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Two More Gamers May Be Charged in Fatal Kansas 'SWAT' Shooting (kansas.com)
A newly-released affidavit reveals that money was at stake in a game of Call Of Duty: World War II which led to the fatal real-life police shooting of Andrew Finch. The Wichita Eagle reports:
Investigators learned that Shane Gaskill, who lives in Wichita, was involved in an online video game with other people when he accidentally [virtually] shot and killed one of his teammates in the online game. The teammate who was killed in the game became "extremely upset" and began talking trash to Gaskill, the affidavit says. The dispute escalated until the teammate, who the document identifies as Casey Viner of North College Hill, Ohio, threatened via Twitter to "SWATT" Gaskill, according to the affidavit. Gaskill replied, "Please try some s---." He then posted the address...
Viner "is considered a suspect in several 'swatting' incidents in Cincinnati," reports the Los Angeles Times, adding that prosecutors are still deciding whether these two gamers should also face criminal charges.
Meanwhile, Kansas officials have been informed that the third gamer who actually made the phone call, 25-year-old Tyler Barriss, matches the voice on a fake 2015 bomb threat, and is already the subject of an open investigation by an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Viner "is considered a suspect in several 'swatting' incidents in Cincinnati," reports the Los Angeles Times, adding that prosecutors are still deciding whether these two gamers should also face criminal charges.
Meanwhile, Kansas officials have been informed that the third gamer who actually made the phone call, 25-year-old Tyler Barriss, matches the voice on a fake 2015 bomb threat, and is already the subject of an open investigation by an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Is the guy who committed the [real] murder on an unarmed man going to be charged? Or is that workplace mistake?
...from CoD WWII to GTA XXVI, prison VR3D odorama edition.
The three reasons that anyone keeps getting SWAT teams sent to them are the following three factors that must be addressed:
1. Caller ID - it's broken. Unauthenticated caller ID and caller ID spoofing should be treated as a crime since scam artists continue to take over unprotected VoIP gateways. Nothing should be connected to the PSTN without a certificate issued by the PSTN provider, period. This way there's at least some traceability and requires someone to have come on premises or seriously violated the chain of trust far beyond the skiddie level that these little bastards engage in.
2. Police attitudes - militarization of police is rampant with surplus war equipment like MRAPS, Hollywood movie style takedowns and insufficiently-vetted police officers with mental stability issues. Some modicum of rational assessment of a situation without automatically deploying people is necessary. Laser listening devices on windows, drones, or maybe just walking up to the door. It can't be break in, throw flashbangs and yell like a lunatic getting the innocent occupants to play Simon says until they can't comply and someone innocent gets shot any more.
3. Punishment - this one is simple. You SWAT, you get twenty years for each instance consecutive. Someone dies because of a swatting, you're guilty of murder and you get life imprisonment. But wait, you say you have some kind of mental disability? Well no problem, you'll just be committed to a mental facility until your condition is eliminated without drugs. Oh, and are you a provider of a gateway to the PSTN or other services that connect to police and don't work to get this done? You lose your license to operate.
So many people, including myself, are tired of this nonsense. Legislators, law enforcement and telecom companies need to start working together to prevent these things. Otherwise I say they should all be held complicit along with the perpetrators of SWAT incidents in the crimes. It is sheer lunacy that this hasn't been addressed at multiple levels yet.
They are both responsible for their own parts however there is one large difference: the swatter acted with malice. He intended harm.
The officer was responding as part of his job, how he handled it is a separate part of this fucked up situation.
You know, the one who actually shot an unidentified person.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Still. The police involved will not be charged. There is no rioting or civil unrest to sacrifice an officer for.
Additionally, this development offers up more folks to share the blame, shifting the focus in the conversation from flaws in police tactical exploits.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Why is the focus on these gamers? Yes they are probably losers who have no life but that doesn't change the fact the SWAT team murdered this guy not some gamer or a phone call to police. This should ignite a debate about how the police continue to militarize and raid (often times the wrong place) people homes. What happened to police putting their life on the line to save innocents? This POS cop murdered an unarmed man because he wasn't willing to risk his life for innocents. The police are the problem. Give a monkey and hammer and inevitably he will beat another monkey to death with it.
The american prison system is one of the most insane in the world.
This shit called spoofing numbers needs to be fixed.
Oh bullshit. There's not a friggin' twenty year old who doesn't know SWATTing is a terrible thing. None except psychopaths like these people.
As for "brain does not solidify until the early 20's". Again, bullshit. You are very purposefully conflating two very, very different things; the course of brain patterns and fucking intelligence and morals.
It's telling that you think a twenty year old is a child. Besides, the bastard was twenty-five. Outside your fake protective shield.
Agreed, and I'll add that if parents actually parented instead of using various gaming devices as surrogate babysitters then we might not have this problem.
Yeah, they tried that after he was convicted for SWATTing and fake bomb threats the first time.
That it not a spotlight. It's an edit to the video done in post to highlight the area of interest. Notice it moves exactly with the camera at times. Police spotlights are mounted on very sturdy arms, they don't shake like that.
The SWAT team clearly has a major attitude problem as well.
Here's a scary article for you. There are cops out there making $10.50/hr working part time. Less than a Wal-Mart Greeter. At those prices beggars can't be choosers and cops who've been fired for misconduct get hired by cash strapped departments who can't afford the $140k it takes to train up an officer. This is what happens when you slash taxes non-stop for 30 years. The government doesn't waste nearly as much money as people think. Sooner than later those cuts need to come from somewhere real.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The officer was responding as part of his job, how he handled it is a separate part of this fucked up situation.
The only final, irrevocable, irreparable act in the entire situation is the officer aiming his weapon at the victim and pulling the trigger. This was the ultimate go/no-go, life or death decision, and it was made incorrectly. If we are not going to hold the shooter responsible, we might as well just send a robot to execute every suspect. The human is there to not pull the trigger.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The systemic problem here is that it shouldn't be possible for a false call to the police to put someone's life at risk.
I've got a teenage daughter who likes exploring abandoned buildings. (There are whole websites dedicated to this, and we're thinking about taking a trip to go on some of the tours at that link.) A couple of years ago she and a friend were picked up by the police as they were leaving one.
When I went in to pick her up, an officer gave her a lecture about how dangerous it could be. "We could show up and think there are drug dealers or gang members in there and you could get shot."
Hold on there! You're telling a teenager that something is dangerous, and it's not the drug dealers or gang members she should be worried about, but the police? On the one hand, thanks for the honesty. But Jesus Tap-dancing Christ don't you think that indicates a problem?
Nope, no sig
Slashdot posted the study the other day. This is unbelievable.
As a gamer, I hope their eventual probation or parole involves every gamer they come in contact with teamkilling them mercilessly and twich'ing every single instance.
The brain does not solidify until the early 20's.
In my experience, a person's brain solidifies when he gets a government job. When something like the swatting incident occurs, the owner of a solidified brain instinctually lashes out against everybody who was playing the game, regardless of whether they were actually involved in the swatting.
I am against the death penalty. But your post is misinformed: The guy is 25 years old. Has multiple similar charges, spent time in prison.
He is old enough to take responsibility and has been given enough chances. Throw the f...ing book at him. 10 to 20 years should cool him off.
I do not agree with the US justice system to send people to prison for life that the US do not consider old enough to drink. I think that most of the punishments are way to hard even for older people.
But a 25 year old f.cker that got someone killed by swatting so often that the slim chances became reality? AFTER he already spent time in prison for swatting without someone dying?
Send him away. For a long time.
And by the way: Fix your police.
The cop showed up *on scene* as his job and duty demanded.
That he pulled the trigger and killed a completely innocent, unarmed man IS THE ONLY REASON WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THIS.
As a gamer, I hope their eventual probation or parole involves every gamer they come in contact with teamkilling them mercilessly and twich'ing every single instance.
Obviously these kids aren't mature enough to play multiplayer games, and should have that right taken away from them. It's not even in the constitution, and rights which are in there are taken away from people all the time.
If these children can't play games without escalating to swatting, or giving someone else's address to a swatter because ha ha won't this be fun, then they shouldn't get to play games.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So if someone yells "FIRE!" in a crowded theater and people get trampled to death while attempting to exit, you would let the yeller go and prosecute people whose shoeprints are found on the dead, correct?
Oh horseshit! They had more armor than fucking robocop, outnumbered the guy something like 20 to 1, he is a fat guy with nothing but a pair of shorts versus an entire fucking SWAT team and despite them having tasers and flashbangs and rubber bullets and riot shield and a dozen other NON LETHAL methods of taking someone down...their FIRST and only reaction is to shoot someone in the head? Really?
And lets us not forget these dumbfucks were told it was a hostage situation....who answers the door when there is a gunman holding hostages? it sure as fuck ain't the gunman, nope he forces one of the HOSTAGES to answer the door as a shield! So even if they 100% believed what they were told by the dispatch that means this braintrust SHOT THE HOSTAGE, again despite having armor and shields and all those non lethal methods...now are you REALLY buying their line of bullshit, really?
Those cops are killers, full stop. I wanna see a drug test on these cops, wouldn't be surprised if half of them are running on roid rage and just looking for a fight. In either case I don't give a shit if someone called and said Jigsaw was in that house holding hostages because there is NO way in hell you can spin this in any way, shape, or form to make their actions justified, none. They should be looking at murder two FULL STOP and anything else is nothing but a cover up.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
To complete the summary... The actual caller, Tyler Barriss from LA, had a history of helping people perform swattings, and so appears to have helped Casey Viner by calling in the swatting on the made-up but real address in Kansas where the guy ended up being killed. Given Barriss' apparent history, including bomb threats, *two dozen* swattings or hoax calls, he really should have already been in jail.
While I agree with others that the action of the police are insane and should be punished, one should keep in mind that this is not just one swatting case. Out of hundreds or thousands of swatting incidents, one finally went totally bad.
Also if you are surprised by this, you have no idea of how many people killed by the police in the U.S. Basically someone unarmed (white or black) is killed by police every few days. Yes every few DAYS. The only ones that make the news are the few that happen to have something novel about them or have a video, otherwise they just happen.
The officer fired a single shoot.
The officer likely fired accidentally because he used poor trigger control.
No other shoots were fired; therefore, the other police did not see reason to fire.
Even, the one officer that fired did not fire a second bullet.
This is a case of poor firearm training in the area of trigger control!
Tim S.
Because they caused an actually productive member of society to be shot and killed?
Over a video game?
They aren't even smart enough to target their actual enemy...they were never going to be worth anything.
Just drains on society.
The brain does no such thing. Plasticity is a lifelong event that simply slows with age. Besides, that is a moot point because it only relates to how quickly your physical brain can learn new things and change habits, and the law isn't concerned with that, rather the law is concerned about whether you know that what you did was wrong at the time you did it. A 15 year old and a 30 year old have the same ability to know right from wrong. A reasonable person would easily be able to know that swatting would be wrong.
If you're aiming for growth/redemption then five years in prison is about the worst thing you could do.
So if someone yells "FIRE!" in a crowded theater and people get trampled to death while attempting to exit, you would let the yeller go and prosecute people whose shoeprints are found on the dead, correct?
No, I'd go after both, because both are shitheels. And that's exactly what I've advocated in arguments on this subject, time and again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There always has been prank calls. There always will be prank calls.
The only people that need to verify the situation on the ground is the paid people doing the work on the ground. The more force projected the more it needs to be checked. Simply upping the anti is going backwards.
Many people are in despair over the level of inhumanity being displayed by law enforcement. As someone here said, we may as well send the machines in. At least there is an excuse for being heartless then.
I'm not trying to justify it. Obviously it was a bad call. But at the moment the cop pulled the trigger, the death wasn't certain - it merely became a lot more likely.
In this case, it was certain. And that's another issue. Cops have shit muzzle and trigger discipline. You are never supposed to point a gun at something until you are ready to kill it. That's how guns work. The most important safety is the person holding the gun not pointing it at things they don't mean to shoot.
But if that is our criterion, then we would also have to say that it also became a lot more likely when the SWAT team was sent in;
Yes. It did. But think about that for a minute. People swat people because SWAT teams have loose triggers. It's specifically because they are known to shoot people that they aren't supposed to shoot that swatting is "worth" doing in the first place. It's this war mentality that they're literally training cops to have. By teaching them that there is a war on cops when this is the safest time in history to be a cop in America, they are encouraging them to kill us in record numbers, which is in fact what is happening.
What is the basis for singling out just one action as "irrevocable, irreparable"?
To be fair, the whole SWAT team engaged in terrorist activity, which would likely have traumatized the victim even if none of them had shot him. That sort of experience can never be unlived. However, this experience can never be lived, because he is dead. Everything up to the point at which a SWAT team deployed around the victim's house was essentially harmless. It was the police escalation of the situation that caused harm.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ignoring the issue that cops seem to (a)see guns when there are none and (b)lie their asses off to cover up fellow officers misdeeds - motherf***ers that intentionally send a bunch of amped up, over militarized, SOCOM wannabes to someone's house deserve either attempted murder or conspiracy to commit murder charges and sentences.
It's so godd*** chickensh** and the odds are ridiculously high (again because of endemic police problems) that someone is going to get seriously injured or killed.
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In other words, you think punishment is more important than rehabilitation?
Outside of Slashdotâ"a paranoid community of internet nerdsâ"nobody gives a shit about your opinion time and time again.
This is inside of Slashdot, and I'm literally being asked for my opinion.
The officer was doing his job, you are now bitching about how he wasnâ(TM)t doing it well enough from the safety of your home.
What safety?
Fuck off.
If you don't want to interact with me, literally all you have to do is stop. I think you have a problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
While Shane Gaskill (the guy who gave out "his" address in the chat), is morally responsible, barring any evidence that he had a gripe with the people at that address it is a real stretch to suggest he could face criminal charges for his role in the events.
OTOH, Gaskill is a resident of Wichita. Did he have a reason to choose that particular "fake" address in Wichita?
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Why should the shooter be held responsible when the ONLY reason he was there
Because fuck the reason he was at the premises and look at the purpose of him being there. It's not to shoot innocent men.
He should be held responsible because he fucking murdered someone.
I can tell from reading about this guy. He's done it before, he doesn't care, he's a psychopath and a menace to society. You need to understand that if he ever gets out of jail he could kill *YOU*. Your Daughter, your 90 year old grandmother and he'll also be like - Meh, no biggy. The brain is where it is going to be already. I see it all the time with kids. How they act, those that will be successful and those that will be pond scum.
Hang 'em. Hang 'em high.
The cop deserves to be hit by a taser every day for a week. That'll teach him to just shoot.
A pretty good way to work the overly-excitable into a real froth of their hot-button issue of the moment is to ask them what they would consider a "success" to be.
What should be measured, and how we expect the measures change over time as the institution became more successful?
Then watch the frothing begin. Emotionally-charged nouns and verbs and adjectives with little or no objective meaning. Topic changes. Evasions. Personal insults.
I've never actually killed any by remote apoplexy (that I know of), but that's not the goal.
The goal is to get them to discredit their positions by getting them to behave badly while failing to answer simple, reasonable questions.
Well, that's Plan B.
Plan A is to get them to think about their positions. If not in the discussion (unlikely to happen), later.
Hey! It can happen. Not with complete strangers. Yet. But one was pretty close; we met, once, on a float trip.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
So if someone yells "FIRE!" in a crowded theater and people get trampled to death while attempting to exit, you would let the yeller go and prosecute people whose shoeprints are found on the dead, correct?
Yes, exactly. The yeller caused a disruption and ruined the show, but isn't responsible for killing anyone. Those who trampled others in their haste to exit did that. This isn't a case of acting innocently on the basis of false information—trampling others is the wrong answer whether or not the fire is real.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat