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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the crime-doesn't-pay dept.

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.

21 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 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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=-
    6. 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.

    7. 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...
    8. 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.

    9. 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.
    10. 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.'"
    11. 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
    12. 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?

    13. 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?

    14. 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.

    15. 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.

  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.

  3. 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.
  4. 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...

  5. 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.