful authoritarian dumbfuckery. For all the cop knew the man walking out and complying with instructions was a hostage.

    4. Re:what about the officer? by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Everyone shoots to kill. Shooting to wound or at the other guy's gun is a Hollywood fantasy. Criminals don't survive being shot because the cop was trying to wound them, they survive because they got lucky.

      Shields and armor are only resistant, not bullet proof, and there are many exposed areas (neck, face, arms, legs) where a bullet can kill you even with body armor, to say nothing of hitting an artery and you bleed out in a minute. Unless you want the cops knocking in doors with APCs, they are still very much at risk when entering a home where violence has occurred.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    5. Re:what about the officer? by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      The assessment was that the shooter had called and confessed to shooting and murdering his parents and holding his sister hostage (or something similar). The police officer killed an innocent man in retrospect, but at the moment he fired, that was what the assessment was.

      The asshole who perpetrated the swatting pulled the trigger with his phone call, as far as I am concerned. He has a history of bomb threats and swattings and he apparently is skilled at doing this. Justice would be taking this piece of human excrement sociopath out in a field with a blindfold and giving a rifle to every person in the dead man's family. Let them get justice for their loved one.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    6. Re:what about the officer? by Kohath · · Score: 1

      SWAT teams consists of humans - humans make mistakes. Yes even fatal ones.

      ... they were sent in expecting a situation where a moments hesitation to shoot to kill could have killed a lot of people!

      Reflect upon that for a second.

      Upon reflection, SWAT teams are too dangerous to innocents and far too unaccountable for their mistakes to be allowed to continue to exist. It's too bad, because there are genuine situations where SWAT tactics could protect the public. But if SWAT officers are going to shoot before they learn what's happening, and others are going to defend that, then we can't have SWAT teams.

      If police would go back to protecting life and serving the public, these incidents would be a lot less common.

    7. Re:what about the officer? by Agent0013 · · Score: 1

      The risk is what they get paid for. Not killing innocent people is what their job is supposed to be about.

      --

      -- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
    8. Re:what about the officer? by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      The risk is what they get paid for. Not killing innocent people is what their job is supposed to be about.

      Really?? What are you 12 years old? Cops make an average of $52k/year, the average software engineer makes $92k. How much risk does your job entail? They sure as hell do not get paid commensurate with the risk that they put themselves in. They don't do it for the money, most cops do it because they want to help people and protect society from bad guys... If you can't figure that out, you may need to lay off your medical marijuana, because it's making you stupid.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    9. Re:what about the officer? by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Everyone shoots to kill. Shooting to wound or at the other guy's gun is a Hollywood fantasy.

      Know what else is a Hollywood fantasy? Getting off a hip shot, at range, at armored targets in cover. But this guy didn't have a gun. I don't know about these cops, but I learned to always be sure of what I was shooting at when I took basic firearms safety.

      When I was eight. And this man wasn't carrying anything, much less something that looked like a gun.

      Shields and armor are only resistant, not bullet proof

      Ballistic shields are bullet proof. If the man came out with a .50 caliber rifle at the ready position it might have been a different story, but that wasn't the case.

      Really?? What are you 12 years old? Cops make an average of $52k/year, the average software engineer makes $92k. How much risk does your job entail? They sure as hell do not get paid commensurate with the risk that they put themselves in.

      Are you? Being a cop isn't even in the top ten of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. Loggers, fishermen, roofers, garbage men, truckers, taxi drivers, pilots and ag workers all have it harder than cops do. And we don't allow any of those people to literally beat your brains out in the street for no reason, with impunity. Take out car accidents - which don't have anything to do with cops getting their guns off - and they aren't even in the top 20.

  10. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you rob a 7-11 at gun point, and the clerk pulls a gun in self defense and accidently shoots a bystander, not only might you get charged with murder the clerk might not be.

    If someone dies as a result of a crime you committed, you can be charged with murder.

    In this case, the 'prank' was to commit a felony by intentionally reporting a false alarm. For the express purpose of having an armed force dispatched into a private residence, and to maximize their tension by leading them to believe they were likely going into an extremely volatile situation with an armed murderer.

    "He didn't pull the trigger."

    So fucking what? What's next? You'll be telling me that mafia bosses who send thugs to intimidate people aren't responsible for any injuries or deaths that result...

  11. "a little of remorse" by DrXym · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Throw this asshole in prison. He deserves the maximum sentence under law.

    1. Re:"a little of remorse" by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Which is eleven years according to the summary, for involuntary manslaughter. It's not murder without intent. He's a dumb-ass, not a murderer.

    2. Re:"a little of remorse" by gravewax · · Score: 1

      IF you look at his past and posts I think Murder would have been more appropriate charge, it seems obvious his intent was to get someone hurt or killed, though I guess for prosecutors manslaughter will be the easier to prove and at least keeps him off the streets for a few more years.

    3. Re:"a little of remorse" by Nite_Hawk · · Score: 2

      IF you look at his past and posts I think Murder would have been more appropriate charge, it seems obvious his intent was to get someone hurt or killed, though I guess for prosecutors manslaughter will be the easier to prove and at least keeps him off the streets for a few more years.

      Personally I wouldn't be opposed to murder charges with the possibility of death penalty (let a jury decide his fate). It's one thing for a stupid 15yo kid to do this their first time (though they still should be punished).

      "Barriss, 25, was already well known to local law enforcement. Glendale Police Sgt. Daniel Suttles said he was behind at least two dozen fake bomb threats in the area in recent years, including incidents that prompted the evacuations of television stations and an elementary school."

      "In May 2016, he pleaded no contest to making a false bomb threat and was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail" "He was released on Jan. 20, 2017. A day later, he was arrested in the San Fernando Valley and spent another seven months in jail"

      âoeHe knows exactly what to say. He is very meticulous,â Suttles said. âoeHe knows what a 911 operator will ask and is convincing.â

      He's shown by his repeated actions that he has no interest in being redeemed. Punishment has not deterred him, and now someone innocent has died. He needs to be permanently denied the ability to do this again.

  12. YAAFM by Oligonicella · · Score: 1

    Look it up.

  13. 15,000 life sentences woo hoo ha ha hah!!!1!!1!!! by Reverend+Green · · Score: 1

    Feed the Gulag!

  14. Re: Too harsh IMHO. by Reverend+Green · · Score: 1

    How many more murders will these trigger-happy law enforcers commit while this dumb kid rots in a torture camp?

  15. Good reply. Other issues. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    You mentioned several important issues: 1) Police are sometimes "trigger happy troops". 2) Police are "under immense pressure". Yes! Difficult job. 3) "Kansas police ... training of ... SWAT teams ... is far too militaristic." 4) "... the bulk of the burden ... falls squarely upon the guy who made the false report..."

    There are other issues. Putting someone in prison for years: 1) Damages that person mentally and increases the mental disturbance they have when they enter prison. 2) Costs taxpayers HUGE amounts of money. The government should be required to post on a web site the cost to taxpayers of keeping each prisoner in prison. 3) When the prisoner is released, he or she is usually less likely to be able to lead a healthy life.

    Norway is rehabilitative, not destructive, to those who commit crimes. Michael Moore's film, Where to Invade Next explored the system in Norway, and prompted articles like this one: Why Norway's prison system is so successful. Quote from that article: "... when criminals in Norway leave prison, they stay out. It has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The US has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are re-arrested within five years."

    Being destructive to those who commit crimes is another crime, a crime committed by the government.

    The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime lists other issues.

    1. Re:Good reply. Other issues. by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      There are other issues. Putting someone in prison for years: 1) Damages that person mentally and increases the mental disturbance they have when they enter prison. 2) Costs taxpayers HUGE amounts of money.

      Fully agree. Can we send a swatting team to this home then to save on cost?

    2. Re:Good reply. Other issues. by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Norway is rehabilitative, not destructive, to those who commit crimes. Michael Moore's film, Where to Invade Next explored the system in Norway, and prompted articles like this one: Why Norway's prison system is so successful. Quote from that article: "... when criminals in Norway leave prison, they stay out. It has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The US has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are re-arrested within five years."

      At one time, The US was not so bad at the rehab concept. Folsom Prison is an example.Back in the day, they had a low recidivism rate, then the "get tough on crime" crowd took over, and now it is an overcrowded shithole with a nice high recidivism rate.

      It is obvious that the get tough on crime ideal has worked about as well as the War on Drugs.

      So you end up wondering why so many people still believe in an obviously failed paradigm.

      Here's why - a fair percentage of the American people have deathlust. They not only don't want criminals rehabilitated, they want them killed, and preferably as early as possible, in order to save the expense of a trial. And they want them killed for any crime, as long as it isn't their family.

      But we haven't reached that point, and probably won't. so there is a big dynamic tension going on. The deathlust crowd wants some things that are contradictory in nature, like more people convicted of crimes, and much longer sentences, but do not want to pay for prison expansion. That one starts to make sense when you apply the fact that they desire a lot of summary executions.

      In addition, "get tough on crime" is a pretty easy sell. O the surface it almost makes sense - "If we punish harder and harder, people will eventually stop committing crimes!"

      Again, that almost makes sense, until we see that at some point, people become unafraid to die. Witness the number of crimes when the perpetrator does their crime, then kills themselves. While the tough on crime crowd at first cheers the lack of a trial, and their deathlust is temporarily sated, even they must admit that they have no other tools to prevent crime. An innocent is harmed or killed, and they cannot stop it. Being destructive to those who commit crimes is another crime, a crime committed by the government. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime lists other issues.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  16. A Northern Point of View by Bahamut_Omega · · Score: 2

    To add another source for the attempted swat in Calgary.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada...

    One has to wonder what would happen if he wound up facing a crown prosecutor in Calgary. I'm just curious how many charges he would be hit with under the Criminal Code of Canada.

    I believe he would be busted if he tried doing either land air or sea to get into this country.

  17. why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? by darkeye · · Score: 1, Insightful

    why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? they killed an unarmed man for no reason.

    1. Re:why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? by fabriciom · · Score: 1

      I was thinking am I the only crazy one who thinks that the responsible party is who ever pulled the trigger? How about the leader that sent in the team with out any previous assessment of the situation?

    2. Re:why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? they killed an unarmed man for no reason.

      They didn't kill an unarmed man for no reason. They killed an unarmed man because a psychopath convinced them to expect an armed murderer holding hostages.

      Assume that an armed person enters a house, kills one inhabitant, holds the rest hostage, and a neighbour calls the police with exactly the same message as this psychopath. A SWAT team will arrive, and the situation will be dangerous for the killer. However, the killer has the advantage (compared to the innocent victim in this case) that he can expect what is coming and react appropriately.

    3. Re:why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2

      It could have been a hostage sent to open the door. So yes, they have killed an unarmed man for no reason.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  18. Re: Involuntary Manslaughter is outrageous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    this is same mentality as a bad movie gun standoff with badguy holding gun to the hostages head saying do as i say or its on you if she dies.
    Then he shoots her and the other guy go to prison? such a sick system you have there..

  19. What did I think? Police should act with caution. by Kludge · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The caller was the murderer and the police were his weapon, just as if he had hired a hit man.
    If police are just a weapon, then we should get rid of them. Police should be thinking professionals who protect the public, not shoot the public because someone on the phone told them to. They should know what swatting is, act accordingly. At least that is how I think I should be spending my tax dollars.

  20. Re:Involuntary Manslaughter is outrageous by gravewax · · Score: 2

    What the fuck is wrong with you? you seriously think that someone that intentionally endangers peoples lives to the point they are killed doesn't deserve to be charged? this cunt is getting off way to light with manslaughter, you never point a gun at anyone as the consequences can be serious, this cunt pointed a whole SWAT team of guns at someone MULTIPLE times, eventually someone was going to die and it is HIS FAULT. He should be on trial for murder not manslaughter.

  21. Re: Felony Murder? by echnaton192 · · Score: 1

    He tried multiple times. That is a way to increase the odds.

  22. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by Biogoly · · Score: 1

    What if there actually HAD been a genuine hostage situation, but in the chaos of the 911 call the wrong address was given (you can read several accounts of this happening in real life). NOW would you agree the SWAT team at fault? Just why does it make any difference in either situation? Law enforcement should be trained to rationally access the situation in the field and respond accordingly. These bozos would have gunned down Mr. Rogers as he zipped up his sweater...

  23. Re:What did I think? Police should act with cautio by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    If police are just a weapon, then we should get rid of them.

    But... second amendment!

    Seriously, nobody said the police are just a weapon. Where I live, we had two car attacks last year resulting in seven deaths, but nobody would claim that a car is just a weapon.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  24. Re:Involuntary Manslaughter is outrageous by fabriciom · · Score: 1

    Who did the killing? Who pulled the trigger? Who went in to a situation without any assessment? Whats the job of the SWAT team? Kill on site?

  25. Re: Not at all. by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

    The DoE has SWAT type teams to guard nuclear reactors and shipments of nuclear material. My dad's cousin, a former Marine, used to work for them and ran one of their shooting ranges. I've seen the shipment convoys myself once, you just have to know what to look for.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  26. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by fafalone · · Score: 1

    Say I was legally carrying a gun at that 7-11, and the clerk said "help this robber is going to shoot me!". If he was actually holding a gun on the clerk at that point and I shot him, I wouldn't get charged. If I summarily executed him without bothering to even look and it turned out he was not in fact holding a gun on anyone, I'd be locked up for decades. That's more along the lines of what happened here. To 'accidentally hit a bystander', there must be a legitimate target being shot at. There was no valid target until they verified the man was an active threat.

    Involuntary manslaughter is an appropriate charge for the swatter, then ALSO the appropriate charge for the shooting officer is Murder 2.

  27. i don't disagree with this person's sentence by pezpunk · · Score: 1

    but it'd also be nice if our cops weren't so eager to fucking kill people at the drop of a hat.

    --
    i could live a little longer in this prison
    1. Re:i don't disagree with this person's sentence by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      no they're not, just because a cop has "you're fucked" engraved on his custom AR-15 doesn't mean he's eager to gun down crying drunks in their underwear

    2. Re:i don't disagree with this person's sentence by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      They aren't, but they are ready to shoot a guy who calls up and says he just shot and murdered his parents and is holding his sister hostage (or whatever the swatting perpetrator said exactly, something to that effect). The bottom line is they thought they were confronting an armed murderer. You would be all keyed up and ready to shoot at any unexpected or threatening movement too, since you anticipate that your life, your fellow cops lives and the life of any hostages are on the line.

      Bottom line, if cops come to your door with guns drawn, freeze and move very slowly following their directions exactly. If you are at all confused, just freeze and let them repeat their commands. They are trained not to shoot a motionless person. If you are an innocent victim, you can all laugh about it over a beer in an hour. The majority of police in the US far and away are good people just trying to help people and make it home at the end of the day to their families.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    3. Re:i don't disagree with this person's sentence by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      just because a cop has "you're fucked" engraved on his custom AR-15 doesn't mean he's eager to gun down crying drunks in their underwear

      Sorry, I believe that's precisely what it does mean. Use of the gun is the last argument, not something to glorify.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  28. what a dick by dkman · · Score: 1

    I never intended for anyone to get shot and killed.

    Just to waste tax dollars (sending the police nowhere).
    And to waste police time, potentially diverting them from an actual emergency where some unintended victim might die.

    --
    I refuse to sign
  29. Re:Bogus! He didn't pull the trigger! by DCFusor · · Score: 1

    He's the murderer. The cop is merely a killer. Get a dictionary, or even the Bible and discover the difference. Murder is personal.

    --
    Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  30. People should also comment by pjv936 · · Score: 2

    on how the person in his own home was killed by the police. Encounters with police in America are too often fatal. The rules of engagement needs to be changed to reduce the risk of killing civilians.

    1. Re:People should also comment by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 2

      How many fatal encounters do you think there are, exactly? Let me enlighten you with some actual facts:

      According to the FBI UCR, the total number of arrests (not traffic stops but arrests) in 2015 was 10,797,088. Probably double that for traffic tickets and other "interactions". Out of all those arrests, approximately 965 were fatally shot. Of those, 564 were armed with a gun, 281 had a weapon of some kind, only 90 were unarmed and essentially all of them were attacking officers, resisting arrest or felony attempting to flee.

      OTOH, there have only been about 54 unjustified police killings in the last 10 years, or about 5 per year So the actual numbers say if you are being arrested, you have a roughly 5 in 11 million chance of being unjustifiably killed by police. I will take those odds any day.

      So you live in your fantasy world where 5 unjustified killings per year makes 11 million arrests (probably 25 million "interactions") super dangerous and the cops are loose cannons who are going to shoot you on sight. I will live in the real world where statistics are a thing and cops are still the good guys far and away.

      Just driving your car to work is more likely to kill you, with 35,485 deaths in 2015 (or 709,700% more fatalities than unjustified shootings by police), yet you don't give that a second thought. Might be time to fix your perception of reality...

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    2. Re:People should also comment by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Out of all those arrests, approximately 965 were fatally shot. Of those, 564 were armed with a gun, 281 had a weapon of some kind, only 90 were unarmed and essentially all of them were attacking officers, resisting arrest or felony attempting to flee.

      These figures seem awfully precise, considering that there is no central registry, and researchers have to search newspaper files to find out how many people the police kill. 564 were reported to have a gun. I don't know how many of these cases were when an officer dropped a gun next to the dead person, but I do know that can happen. "Essentially all" is not very useful; we know that police have shot people who were not presenting a threat. While anyone actually attacking an officer is a valid target, resisting arrest and attempting to flee are not capital crimes, and don't present a direct threat to the police. You really want a police state, don't you?

      OTOH, there have only been about 54 unjustified police killings in the last 10 years

      Okay, who's counting, and are they counting all the cases? Who's classifying them as justified or unjustified, and on what criteria?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    3. Re:People should also comment by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      "don't know how many of these cases were when an officer dropped a gun next to the dead person, but I do know that can happen." Well shit buddy, if the cops are that dirty, we should just get rid of all 900,000 of them because of 5 bad cops a year and strap on a gun when we get up in the morning. Lets just have wild wild west justice and we can shoot each other for stealing a TV...

      You are pointing out that our current system is not perfect, I agree, but then you go full retard (never go full retard) and say all the cops are bad and suspect, when the facts just don't support that conclusion...

      For your own safety, I will clarify a couple of glaring errors in your post in an effort to save your life on that of another reader that is misinformed by your ignorant post:

      An officer in most US states can shoot your ass dead if you are resisting arrest and start getting the upper hand, because officers are allowed to use whatever force required (up to deadly force) to subdue a suspect, so sorry, but you are wrong, resisting arrest can carry a death sentence in the moment. Don't do it. It is even more dangerous because your perception and the officers perception of resisting arrest may not align, and the courts will side with him/her if you show any meaningful resistance.

      Also, an officer in most if not all US states can shoot your ass dead in the back while fleeing if he reasonably believes that you are a continued eminent threat to the community (i.e. you just shot someone and are fleeing towards other people with a gun or you just shot someone and you are running towards an occupied car to car jack someone or you are fleeing in a car and are showing reckless disregard for other drivers or pedestrians safety. They can and will shoot you DEAD for that shit. Don't do it...

      I don't want a police state, and you clearly have no clue what a police state is (that is what they have in Russia, China and Venezuela. If anyone in the US truly tried to enforce a police state, they would be facing 60,000,000 armed citizens, and it would not end well.

      I want law and order, and I don't mind a pile of dead criminals to get it, they made the choice to break the laws and put innocents in harms way. It is a tragedy when innocent people are accidentally killed in the course of law enforcement, but we live in an imperfect world. 35,000 people die every year in car accidents and you are shitting a brick over 5 murders by police out of 900,000 police and 11,000,000 arrests? You need to get a better grasp on statistics.

      It is asinine to reject the best most fair law enforcement in the world because it is not 100% perfect. I think body cameras and dash cameras are the way to go, and we should have a federal law that protects recording of law enforcement at any time, that is an improvement on our current system to ensure that the people we hire to be cops are doing their job right, but enough with the BS about all cops being killers and trigger happy, the facts just don't support it.

      https://www.washingtonpost.com...
      (pick 2015 and hit the drop down to see the distribution of suspect circumstance (armed with a gun/knife/toy gun/unarmed/etc).

      https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...

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    4. Re:People should also comment by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      You seem awful happy about the idea that you can be shot dead for being misunderstood during an arrest, and everyone will think it's OK.

      You also seem to be unaware that police tend to protect each other, and even a small number of bad police officers can do a large amount of harm unless and until stopped. I'm not suggesting that there are all that many bad cops, just many who will not stop a bad cop.

      Or, for that matter, unaware that you could be arrested and be, at least temporarily, on the bad side of the law. Even if you never violate the law, a judge might consider there to be probable cause, or a prosecutor might take a flimsy case to a grand jury. Innocence will not necessarily stop you from being arrested, searched, and indicted (although it changes the odds a lot).

      I have no idea why you consider the mishmash of US police forces to be the best in the world. As a general rule, they don't seem as capable of deescalating situations as several other countries' police forces.

      I do support dashcam and bodycam recordings - as long as they don't mysteriously disappear after a police officer does something dubious.

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    5. Re:People should also comment by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Resisting arrest or fleeing police after committing a capital crime are not misunderstandings. Police give each other the benefit of the doubt, which they deserve from all of us as well. Our system of justice is very good, but not perfect. Compare it to any other justice system in the world. Criminals have more rights and protections than anywhere else, even if they are caught red handed with multiple angles of video.

      I am a fan of a reciprocity law that states that tampering with evidence or giving false testimony gives you (regardless of police officer or other citizen) the same penalty as the person on trial (i.e. death penalty case, perjure yourself or tamper with evidence and risk the death penalty).

      The US police don't focus on de-escalation, that is for European sheep, they focus on overwhelming force. More people are killed by police in the US because we are an armed society and because of our demographics and violent gang sub cultures. It has little to do with the police.

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    6. Re:People should also comment by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Police arrest people for crimes that don't rise to the heights of being capital, and police arrest people who turn out to be innocent. The system isn't perfect. There's no reason the police couldn't arrest you or me tomorrow (it's not likely, but it's possible) because the evidence temporarily points to us wrongly. If anything can be taken as a sign of resistance, and a police officer is justified in killing someone resisting arrest, anyone can be shot by the police due to misunderstanding, whether malicious or not.

      Whether or not criminals have more rights, the US prison system is the largest in the world, both per capita and in absolute size, and appear designed to take in various sorts of people and release hardened criminals who have little to lose.

      The US police should focus on de-escalation. Overwhelming force is normally lethal force, and can easily result in someone being killed through not quite comprehending what's being yelled at them or being unable to comply immediately. In a case of an Air Marshall killing someone, the Marshal ordered the innocent but scared person to lie on his stomach, and said person was wearing a pack backwards, on his chest The victim was not given time to get the pack off before being shot dead.

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    7. Re:People should also comment by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      The problem with de-escalation is, it works sometimes when you have a hostage situation with a rational (non mentally unstable) individual on the other end. It does not work with terrorists (you are just giving them time to trip their bomb or bomb vest). It does not work with the mentally ill (the crazy guy who shot up the naval yard, most of the school mass shootings, etc). De-escalation in those circumstances will get more people killed, often including police. It is on the police to make a split second determination as to who they are dealing with and they have to decide if that person is rational or not and, combined with what the person is doing and how they are following commands, make a split second decision that innocent lives as well as their own may hang on. And you point out instances where those choices have been wrong in hind sight. The problem is, in the real world where nothing is perfect, you will always be able to find mistakes. That is a symptom of reality, not a symptom of a broken system or a problem with police.

      In the instance of the air marshal, I can tell you 100% that futzing with his backpack is what got him shot, and the air marshal will be cleared. If any cop tells you to lay face down with his gun drawn, you do it, it doesn't matter if there is dog shit on the ground or if you will break $1000 worth of electronics in your backpack, you do it, because if the officer has his gun drawn, he is pretty sure that you are a lethal threat to him or innocent life, and he will shoot you if you don't slowly comply exactly with what he tells you to do. Futzing with your hands and not exactly complying with commands lead to 99% of unarmed suspect police shootings.

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  31. Charge the police!!!! by lamer01 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    1. Chief of police should resign. 2. The supervisor who hired the shooter and/or is/was in charge of training should be demoted or fired 3. The shooter needs to be charged with manslaughter. Obviously many factors played into the final outcome of an innocent man being killed. If this was any other circumstance (not the police), most of the above would happen. We as a society should not tolerate this behaviour. Police themselves should aspire to a higher standard. They should not tolerate the current state of affairs.

    1. Re:Charge the police!!!! by Stan92057 · · Score: 2

      Everyone involved should be changed that includes the idiot who gave the swatter someone eases address.and never notified the cops. that jackass is just as guilty as the swatter IMO. Sad part is the cops are nothing more then over paid meter maids to give out traffic tickets to fill county coffers. How the hell does a spoofed call warrant a swat call??????????? send a squad car do some actual police work..

      --
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    2. Re:Charge the police!!!! by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Consider that we as a society do want the police to shoot people though. If the man who had been shot had actually just murdered his parents and was holding his siblings hostage (or whatever the swatter had said) then we would have congratulated the police on a job well done and moved on. The error here wasn't in shooting someone, the error was shooting the wrong person. If we treated the police as you suggest, no good people would want to be police, and we would be left with the equivalent of the federales of Mexico, who are all a bunch of crooked criminals who routinely steal from anyone and everyone.

      Would you do your job for 30% less pay, the risk of being shot and killed if you hesitate for half a second and the risk of going to prison for 10 years if you made a split second mistake and shot a confessed murderer who wasn't compliant with lawful orders? No you would not. That officer will have to live with the trauma of killing an innocent man for the rest of his life, but it was clearly a mistake with extenuating circumstances. People need to give police the same consideration that they would want to have in the same situation. The asshole swatter is the only person here who is guilty, and he should be punished severely.

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  32. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Say I was legally carrying a gun at that 7-11, and the clerk said "help this robber is going to shoot me!". If he was actually holding a gun on the clerk at that point and I shot him, I wouldn't get charged. If I summarily executed him without bothering to even look and it turned out he was not in fact holding a gun on anyone, I'd be locked up for decades. That's more along the lines of what happened here.

    What if it was a replica gun that couldn't actually shoot anyone? What if he was wearing a ski mask and pointing something at the clerk but your view was obstructed? What if you by some strange mistake you had wandered into a film recording or training exercise? The threat doesn't have to be real, if:

    1. It would seem real to a reasonable person
    2. You acted in good faith to save the clerk's life
    3. The response appeared necessary both in terms of force and urgency

    then I'd acquit you no matter what the real truth was. It's that last part that is most in question here, even if the cop that shot thought that he was hiding something that might have been a gun, was that a necessary response? If it had been a dark back alley one-on-one probably. A guy in the open on his front porch, spotlight in face, facing a small army in full battle gear? It's excessive.

    We had a court case here in Norway not that long ago, brief summary is guy catches prep raping his drunk girlfriend, beats him up, drags him out onto the street and continues to beat the shit out of him. The court held that the first part was valid self defense, but after the assailant was outside and incapacitated the remaining beating he took was vigilante justice not self defense.

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  33. Pranks by CRB9000 · · Score: 1

    No, this is not a good analogy. Swatting was recognized as a prank before this incident. And intent matters. With the amount of people texting while driving, there's gonna be a lot of murderers out there if we start changing the mentality towards the definition of murder.

    It would also be one hell of a which hunt to get rid of all the celebrity murderers too.

    Throwing rocks from an overpass is just prank, no one intends to kill a father of 3 driving on the freeway below. Does their intent matter when their rock crashes throw the windshield and devastates the man's skull?

    A drunk driver never has the intent to kill a family vacationing at Disney World, but does his intent matter when he does?

    You seriously need to rethink how you analyze things in this world.

  34. Anyone who's ever thought of swatting as a prank by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    has probably removed themselves from 4chan via the hours and hours of shit posting to 4chan.

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  35. Accessory before the fact by denbesten · · Score: 1

    Seems pretty straight-forward to me.... Accessory before the fact.

  36. Re:What did I think? Police should act with cautio by freeze128 · · Score: 1

    Where is Robocop and his prime directives when we need him the most?

    1. Serve the public trust.
    2. Protect the innocent.
    3. Uphold the law.

  37. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by vux984 · · Score: 1

    "What if there actually HAD been a genuine hostage situation"

    Then calling in the incident wouldn't have been a felony. And the callers intent wasn't to send a team of amped up armed police into a situation that didn't exist.

    "Just why does it make any difference in either situation?"

    Because the intent of the peole involved always matters.

    "NOW would you agree the SWAT team at fault?"

    I never suggested the SWAT wasn't at fault. In your scenario they'd be soley at fault. In the actual scenario both are at fault.

  38. what's obvious, pussycat? by epine · · Score: 1

    it seems obvious his intent was to get someone hurt or killed

    If I were redesigning the school system, the four major food groups would be reading, writing, arithmetic, and intent is never obvious (keep your head up, and your eyes on a swivel on social media, boys and girls).

    You aren't at the mercy of your emotions — your brain creates them — December 2017

    She's accurately portraying real research, although I don't even like this talk, because she's skating over necessary context in an unhelpful way.

    The way that we see emotions in others are deeply rooted in predictions. So to us, it feels like we just look at someone's face, and we just read the emotion that's there in their facial expressions the way that we would read words on a page. But actually, under the hood, your brain is predicting. It's using past experience based on similar situations to try to make meaning. This time, you're not making meaning of blobs, you're making meaning of facial movements like the curl of a lip or the raise of an eyebrow. And that stone-faced stare? That might be someone who is a remorseless killer, but a stone-faced stare might also mean that someone is stoically accepting defeat, which is in fact what Chechen culture prescribes for someone in Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's situation.

    I read a book recently with the title Do No Harm (2014) by Henry Marsh where he devotes half the book to the admission that without the rituals of patient depersonalization, some of the unbelievably desperate and risky procedures would be impossible to perform for any normal person (though a beneficent sociopath—these really do exist—might find a way—including some already in the profession).

    This giant farce where the jury stares at the face of a person in a strange, threatening situation, under extreme stress, a person that the jury hardly knows (and has never witnessed interacting in a less artificial context) is strictly for the birds: the birds of not having to take too personally whatever harsh (possibly fatal) judgment the jury decides to hand down.

    Some rituals are more for the surgeon than the patient; more for the jury than the accused; more for the police than the perpetrator.

    What makes Lisa Feldman Barrett's talk irritating is that she never even mentions FACS.

    So you watch the talks given by the people who either a) are world class at actually doing this; or b) are in the business of imparting some dangerous modicum of this skill to law enforcement professional and to the last man and woman a full one third of the talk is the long road from salient observation to supportable interpretation.

    There's this thing called mental multitasking, and to judge from 90% of their students, most of the world has never heard of this.

    The salient facial micro-twitches can arise from any thought or emotion passing through the other person's head. But no, 100 people surveyed, 99 people are cock sure that the other person's fleeting facial twitch is all about their own narcissistic central concern of the moment.

    The experts require a cluster of three to five twitches each in close proximity to the same stress point (which is why police interrogation done correctly involves more circling around than cleaning up after a fender bender on the main runway).

    The biology of our best and worst selves — April 2017

    Let's look at an example. You have a gun. There's a crisis going on: rioting, violence, people running around. A stranger is running at you in an agitated state -- you can't quite tell if the expression is fr

    1. Re:what's obvious, pussycat? by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      If someone gets out a gun, aims and pulls the trigger, that is intent. In this case, the guy has a long history of putting people in danger, and pointing entire SWAT teams of guns at innocent victims. His words pulled the trigger as far as any reasonable person looking at all the evidence can conclude.

      He made the call, he said the words with malice. THAT is intent, and all the bullshit you lay out is just that. Pseudoscience is no substitute for common sense, apparently.

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    2. Re:what's obvious, pussycat? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I hate that our legal system's best response to unacceptable behavior is usually to be beastly to people, but that's still no excuse to permit people to continue to do harm. We have to act like people have free will or else the system doesn't function. In my book that includes condemning the people whose response to an act like this is to put someone in a rape factory, or into a box, or in front of a firing line, but none of that changes the fact that a strong response is necessary.

      Let us both crack down on SWATters and on the criminal "justice" system for its distinct lack of its namesake.

      --
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  39. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by vux984 · · Score: 1

    "Involuntary manslaughter is an appropriate charge for the swatter"

    I tend to agree that does seem appropropriate. And for the purposes of sentencing, as aggravating factors I'd note the lack of real remorse, and the fact that he has done this several times.

    "ALSO the appropriate charge for the shooting officer is Murder 2."

    Based on my understanding of the facts I'd argue for a charge of voluntary manslaughter.

  40. A big NO. by rjh · · Score: 1

    As a guy who did his EMT training in '92, let me give you a giant fuck you, buddy.

    It has never been an EMT's job to put themselves in harm's way for a patient, and in fact, we were specifically trained to not do that. Job number one is to ensure the safety of the area before going in, otherwise we're at grave risk of being taken out by whatever's already critically injured at least one person. Adding one more to the casualty count solves nothing: it just means you need another ambulance.

    If there's a downed power line draped over your car and you're unconscious behind the wheel, well, sorry, but you're going to be waiting there until either the power company or the firefighters tell me the scene's electrically safe.

    "Emergency medical personnel used to be expected to put themselves in harm's way to protect people." You've clearly been watching way too much Hollywood.

    1. Re:A big NO. by arth1 · · Score: 1

      "Emergency medical personnel used to be expected to put themselves in harm's way to protect people." You've clearly been watching way too much Hollywood.

      No, I grew up in a different country where people weren't risk-averse chickens, but did what the situation would require, even if it meant risking their own life for someone else.

    2. Re:A big NO. by rjh · · Score: 1

      Name the country, and show me a nationally-recognized EMT training course from it which tells EMTs to be heroes.

      I know the UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany teach their EMTs the "no heroes" rule.

    3. Re: A big NO. by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      No, I grew up in a different country where people were suicidal idiots.

      FTFY.

      Though I suspect they weren't any more suicidal there; you were just too young or too stupid to understand what was going on.

    4. Re:A big NO. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I know the UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany teach their EMTs the "no heroes" rule.

      That's a logistics issue. Heroism is admired by all, but we are too short on medical personnel in all of those countries to simply be throwing them away on heroics. Is there anywhere in the world that's got a surplus of medics?

      --
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  41. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by tomtomtom · · Score: 1

    If you rob a 7-11 at gun point, and the clerk pulls a gun in self defense and accidently shoots a bystander, not only might you get charged with murder the clerk might not be.

    The rule that allows the robber to be charged with murder in that circumstance (a version of the felony murder rule) is pretty controversial though - many have argued it is wrong as e.g. it allowed for the conviction of Ryan Holle. It is controversial enough that it has been repealed in many jurisdictions. I'm also not sure it's applicable here as I don't think falsely calling 911 would usually be classed as a felony.

    "He didn't pull the trigger."

    So fucking what? What's next? You'll be telling me that mafia bosses who send thugs to intimidate people aren't responsible for any injuries or deaths that result...

    The problem with that logic (mafia bosses ordering killings) is that it is a different standard of intent - the mafia boss intended the victim to be killed or suffer very serious harm and should have reasonably foreseen that his instructions might be interpreted that way. Here you'd have to argue "reckless indifference" to whether the victim was killed or seriously injured. In turn that means the prosecution would have to make an argument that an innocent person dying is a "reasonably foreseeable" consequence of the police turning up anywhere (e.g. wrong house, etc etc). The defence would then presumably dig up the training the police have which includes a lot of "don't kill innocent people". And in the mean time, the government may have opened the police up to civil litigation on a grand scale as it is effectively admitting liability.

  42. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by tomtomtom · · Score: 1

    Sorry, that should have said falsely calling 911 would not usually be classed as a "dangerous felony", not just a "felony".

  43. Re: What did I think? Police should act with cauti by c6gunner · · Score: 1

    RoboCop was pretty liberal with his use of force. Given that the vast majority of shootings by police are against people who used force against the officer, very little would change if you replaced the entire force with RoboCop copies. Out of something like 1,500 deaths per year, you might prevent 10-15.

    On the bright side you would also prevent 40+ police deaths, so that's good ...

  44. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by fafalone · · Score: 1
    Voluntary manslaughter is for when the killer is emotionally disturbed. It shouldn't apply to a situation you're specifically trained to handle. FindLaw on 2nd degree murder:

    1) an intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned, nor committed in a reasonable "heat of passion"; or 2) a killing caused by dangerous conduct and the offender's obvious lack of concern for human life.

    Fits perfectly. Heat of passion is more walking in on a dude boinking your wife, not when you're wearing body armor behind cover with a team of 20 surrounding one man who's complying with your orders and you suddenly think he might somehow be reaching for a gun you don't know exists, as a member of an elite highly trained unit specializing in such scenarios.

  45. Manslaughter is under charging by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 2

    The manslaughter charge is actually under charging the swatting perpetrator. A more reasonable charge would be negligent homicide or Murder 2. If suicide by cop is a thing, swatting is essentially murder by cop or attempted murder, depending. It is equivalent in culpability to putting on a blindfold and firing into a crowded street. You are not trying to kill anyone by aiming at them, but by taking those actions, any reasonable person can assume that someone is likely to be killed. Much like a gun, police officers responding to active shooter/hostage situations can be counted on to act a specific way, and like a gun they are deadly in their intent.

    Manslaughter is more along the lines of a bar fight where you are both equally responsible for starting the altercation, but the other guy has a bad heart and dies during the fight. You didn't mean to kill the guy and his death was not an expected outcome of some drunken fisticuffs.

    Cops are trained to behave a certain way when responding to a violent felony/murder/hostage situation. They are keyed up expecting to be facing an armed person who just killed an innocent victim and is likely to do so again at a moments notice. They are still imperfect humans that make mistakes of a fraction of a second, and the fact that an innocent person was killed in this case is a tragedy that that police officer will have to live with for the rest of his life.

    All the pinheads saying the cop is a murderer need to look up the definition of murder, namely, that the perpetrator needs malicious intent specifically against the victim. The cop who fatally shot the victim never laid eyes on him before that moment and by definition harbored no ill will against him, it was the victims bad luck that he made some sudden move, innocent though it may have actually been, that caused the officer to shoot, expecting to protect innocent lives and/or his fellow officers from what he understood to be an armed murderer.

    I hope the swatting perpetrator gets a very public trial and gets the maximum sentence as well as a civil suit that takes every penny he ever makes. Swatting as a practice needs to be severely punished and treated as attempted murder with every incident and investigated both locally and by the FBI. A few more cases like this and we might actually get some investment in proper infrastructure that eliminates spoofing caller IDs (all emergency lines should be able to trace the call back to a house number, IP phones should either be blocked from emergency services, or require a credit card/drivers license pre-authentication to a physical address to access emergency numbers over VOIP). Sure, there will still be a few hundred people on the planet who can place emergency calls anonymously, but no system is perfect, the perpetrator in this case certainly is no hacking genius.

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    1. Re:Manslaughter is under charging by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      I'd go so far as to say this is Murder 1. Full-on premeditated homicide with malice aforethought.

      This guy made a plan, and executed the plan, and he knew that death was a likely outcome of that plan.

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    2. Re:Manslaughter is under charging by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Except he didn't kill the guy he intended to Swat, but his neighbor. More similar to shooting at someone you intend to murder but have bad aim and kill the neighbor out watering his lawn.

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    3. Re:Manslaughter is under charging by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 1

      Which actually doesn't matter in most jurisdictions in the US of A; if you decide to kill Bob, go out and buy a gun, lay in wait for Bob, shoot at Bob, miss, and kill Alice instead, it's still first degree murder; being a crap shot doesn't buy you a reduction in charge.

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  46. Re: Charge the Police by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Two points:
    1. If you ever have someone threatening to swat you, don't give them any address and immediately call your local police yourself to report it as a threat of violence against your person. They can often find the twit with a few screenshots and a call to the company that hosts the servers you are playing on. If nothing else, it puts you on the radar of the police, and they will be less likely to come in guns ready if you do ever get swatted since your complaint will be tied to your physical address when the emergency operator pulls it up.

    2. The police would not be doing their jobs if they don't respond to an active shooter/hostage situation with overwhelming force. They are catching hell for not getting to the Las Vegas shooter sooner. They knew where he was within a couple of minutes. Much of the carnage during the Columbine shooting happened because only a few officers were on scene at first, and they had to wait for more police to arrive before moving in. If they had responded en mass, the casualty count would have been lower. One or two cops going into an active shooter situation does no one any good because they don't know how many they are facing or where they are, so they need a team (a la SWAT team) to move in and clear all the corners and hide holes that a shooter could find concealment and then either escape or shoot them from behind.

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  47. Re:What did I think? Police should act with cautio by Agripa · · Score: 1

    But... second amendment!

    The courts have ruled that there is no second amendment right to be armed in your own home when the police pound on your door at unusual hours without reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or a warrant.

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the...

    The recent Kansas case applies whether you are armed or not and it is not even the only murder by swatting incident this year.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com...

  48. Re:What did I think? Police should act with cautio by Pseudonym · · Score: 1

    The courts have ruled that there is no second amendment right to be armed in your own home when the police pound on your door at unusual hours without reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or a warrant.

    You might want to re-read the comment that I was responding to.

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  49. Re: What did I think? Police should act with cauti by HumanWiki · · Score: 1

    You forgot about Directive 4.

    In the real world, he would never be able to erase Directive 4 and would always be a slave to the share.

  50. Moral Conscience by MoralCharacter · · Score: 2

    Amazing how he suddenly acts like he has remorse and a moral conscience now that he's facing significant consequences. This is the same person who very publicly announced how hilarious it was the man died, how him swatting left no responsibility of the mans death on his shoulders, that he had a right to do such things because he was a 'leet untouchable hacker', that he was obligated to severely punish people playing a video game of all things if they slighted him. Over the course of several years he called in multiple swatting and bomb threats to private companies, public events, schools and more because it was 'fun'. The things he's saying now are purely in the hope of reducing the punishments he is about to receive. I hope no one is gullible enough to buy his charade.

  51. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by vux984 · · Score: 1

    'heat of passion' is just one criteria for voluntary manslaughter.

    States sometimes also define voluntary manslaughter as a homicide that occurs with the mistaken belief that the killing was justified. For instance, if the defendant kills in self-defense, but was the original aggressor in the situation that led to the homicide, the state could potentially charge the killing as voluntary manslaughter. In addition, voluntary manslaughter can also encompass a homicide that occurs based on the defendant's honest but unreasonable belief that a situation requires deadly force.

    http://criminal.findlaw.com/cr...

    I think the latter in particular could be applied here.

    I think we're in general agreement that the officer who shot the guy is criminally responsible for a homicide. As for the specific charge we think should be brought against the officer, I'm not going to argue with you further. 2nd degree murder might well be the correct charge.

    The main argument I am interested in furthering is that the 'prank caller' is jointly responsible for this death.

  52. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by vux984 · · Score: 1

    Its an interesting question, if I falsely call 911 to report a heart attack as a prank. (ie I am not merely 'mistaken' about the heart attack, I am just doing it to send an ambulance to someone's house for lulz...)

    What if the ambulance is involved in an accident and someone dies? You weren't driving the ambulance, but you are the reason the ambulance was in emergency response mode. It wouldn't have been running red lights, or driving in the oncoming lane, or doing all the things ambulances do to get to a site as quickly as possible. Granted the ambulance driver is trained, and is still responsible for getting there safely, but he is still taking an elevated level of risk on deliberately false pretenses. I do think you should take responsibility for that.

    And that's just a heart attack; just an EMT response.

    Even if you don't think that rises to the threshold of 'dangerous'...

    When you call 911 with the deliberate intent to dispatch an armed SWAT response on false pretenses -- sending heavily armed emergency response police into a situation you have told them is extremely volatile, extremely dangerous, where people have already been shot... do you really think that doesn't rise to the level of 'dangerous'?

  53. Re:DA is going to look stupid by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't bet on that. All the DA has to do is show that this guy does this all the time. He's a menace to society. Barriss would be lucky if they don't take him out back and hang him by the jury. A hanging jury. I wouldn't mind making the noose for him. I'd volunteer to hang him as well. Hang 'em high. Still time to get all of this done for the July 4 holiday. Make it a public hanging.

  54. Re: Charge the Police by Stan92057 · · Score: 1

    Disagree 1000% sending swat thats the whole problem here the cops are getting scammed/conned because they are too lazy too stupid to do any kind police work 1. the call was from a SPOOFED NUMBER ding ding ding ding. RED flags should be sounding, send a squad of 2 officers who get PAID to do just that PROTECT and SERVE. 2.Columbie was not called in with a SPOOFED NUMBER they are no anything alike. Fact is the cops are too busy trying to collect traffic tickets to fill county coffers to do the job they are paid to do. Sorry this really pisses me off oh how badly the cop handle crap anymore.

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  55. Re: Charge the Police by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    I don't think that with the current infrastructure EMS has the capability to determine if a number is being spoofed. This is part of the problem, not the fault of the police, but the politicians who are too busy buying votes will social programs to implement infrastructure upgrades that would make spoofing impossible, or at least alert EMS that the caller is spoofing the origination point.

    Software engineers make on average $92k per year; how much risk to your life does your job pose? Officers get paid on average $55k. Would that be enough for you to put your ass in the line of fire for a stranger? No, it probably wouldn't...

    There were officers at the scene pretty quickly, but not enough officers responded initially to safely enter and sweep the school. The Columbine massacre went on for almost an hour, where if police had breached and entered in the first few minutes, many lives would have been saved (this was one of the key findings incorporated into law enforcement by a fact finding committee, which is why these days they respond en mass to an active shooter threat and enter ASAFP in most cases, the most notable exception being the Las Vegas shooting).

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  56. Often mistakes are made in prosecution. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    Often mistakes are made in prosecution. Do you agree you should be executed if you are found to have done something serious against the law? Or, does you thinking only apply to others?

  57. Too much in a rush. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    "you thinking" should have been "your thinking".

  58. Re:Too harsh IMHO. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Say I was legally carrying a gun at that 7-11, and the clerk said "help this robber is going to shoot me!". If he was actually holding a gun on the clerk at that point and I shot him, I wouldn't get charged.

    That would depend very much on where you were. By one estimate I am far too lazy to track down just now, it costs an average of $10,000 in court for every bullet fired in anger by a civilian. (when coupled with magazine limits, this really promotes the ownership of high-caliber firearms in certain states, but that's another discussion.)

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  59. Re: Charge the Police by Stan92057 · · Score: 1

    No matter what you or i say we will never meet the minds and yes i would put my life on the line paid or unpaid. Stop making excuse for horrid police work. the Columbine example is a very very poor example as they were both very different cases not even close...and ya poor police work their as well. They CAN call for backup they DO carry walkie talkies that work for miles. so again go in take charge, call for back up IF needed which it was in Columbine case has they did. Had that happen at this swatter call, no one would have been killed at all.

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    Jack of all trades,master of none