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."

Comments

Stupid charge

[Anonymous Coward]

How about you charge the police officers who unjustifiably shot the victim to death with murder first?

Re:Stupid charge

[Riceballsan]

honestly I do have to say, it is a bit of both on that end. 100% screw people who think falsely telling the police that there is a life and death situation. But yes doubly screw actual law officers that think innocent until proven guilty is only a thing if they arrest someone.

Re: Stupid charge

[Millennium]

A hitman and his client are equally guilty: this legal principle goes back thousands of years, and should apply here as well. If a prosecutor refuses to charge the hitman (i.e. the officer), that's a serious problem that needs to be fixed. But refusing to charge the client (i.e. the swatter) just to protest not charging the hitman is counterproductive. Swatting is attempted murder, and swatters should have the book thrown at them.

Re:Stupid charge

[arth1]

There's enough blame to go around.

But the best thing to do would be to stop sending swat teams as first response.

Re:Stupid charge

[Anonymous Coward]

The military has ROE.
The police has contempt for anyone else.

Re:Stupid charge

[King_TJ]

Except if they stopped using swat teams to respond and someone really was being held at gunpoint, as a hostage in their own home? You'd likely create a scenario where the officer who goes in to verify it's not just another prank call winds up getting everyone involved killed. Then, people would be screaming about law enforcement failing to take the call seriously enough and not leveraging the swat team taxpayer dollars funded.

Re:Stupid charge

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh then they would do what the police USED to do before they got all that leftover military gear that left them better armed than many third world armies which was call in a hostage negotiator to ya know, try to actually NEGOTIATE a safe ending for everybody?

But then they wouldn't get to play with all that cool military stuff and shoot places all to hell with zero actual evidence shit is going on, and where would be the fun in that?

Re: Stupid charge

[Attila Dimedici]

NO, it is attempted murder, even if the police respond in a reasoned and appropriate manner because the person who called the police has told them that there is a situation where their lives of innocent people are in danger and where the police who respond will be in danger. No matter how well the police respond, this type of report always increases the possibility of them using deadly force inappropriately...and that is the reason the caller made the call.

Re: Stupid charge

[DakotaSmith]

Here's what would have happened in the 1970s when I was growing up. Think of Reed and Malloy from Adam 12:

1. Dispatcher gets the call.
2. Dispatcher assigns the call to a pair of uniformed patrolmen in their squad car.
3. Patrolmen arrive and knock on the door
4. Patrolman 1: "We've got a report that you're holding a hostage here."
5. Citizen (suprised): "Huh? There's nothing like that going on here."
6. Patrolman 1: "Do you mind if we come in and have a look around?"
7. Citizen: "Sure."
8. Patrolman enter the home and wander around. They find nothing.
9. Patrolman 1: "Sorry to have bothered you. Must have been a false report. Do you know of anyone who might want to file it?"
10. Citizen: "No idea."
11. Patrolman 1: "We'll turn it over to the detectives. They might come by to ask some questions. If you think of anything, give us a call. Here's my card."
12. Citizen: "No problem. Sorry you had to waste your time."
13. Patrolman 1: "Better to be safe than sorry. We'll let you get back to watching TV."
14. Patrolmen get back in their car and relay the false report to the dispatcher.

While I have no sympathy for the swatters, I also have no sympathy for the police on this one. A simple knock on the door would have sufficed.

This ultimately comes down to an over-militarized police. The solution is simple:

Take away all the hardware. Limit the average patrolman to a sidearm (I'd recommend a .45ACP M1911 rather than a 9mm Glock). Give them a shotgun in the door in case things get dangerous.

No flack vests. No M16s, except for the SWAT team that would rarely be called. If the patrolmen can't handle it, then call SWAT.

If SWAT can't cope with it, police cordon off the area for several blocks and call in the national guard. It's part of why they exist. It's just that now that we've armed police to the teeth, it never happens.

It used to. Get rid of the hardware.

Again, no sympathy for the swatters. I hope they get life. But this is what happens when you over-militarize your police.

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

- Commander William Adama, Battlestar Galactica

Re: Stupid charge

[DakotaSmith]

You're describing the national guard now, not what they've been historically.

The national guard's historic role has changed for one reason:

We've over-militarized our police into paranoids who'll shoot first and ask questions later.

Get rid of the military hardware. Stop training multiple generations of police to be paranoid, thinking that every citizen could stab them in the face at any moment.

And no, I'm not kidding. Surviving Edged Weapons is a real video produced by the Milwaukee PD in the 1990s. That's how long we've been training our police to be paranoid.

Police should look and act like this (forgiving the quality due to the uploader's attempts to dodge YouTube's bots). They should not look like this

They most certainly should not be able to be manipulated by a few scubag teenagers into blowing away innocents.

And so what if they have to call the Governor to get the national guard called out? You think the Police Chief doesn't have the Mayor's cell number; and that the Mayor doesn't have the Governor's? Calling the guard in an emergency situation is a pair of calls away. Done and done in 15 minutes, and the guard is on its way -- probably from a base within the city itself.

Over the last 40 years, we have simply over-militarized our police and this is a direct result.

Police don't need to be a hyper-paranoid, paramilitary group. Take away the hardware, let a patrolman knock on the door instead, and this would not have happened.

Adama was right. The people tend to become the enemies of the state.

Get rid of the military hardware and stop training them to be paranoids, and this crap simply won't happen.

I'm quite certain that the general attitude toward police would also rise. At present, I wouldn't call one unless my life absolutely depended on it. Calling a hyper-paranoid, paramilitary organization will only lead to ... well, this.

(Also, you need to stop resorting to name-calling. It makes you look like an ignorami incapable of making a reasoned argument.)

Re:What the hell is wrong with our country

[religionofpeas]

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.

Re: Execute Barriss

[Bruinwar]

With a SWAT team showing up, my chances of surviving a small robbery turned hostage situation starts to drop fast. I would prefer enough law enforcement to lock down the area & one very good hostage negotiator.

Re:In a hostage situation / murder, send meter mai

[arth1]

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.

Re: In a hostage situation / murder, send meter ma

[Millennium]

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.

Re: Execute Barriss

[Bruinwar]

Wow. I don't even know where to start in a reply to that post. The only thing I agree with is most law enforcement do not have experience with hostage situations. The rest is pretty wacky. The war on drugs is not at all a real war. It's a tragic business of law, prisons, & money. Trillions spent on it & you can still score dope anywhere. Some day maybe we will completely change our because we all know what we are doing now is a total failure.

BLM & Antifa deploying guerrilla tactics? I'm not sure if your serious but if you are, citation please. Fake 911 calls are usually mentally ill suicide by cop situations. Please link these "occasional YouTube movies". I think your thinking of regular hollywood movies.