Man charged after US gamer is shot by SWAT following hoax terrorism call
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
Control of SWAT should really not be at the local police level, but at the state level. The fact that SWATing is a thing shows just how broken the current model is. The use of SWAT should be extremely rare.
The goal of this kind of thing is to condition us to a new-normal.
1 - https://www.rt.com/usa/361982-marijuana-pensioner-police-hel...
If this is the police response you think is appropriate for the vast majority of police calls then I think you should reevaluate your country of residence.
I'm sure you could go state by state and find similar percentages.
Not to mention that what they find should be worth found too (e.g. some kid's stash of weed or some guy's coke is not to be counted among the "successes" -- you don't send a SWAT team for that, you send it to major dealers).
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
It really is power projection from a totalitarian state
Hard to think of a better model though; you never know what call is going to be real. Additionally getting local police involved does make a lot of sense, as they should have invaluable knowledge of the area and the people.
No, it's not. USA is probably the only western country with such militarized, trigger happy police force and still does worse[0] than any EU country and most Asia countries in controlling crime.
Plus, the US is extremely individualistic, while European countries tend to be more communal. I think this also contributes to the increased tension between factions in the US.
Finally, the US has far higher gun ownership, so law enforcement in the US has to deal with gun violence while Europe does not.
Good for you. Multiple studies and the FBI's own crime statistics prove you wrong.
> Plus, the US is extremely individualistic, while European countries tend to be more communal.
Irrelevant. Not all European countries are communal and some of the highest crime rate countries in the world are communal.
> Finally, the US has far higher gun ownership, so law enforcement in the US has to deal with gun violence while Europe does not.
Czech republic has just as high a gun ownership rate as the US, but much lower crime. The reason? Homogeneous population.
Do you want to make any other arguments that have been debunked to hell? I haven't heard you use the word 'racism' yet.
Cite them, please. Particularly, cite the ones showing that:
- Europe is not diverse.
- Diversity causes increased crime (and is not just correlated, in which case other factors like poverty, which seem to be correlated with diversity in the US, could be a factor).
To provide some evidence of my own, here's some evidence that violent crime in the USA is heavily correlated with poverty: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137
And here's some more evidence showing that poverty is associated with being a minority ethnicity: https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf
So it seems likely that crime is correlated with diversity but it also seems (to me) that diversity isn't the cause, poverty is (you can see in the first link that whites in poverty have similar crime rates to blacks in poverty).
> Irrelevant. Not all European countries are communal and some of the highest crime rate countries in the world are communal.
I never said it was a sole factor, I believe it's a contributing factor. Those countries with high amounts of violence are also influenced by other factors, like poverty and lack of stable government.
Those communal countries also tend to be more "socialist", which leads to reduced poverty, reduced income inequality and hence, I believe, reduced crime.
To provide some evidence, it seems that people on the lowest end of the income spectrum in most of Europe have more income than their counterparts in the USA: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/01/05/america_s_poo...
> Czech republic has just as high a gun ownership rate as the US, but much lower crime. The reason? Homogeneous population.
No it doesn't. Wikipedia puts the number of license holders (and note that a license is required) at 300k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_Czech_Republic
The population of the Czech Republic is 10m, that puts gun ownership at ~3%.
This puts gun ownership in the US at ~22%, over 6x higher: http://www.guns.com/2016/09/20/how-many-guns-owned-by-how-ma...
Further, you provide no source to support your assertion that Czech crime is lower because of a culturally homogenous population.
> Do you want to make any other arguments that have been debunked to hell?
Nothing's been debunked so far, I've simply made some suggestions and you've thrown "you're wrong" at me without any evidence to support your assertion. I've now expanded my argument, feel free to show that my evidence or the logic based upon it is flawed.
I haven't quoted the mathematical proof that 2 + 2 = 4 either. Next you'll be asking me for evidence of that as well. The studies I referred to are freely available on the internet. If you want to shore up your faulty arguments, go find them.
There are much more reasonable ways to enquire about a potential drug situation, and that is all these raids are, very violent enquiries, given little to no evidence past a phonecall exists to pin the household.
If you are going to search the whole house anyway, and surround the perimiter, what good does such an aggressive incursion produce? These aren't military outposts, the element of surprise gets you next to nothing.
Nowhere did I say anything of the sort. At least Australia is a better comparison than the EU or UK. And I agree with you that increased militarization of the police is both unnecessary and counterproductive.
So the question remains: why is the police becoming increasingly militarized when the results are worse across the board?
Translation: "We need a militarized police because we have a lot of black people."
Which I understand to an extent, but often it sounds more like a cop-out than an actual analysis of the situation.
Police shoot, mutilate and nearly kill man sleeping at home during hoax: outcome > citizen to blame
I'm sure I could go on for a while. The point is, are we not allowed to hold government accountable for illegitimate use of violence? Isn't that... a really big problem?
There isn't any information in the article to judge whether the police response was appropriate. For example: was the victim acting suspiciously, or being violent and uncooperative during the incident? The notion that the police overreacted in this case is not a conclusion that is supported by any known facts.
The article also doesn't make the slightest attempt to examine the accusations of police incompetence that it presents, which further fuels the unwarranted sense of outrage.
Why wouldn't you have reason to ignore the warnings from people claiming to be "family" members in a hostage scenario, given they might be criminal accomplices?
Why is it bad to take reports of serious crime at face value, instead of assuming it might be a prank and risking a pattern of ignoring legitimate incidents in future?
Why would you take the expensive and time-consuming step of tracing phone calls before acting, when it risks wasting valuable time that would have saved lives in a real criminal incident?
There are incidents that demonstrate police incompetence and overreaction, or a failed law enforcement system, but this isn't one of them.
Having said that: 15 of the 17 top-level comments on this thread are explicitly critical of the police in this situation, so I don't know how you you're getting the impression that we aren't allowed to hold them accountable.
Of course, it's hard to judge without knowing the whole situation, but this all (military) approach of "shooting first, ask questions later" is not suitable for a local police imho.
Yes you can. And I feel like we should. Just because you get an order to murder someone doesn't mean you then get to switch off your brain and be absolved of any guilt.
I suggest you have a listen to this video[1]. "Just following orders" is the cause of some of the biggest grief in the world, now and historically.
Perhaps their willingness to enact violence on behalf of the state should put the police under greater suspicion.
Of course the one giving the orders should take an even higher blame.
I guess you don't believe police are there to protect and serve which they are sworn to do. Not protect and serve random callers from other nations by the way!
UK resident: my memories of seeing television reports of rubber bullets used in Northern Ireland during the troubles suggest that the bullets were designed to be bounced off ground or wall first. That they were primarily a riot control round.
When did the police start using them as direct ammunition? Is that generally regarded as OK?
Swapping out the type of ammunition isnt going to erase that training and so they would fall back to it in a stressful situation.
(Remember that as a UK resident our TV coverage of NI was subject to state censorship, though. "Gerry Adams' words are spoken here by an actor" etc.)
That being said, they should have assessed this situation better and have realised it wat not an emergency situation.
In Northern Ireland.
Later replaced with plastic baton rounds which were fearsomely accurate and were used in direct-fire. Forbidden to aim at head but instead aimed at stomach and let bullet-drop do its thing. Given the majority gender of the 'opposition' you can guess the results.
There was a minimum range ( 25 metres or so ) which could only be violated to save life. Absolutely not permitted indoors.
This is all public-domain.
I had forgotten the batton rounds development.
I'm not so much baffled about actually showing up with a SWAT team before the threat could be identified as a hoax, but rather how an allegedly sleeping man could be shot twice. Once in the face.
The interesting parts are the following:
> Dobbs himself said when police woke him up with a call on his cellphone, he said he told them he would come outside. Dobbs said he walked around the apartment looking for something to put on because it was a cold February night. He said he walked out to the living room, saw the SWAT{ } team, and heard police yelling at him to come out. He said he turned around to go get his girlfriend but was shot. He said he doesn't remember anything after that rubber bullet him in the face.
And:
> Police say Dobbs was shot twice with two rubber rounds to prevent him from reentering the apartment. A Howard County Police Department spokesperson said Dobbs repeatedly refused to obey officer's commands, and also allegedly had his hand in his shirt, though police do not have video evidence of it. When asked, Dobbs denied having his hand in his shirt, and said he had nothing in his hands at all. The department said Dobbs was shot in the face as he was "falling forward," according to a written statement to 7 on Your Side.
[0] http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is...
It is actually not baffling. What is happening here is the symptom of an increasingly-authoritarian government which benefits from a trigger-happy, order-obeying-without-questioning-or-critical-thinking-abilities police force. That's why you see this and so much other egregious, unjustified, awful police brutality in America, but it is uncommon in Europe, Scandinavia and East Asia.
though police do not have video evidence of it
There's far too much of "do not have video evidence", coupled with far too many incidents where the official record is disproved by third-party video evidence.
Wow, this is disturbingly similar to Chicago's PD saying that the United victim "fell" and knocked himself unconscious!
> ...refused to obey...
Zero tolerance, zero patience.
It's those responsible for ordering and carrying out the raid that deserve the harshest penalty.
So the U.S. government is taking up a large chunk of young people's prime years and teaching them few transferable skills. But they need to pretend like they're not just wasting they're lives, so they tell them that now that they know how to fight a war they know how to be a police officer. Then, unsurprisingly, we get police officers who think they're soldiers.
http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is...
The police statement on the issue has additional detail that, if true, puts the victim in a slightly different light.
https://www.scribd.com/document/271698829/Howard-County-Poli...
My conclusion is that the guy had a small stash of pot and was panicking thinking they were there for that. So he was going around his apartment trying to hide it instead of coming out when directed. Police interpreted that as hostility and shot him. They claim the shot to the face was because the guy "fell into" a shot intended for the torso. I really don't know how they said that with a straight face.
The advice in the first link to call your local police if you think someone might try to SWAT you sounds very helpful.
Oh this sort of thing happens all the time. Haven't you seen the documentary, The Matrix?
It is like when Gary Webb exposed a CIA drug running scheme. Died of 2 gunshot wounds to the head. The universe opens itself up to interesting probabilities when police accountability is on the line.
In the face - not his legs or torso (Not that he should have been shot at all).
Seriously? Was he levitating when they busted in gun blazing?!
Note that in this case it was multiple bullets not just one as SWAT shot the innocent guy multiple times. It is not just a 'oopsie, we pulled the trigger by mistake, our bad' kind of a situation on their part either.
Is this going to be the case in UK as well?
The UK angle is that the guy who made the false report lives in the UK and made the call from the UK.
(+) in practice, a different one for each of the four nations
Prank calls are a fact of life (and people doing them can be charged, provided they can even be tracked).
Sending a whole SWAT team for a prank call, and having it get to the point to shoot people without any actual threatening situation is unacceptable.
You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage situation, that would render the concept worthless.
Though at this point one can easily wonder whether SWAT rapid response is such a good idea, it would be interesting to compile SWAT emergency response actions, see if the emergency response was actually necessary (versus sending a beat cop ringing the door or whatever) and weigh that against swatting abuse.
SWAT teams were initially designed to de-escalate already violent situations, not bring overwhelming violence to a peaceful situation. Sure, overwhelming violence may in many times be needed. In many times, however, it is not.
This is why we recon before we act. Unless it's an active shooter situation (the responding officers can hear gunfire and/or explosions), then it's not evidently clear that there is a violent situation that needs de-escalating.
We've seriously lost our way with SWAT. I used to say we need better training, but I'm not so sure that dismantling the moniker "SWAT" and establishing some new brand name and certification system isn't required. SWAT just means "Rambo" to too many people, laymen and LE alike.
No, SWAT teams were initially designed to end already violent situations (armed robberies, riots, hostage situations, …), however they were designed to be called in after threat assessment and tentative deescalation (by regular police units or negotiators)
> We've seriously lost our way with SWAT.
I couldn't agree more.
SWAT teams were never designed for "first response" but for "overwhelming response", they're police's special ops/SMU, but nowadays they're just a cowboy unit being sent on any trouble without any sort of situational awareness or threat assessment, better training of the SWAT units would be unlikely to help. Not to mention with the militarisation of US police (hands-me-down army and the like) having a "SWAT team" and using it for any and every thing has become a mark of rank/pride for every fucking podunk town sheriff or police office.
Back in 2014 there were ~80000 SWAT actions per year in the US, and only about 7% even remotely had anything to do with the original purpose of SWAT teams (hostage situations, barricades, significant armed robbery, …): https://www.aclu.org/blog/another-day-another-124-violent-sw...
Yes, that's part of their job. But surveillance is also part of their job -- which doesn't involve violence at all. They should be adept at performing normal policing activities in unusual environments, like hanging from the side of a building, or in an NBC environment. The point is that there just isn't a "weapons" part of SWAT; there's also a "Tactics" side. And tactics is a lot more than no-knock raids.
SWAT teams are not supposed to be shock troops, some half-assed version of Delta or DEVGRU. They're supposed to be expert in various policing activities that require unusual weapons or tactics.
As an aside, there are a lot of soldiers returning from overseas with tons of counter-insurgency training. A vast majority of this training is not applicable to domestic police work. But I'll bet you twenty bucks it ends up being part of it anyway, whether we need it or not.
That's a really bad thing for all involved.
> You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage
In the context of having just a random phone call to go on, with no other sign that anything may be wrong, yes: you absolutely need to have a bloke ringing the door and asking. If you don't want to send a bloke to check on the situation, there are plenty of equivalent measures available - especially if you're a militarized police force. You can send probes, you can use thermal imaging, you can ring the phones in the house, you can even use a megaphone.
It's clear that storming in and shooting anything that moves without even so much as a thought wasted on assessing whether the individual is a danger shows a blatant disregard for human life, even the lives of hostages.
Officers reportedly ignored his father, Tom, and his cousin telling
them there was no hostage situation and that the so-called hostage taker
was actually asleep.And was there an actual emergency? The fire department also has emergency response teams, but if there's no fire, the water cannon doesn't come out.
"can't" by virtue of "didn't"? That's not sound logic. It makes no sense to even send in a SWAT team when a situation is not first assessed. And for that, you have to communicate.
No can't by the virtue of can't, the entire idea is a rapid response to a possible threat.
What you can do is scrap the entire concept, but don't pretend to keep it and make it completely useless by removing the one idea at the root of it.
That's why I think terrorism isn't nearly as big a problem as people claim it to be. It's relatively simple to create bombs; a malicious actor could first bomb a lot of places already, but also send bomb threats for weeks on end until nobody believes them anymore, then do the real thing.
So IMO, either terrorism isn't that big a deal, OR, all of the security measures and secret services are actually working and defusing (ha) the situations before they can act; the only recent terrorist attacks were ad-hoc things (grabbing a truck and driving through people) or from unexpected angles (the occasional school shooting).
I think part of the reason we're not seeing that is that a large proportion of the attacks we see are not the work of terrorist "masterminds" pulling strings, but mentally unhinged people who decide tying their murder-suicide to a political cause makes it "mean something". Because it'd be easy to multiply the fear in various ways if they were planning this out properly.
In various other countries half of the swat company would be in prison after this.
For example, heat cameras could be used to make a map of the room and the situation in it.
There should be an unbelievable number of forms for these people to fill out before they can issue a raid. They should have to conduct prior investigations and find corroborating evidence of the original claim that requested the raid, etc. They should need multiple signatures from different levels of command. And heck, they should probably require a video recording of an officer walking up and knocking on the door at least once before moving in any troops.
Unfortunately this woman walking on the streets of Barcelona and passing by chance next to a manifestation didn't had the same luck. Policemen were found not guilty in 2016.
http://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/Absueltos-acusados-reventar...
Somebody that try to shoot you a rubber ball in the face 'by error' is not different to somebody that try to stab you in the face 'by error'.
There really needs to be a complete overhaul of law enforcement training in the US, and the government needs to actually enforce the law against its own agents, too.
Would you please not post grandiose political/national rhetoric to HN? It's unsubstantive and evokes worse.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095966 and marked it off-topic.
We can't overhaul law enforcement without overhauling American culture first.
These all seem like things that were lobbied for by police unions rather than the people electing the representatives enacting these policies.
I disagree. This has been used as a rationale for all sorts of nasty things, like replacing American culture with a globalist culture that's going to be even worse. In any case, no matter what the news may tell you, the American people did not want this.
The politicians saw an opportunity to get more power and money and took it. When both sides of a two party system see an opportunity to increase their power across every level of government (local, state, federal) they take it and the voters don't have much say in the matter. It's one of the biggest flaws of a two party system.