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Two Teenaged Gamers Plead 'Not Guilty' For Fatal Kansas Swatting Death (reuters.com)
Two more men entered pleas in federal court for their roles in a SWAT call that led to a fatal police shooting in Kansas: not guilty. An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
Shane Gaskill, 19, of Wichita, Kansas, and Casey Viner, 18, from a suburb of Cincinnati, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday and remained free on $10,000 bond, court records showed. Both of the suspects live with their parents, local media reported. In the so-called "swatting" incident, in which someone falsely reports an emergency requiring a police response, Viner got upset at Gaskill over a video game they played online, federal prosecutors said, and Viner contacted a known "swatter"...and asked him to make the false report to police at an address that had been provided by Gaskill. Viner did not know that Gaskill no longer lived at the address, but Gaskill knew, prosecutors said.
After media reports of the shooting, Gaskill urged [swatter Tyler] Barriss to delete their communications and Viner wiped his phone, according to the indictment... Barriss and Viner face federal charges of conspiracy and several counts of wire fraud. Viner and Gaskill were charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, and Gaskill was also charged with wire fraud and additional counts of obstruction of justice.
In a jailhouse interview in January, Barriss told a local news team that "Whether you hang me from a tree, or you give me 5, 10, 15 years... I don't think it will ever justify what happened... I hope no one ever does it, ever again. I hope it's something that ceases to exist."
In April, while still in jail, Barriss gained access to the internet then posted "All right, now who was talking shit? >:) Your ass is about to get swatted."
After media reports of the shooting, Gaskill urged [swatter Tyler] Barriss to delete their communications and Viner wiped his phone, according to the indictment... Barriss and Viner face federal charges of conspiracy and several counts of wire fraud. Viner and Gaskill were charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, and Gaskill was also charged with wire fraud and additional counts of obstruction of justice.
In a jailhouse interview in January, Barriss told a local news team that "Whether you hang me from a tree, or you give me 5, 10, 15 years... I don't think it will ever justify what happened... I hope no one ever does it, ever again. I hope it's something that ceases to exist."
In April, while still in jail, Barriss gained access to the internet then posted "All right, now who was talking shit? >:) Your ass is about to get swatted."
He said he would do it again, voluntarily, while in prison for it. He knows it can lead to death because that's why he is behind bars yet he says he will not stop. He has no remorse and is trying to keep swatting from inside prison.
How about you charge the police officers who unjustifiably shot the victim to death with murder first?
It reads like Gaskill was supposed to be the victim, Viner was the "client", Barriss was the hitman, and the police was the "gun". Gaskill deflected the expected swatting from himself by providing an address that he no longer lived at, felt guilty about that deflection after the swatting and tried to hide it. And that's enough to get you prosecuted?
EditorDavid is misnamed.
NonEditiorDavid would be closer.
This Gaskill guy was the intended victim of the swatting, but he gave a false address. He's so far detached from the actual crime that I don't think he should be charged with anything and shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of other people.
He's being charged with wire fraud and obstruction of justice, which seem to be the standard charges for people who haven't actually done anything. It's amazing how often you see these charges used.
when sending cops to somebody's home counts as attempted murder? Britain and Canada don't have this problem,
Everything works in a context. With the realization that the US cops are trigger happy (partly justified because a lot more suspects are armed and dangerous), a swatting call has a decent chance to turn violent. Obviously, a similar attempt in Britain or Canada would be judged in the context of their society.
I'm Canadian. I hope nobody call the cops on me because yesterday I took some leftover KFC home and now I have two plastic sporks.
#DeleteFacebook
âoeNeed to delete everything,â he messaged, the indictment said. âoeThis is a murder case now. ⦠This isnâ(TM)t a joke.â
He wiped his phone and told the other people involved to do the same - while saying "this is a murder case". Intentionally destroying evidence in murder case, knowing it's a murder case, sounds like obstruction of justice.
He's being charged with obstruction of justice.
He apparently not being charged for taunting the guy after the swat threat, saying oh yeah just try to swat me. My address is ...
--
Barrios told the emergency operator that he had killed his father and âoewas holding his mother and brother at gunpoint.â Barriss allegedly gave the operator the West McCormick address. The caller then âoeinformed the dispatcher that he was considering lighting the house on fire before committing suicide,â the indictment stated.
--
So you've got one victim dead already, or perhaps the gather isn't quite dead and could still be saved. Two more victims are being held hostage. The perpetrator intends to kill everyone, including himself.
> stop sending swat teams as first response
Would you perhaps send a crossing guard to handle hostage situations? Maybe a meter maid? Who would you send to a hostage situation when the perp has already starting killing people?
The problem is a draconian, overreaching state deploying swat for situations that don't warrant it.
The two who just pleaded not guilty (Viner and Gaskill) aren't being charged for the death or even complicity in the death in any way. They're being charged with wire fraud, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy.
Only Barriss is being charged for the death. Viner's being charged with conspiracy and wire fraud for hiring Barriss to perform the SWATting, also obstruction of justice and conspiracy for wiping his phone. Gaskill's being charged with obstruction and conspiracy effectively just for telling Barriss to wipe his phone. Not sure why he's being charged with wire fraud, but I suppose prosecutors try to hit them with everything and see what sticks.
Something strange is going on in the US. The info given here and the linked site is probably distorted as well, because I cannot imagine police killing an unarmed man and then blaming some pranksters for that. (Maybe they can be blamed in this case, something like one percent blame)
Besides a few libtards like me on /. bitching about it I've seen zero discussion about what got us to this point.
Way to out yourself as a fake liberal. Go back to /v/, creep.
Forgive me for asking, as it's been a quarter century since I visited a KFC, but have they really replaced sporks with forks?
Your mistake is assuming that there IS a hostage situation. It's one of many possibilities. First response must be to find out whether something is going on, and if so, what.
A swat team is what you send in if and only if you need someone taken down, not to determine whether it's needed. That's not their job, and they are exceptionally bad at it.
So when the guy who calls the police claims to have killed one hostage already and is talking about burning down the building before committing suicide, the default response should be "I don't believe you"? This does not strike me as a good idea.
So when the guy who calls the police claims to have killed one hostage already and is talking about burning down the building before committing suicide, the default response should be "I don't believe you"?
The default response should be that they have understood what he said, and try to get a negotiator involved before hanging up.
At this point, they have a tip that needs to be investigated with urgency. They should not make assumptions that it's either true or false, but determine whether it is. And that determination should never be made by anyone holding a weapon or battering ram. Their job is to take people down, not to determine whether they themselves are wasteful.
If the trial court convicts these two dipshits, I'm sure it will be appealed and overturned by the appellate court.
The trigger-happy cop, though? The twisted DA says he performed adequately.
Each time a story comes up about how technologists ought to move to the midwest, where homes are affordable compared to the tech hot spots, remember it's not just about the cost of living. It would be shocking if a cop acted in the same manner in my area and the DA said "Nah, it was justified." We would have a new DA.
You're talking past him. He *has* no threshold for bringing in officers to deal with a murderous situation other than having witnessed the last hostage executed.
> that determination should never be made by anyone holding a weapon
Okay, so one person has apparently been murdered and the perp says two more are about to. The perp says he's probably going to kill everyone - including himself. Your suggestion is to send in people who do NOT have weapon, to check to see if the dead is in fact dead? Then when the person you sent radios in "I've been shot!", you don't believe him. Presumably you send in two more unarmed people to see if he has really been shot?
The reason it's "swatting" is because the caller claims the person is mentally unstable and armed, thus necessitating a SWAT team to rescue hostages or such. They absolutely need to be prepared to use lethal force in those situations.
If the caller filed a noise complaint, a squad car might come around in an hour or so and knock on the door to see what's up.
If the caller had just ordered a bunch of pizzas, this wouldn't be a problem.
(I hear in Britain the correct strategy is to claim the homeowner shot a burglar, then their version of SWAT will show up. Might've just been a joke, though.)
Not to left these gamers off the hook, but what about the officer who actually killed the guy for no good reason?
Jesus you are a dumb fuck.
No idea, I've never bought anything from that place but I had friends who ate there a decade ago. I just assumed they still gave plastic sporks in 2018 for the sake of my joke.
#DeleteFacebook
So you shoot the first person to come to the door? Because there's no chance a hostage taker would ever send a hostage with a message for the police rather than making himself an exposed target?
So you've got one victim dead already, or perhaps the gather isn't quite dead and could still be saved. Two more victims are being held hostage. The perpetrator intends to kill everyone, including himself.
So the police come in and shoot the first person they see, which has a pretty high chance of being one of the hostages. I guess if the police kill all the hostages then there's no hostage situation.
So when the guy who calls the police claims to have killed one hostage already and is talking about burning down the building before committing suicide, the default response should be "I don't believe you"? This does not strike me as a good idea.
Infinitely better than running in guns blazing and literally getting people killed. But like in every stupid discussion on slashdot there's a happy medium that exists between doing nothing and fucking showing the site with bullets.
Perhaps you aren't aware, but being armed doesn't mean you randomly shoot people. I've been armed every day for years and never shoot anyone. I *almost* had to put a stop to an armed robbery at a store, but fortunately that wasn't necessary.
The proposal which I responded to said sending armed officers to the scene is the wrong response to a 911 call reporting a hostage situation with one person already killed. GGP wasn't entirely clear whether he though 911 should ignore such situations entirely, or send unarmed people look through the house. Why exactly such a proposal is mod +5 is beyond me. Are people REALLY spending so much time in fantasy "rainbows and unicorns" echo chambers that they think the proper response to an active shooter situation is to sing a folk song?
Nice things like a paramilitary police force.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Fatal deaths are the worst.
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The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I think police is at fault..... these guys were pranking people maybe trying to scare them... It would be hard to prove the intent was to get the person killed... at best i would think police would had checked before shooting
The SWAT team was quite good in this case. They held their fire. It was the additional cops they brought on the scene who panicked and shot the unarmed person.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
<facepalm> And I read it as forks, so was confused at the move away from sporks. Sorry for detracting from your joke.
Huh?
I'd send a policeman. Not a paramilitary death squad.
First of all, Britian and Canada aren't full of gun nuts, and guns we do have generally are used for either recreation, sport or hunting. From my interactions with Americans, it appears a lot of Americans use guns for a purpose other than those listed - namely, self-defense. Ignoring whether or not that is a valid purpose, that's a primary difference.
Heck, we don't have "Stand your Ground" laws, and the courts have agreed that you can only retaliate in a manner the situation dictates, so shooting a fleeing criminal in the back can land you manslaughter charges
Thus, the cops here rarely, even in hostage situations, are confronted with the firepower even the typical American seems to pack. And yes, even things like ballistic vests have to be registered.
And forget things like AR-15s and such - those are completely banned. As is concealed carry, and most handguns are highly restricted (typically must be locked "safe" until at the range).
That's what confuses most people in the world - because it seems in the US guns are literally everywhere, and everyone's got an AR-15 ready to shoot at anything that moves. Here those are generally illegal weapons so it's not necessary to bring out the heavy weapons and armor - the average hostage situation usually involves knives as the primary weapon.
Both of them should be banned from using computers for life as minimum we should even consider death row for these maggots
Perhaps there should be a small radio-controlled explosive mounted around the neck of all cops.
That way you could send out an emergency auto-destruct command, in case you deploy them in the wrong direction by mistake.
blink
[ CANCEL MISSION ]
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That's what confuses most people in the world - because it seems in the US guns are literally everywhere, and everyone's got an AR-15 ready to shoot at anything that moves. Here those are generally illegal weapons so it's not necessary to bring out the heavy weapons and armor - the average hostage situation usually involves knives as the primary weapon.
That's a false impression. Admittedly, if you listen to the media, it's an easy impression to get. Responsible journalism seems to go out the window on any issue that the predominantly left-wing media types view as not consistent with their political values.
In reality, your odds of being killed on the highway in the USA by a random motorist are far higher than your odds of being killed by a criminal with a firearm. That's true for ordinary citizens, and it's also true for police officers. Today, as in the past, most US law enforcement personnel will go their entire careers without ever firing their guns outside of training (and had he been following proper procedure, the officer in the Kansas incident could have been part of the majority that gets to retire without ever firing their gun).
Most firearm related deaths in the USA involve inner city gangs and drug trafficking - and most of them happen in urban areas with very corrupt government (which very cleverly tries to redirect public attention away from the corruption and towards other issues such as gun ownership - in any developed nation today, the bad stuff is usually protected by a bodyguard of lies, under the assumption that the public is too dumb to see through the lies).
In the USA, most firearm owners live in rural areas, where police response times are poor. Even then, they are far more likely to have a hunting rifle or shotgun than a pistol - and many are avid hunters, helping the government keep the animal populations under control while simultaneously feeding their families. Often these people will have several firearms, for different types of hunting.
The exception on pistol ownership in this group is primarily those who enjoy the sport of target shooting. Also, in some cases, hunters will own a pistol that they can carry as a backup to their rifle.
Probably the majority of the private firearm owners with handguns are current or former military personnel, current or former law enforcement personnel, or private security types (security guards, bodyguards, private detectives, and so forth).
Relatively few people own AR-15's - and it's illegal to modify them to fire in burst mode or full automatic. Probably the majority of owners are current or former military personnel, who are quite familiar and comfortable with the weapons from their service experience.
Most people do not carry firearms in the USA on a day-to-day basis. However, it's probably wise to carry firearms if you are going into the bush in some parts of the country. In wilderness areas one can find mountain lions, rattlesnakes (and more dangerous snakes), bears, alligators, and crocodiles - and sometimes these can be dangerous. A woman was killed by an alligator not that long ago in Florida.
This is not all that different from the situation in Scandinavia, where firearms are routinely carried in places where polar bears roam.
For that matter, even an animal like a dog or a bobcat can become rabid and hence dangerous. Even non-rabid dogs can sometimes be vicious and extremely dangerous.
The animal threat is another reason why people in rural areas tend to have firearms. Again, having two firearms in any given group or home is wise - that gives one a primary and a backup. The only people I know that have ever used a firearm in self-defence used them to kill snakes that were a threat to them and their children.
Over the years, there have been some ugly and unfortunate incidents in the USA, involving really crazy people doing bad things with firearms - and these incidents keep happening. That sort of thing is probably inevitable when y
Point of order: in Canada, a semi-automatic AR-15 is considered a 'restricted' firearm. Most handguns are also 'restricted.' The main difference between a 'restricted' firearm and an 'non-restricted' firearm such as a shotgun or non-AR-15 rifle are a) stricter storage and transport laws, and b) can only be fired at an approved range; not usable for hunting, shootable on public Crown Land, in your back yard if you have the space, and so on.
There's nothing preventing a licensed Canadian gun owner from using a handgun or AR-15 for home defense, other than the fact that you'll be charge with unsafe storage pretty much automatically, on the theory that if you had the firearm stored correctly, you'd be dead before you could get it out.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
(I hear in Britain the correct strategy is to claim the homeowner shot a burglar, then their version of SWAT will show up. Might've just been a joke, though.)
The British equivalent of SWAT is Specialist Firearms Command (usually referred to as SO19 in films and TV). They train specialist firearms officers, who receive extra training and must pass a battery of psychological tests before they are even accepted for training. There is an automatic investigation in the case of any firearm discharge by one of these officers.
SFC is almost never the first response. An unarmed officer will attempt to judge whether they need to be deployed. When they are deployed, they have been trained to avoid firing unless all other options have been exhausted. This training sometimes fails, but it seems to work a lot better than the US model of arming all of the police and giving them appallingly bad training.
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if you're in jail waiting trial for an offence and you very clearly and publicly show ZERO remorse for your crimes, the only justice is to drop you live into a vat of acid, on national television.
Seriously folks: Back In The Day HANGINGS were PUBLIC for very good reasons
Dead people don't become repeat offenders, and when the word on the street is "remember Jimmy, he was boiled in oil on national television for his crimes" that's a fairly significant deterrent.
People commit crimes for three very specific reasons (1) they'll never catch me (2) They'll never prove it (3) I'll get a good lawyer, will be back on the street in no time
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
There was no hostage situation! What's your answer to hoax hostage calls? Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out?
Did you forget to read even the subject line before replying?
Sending armed, trained people to an apparent hostage situation doesn't mean âshooting people who haven't committed any crimesâ. It means being prepared in case the perp (who says he has already murdered one person) has to be shot.
The proposed solution was to send *unarmed* people into the building to check it out.
Should be: 2 Adult Men, aged 19 and 18...
Teenagers? In the sense that "teen" happens to be in the number... Grown ass men that knew they were sending armed police to a residence? Yup.