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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

By primarily blaming Tyler (who's a super-nasty piece of shit, but that's another issue

No, that is absolutely not another issue. If we don't hold people responsible for misusing these resources, there simply is no remedy here. SWAT teams cannot be expected to be fully prepared for both a hostage situation and a so-called prank.

Pranks are generally fucked up shit anyway. Pranks that can turn deadly so easily should not be called pranks. They should be labeled serious crimes and prosecuted accordingly.

Furthermore, I get rather tired of blow hard Europeans imagining they know what is best for internal matters of the US and that policies that work in their country would obviously work exactly the same here. If your country works better than the US, good for you. That isn't evidence that you know what is best for the US.

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> SWAT teams cannot be expected to be fully prepared for both a hostage situation and a so-called prank.

Yes they should, and they are in the rest of the world. Being a competent police officer is not supposed to be an easy job, and not everyone has what it takes to be trusted amid civilians with deadly weapons.

> Pranks [...] should be labelled serious crimes and prosecuted accordingly.

That is also true, but not the #1 priority. Most unnecessary uses of deadly force by police aren't triggered by pranks. I sure expect Tyler to rot in jail for quite some time, I'd be mad if he weren't. Ditto for the wannabe Dirty Harry who killed a civilian he swore to serve and protect. The thing is, I'm confident the former will happen, and I fear the latter won't.

> I get rather tired of blow hard Europeans imagining they know what is best for internal matters of the US

What baffles me is that even when a problem is solved in all of the non-US developed world, looking at how it's solved by everyone else isn't considered worth debating in the US. Or as the Onion puts it every few months, when a US mass shooting occurs:

https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na...

looking at how it's solved by everyone else isn't considered worth debating in the US.

There is a very big difference between that and some blowhard European acting like they know what is best for the US. I am all for good discussion on such subjects.

There isn't a clear set of policies that will put an end to mass shootings, at least not without overhauls in the current interpretation of the US constitution.

America Uncovered (same crew as China Uncensored) made a pretty-balanced video on the topic https://youtube.com/watch?v=hAtLnTyimT0

>> SWAT teams cannot be expected to be fully prepared for both a hostage situation and a so-called prank.

Long as it does not happen to you. Now, imagine someone sends a SWAT team to your house, and the SWAT shoots your kids because... they moved?

Would you, then, show up on HN telling us that is OK? "Yeah they shot my kids, but... it is A-OK because... "SWAT teams cannot be expected to be fully prepared..."?

My argument here is that it is not reasonable to let the caller off with a slap on the wrist and then in an environment where prank calls are increasingly the norm, hold the police solely responsible for the outcome. That is a broken model that will only create trouble. Whatever problems the US police force already has, it only gets worse if you say "Totes fine for someone to make prank swatting calls, but fry the police every time they mess up."

I cannot fathom why that isn't obvious on the face of it. Setting people up to fail is a thing. How can so many people apparently not see that?

>> Setting people up to fail is a thing. How can so many people apparently not see that?

Are you OK with your kids and your spouse and your parents being murdered by police because... some random POS made a phone call, and "set them to fail"?

No, of course not. And that isn't a rebuttal of my point that the caller absolutely needs to be held responsible for his actions in this debacle.

Yeah that POS needs to be in prison or psychiatric instituton or whatever, we all agree on that.

I am more concerned with... killing people.

How about... instead of military rifles, we use... tazers, rubber bullets, stun grenades and other non-lethal weapons?

That way, we all live, and whoever is accused of crime, can be dealt with judge and jury and so on. In this case, the guy that was murdered by police would be not dead... he may be sore, and also pissed, but that surely beats being dead.

Regular police do use those tools. SWAT is "special weapons and tactics", the heavy-equipment arm of the police used precisely in situations of such danger that normal levels of force are not appropriate (in this case, a situation where they believe there is a hostage and an active shooter).

If there is an active shooter and who is a competent marksman and has a perfectly ordinary hunting rifle, approaching them with non-lethal weapons is just giving them more opportunities to kill while they police try to incapacitate them.

Note the "pranker" didn't call in an event that would have resulted in normal police being dispatched (say, a domestic disturbance, or somesuch). They specifically called in a situation that demanded immediate application of potentially lethal force against an already active shooter.

I would love to see the numbers. How many "hostages" were saved by these SWAT teams, vs how many innocent people were shot.

If you re-read carefully, you will see that absolutely nobody in this thread ever argued that Tyler wasn't responsible, nor that he shouldn't be charged with manslaughter. He is, he will most likely be found guilty, and we're all happy with that.

The point you misinterpret as "pro-Tyler" is that the police officer is probably co-responsible of the manslaughter, and should be charged in addition to (not instead of) Tyler. And this seems infuriatingly unlikely.

I quoted what I was replying to:

By primarily blaming Tyler (who's a super-nasty piece of shit, but that's another issue

Maybe you should reread more carefully. A lot of the replies to me have assumed things I did not actually say.

>If we don't hold people responsible for misusing these resources, there simply is no remedy here.

but you SHOULD hold this guy responsible for misusing these resources. Just not for the murder.

>SWAT teams cannot be expected to be fully prepared for both a hostage situation and a so-called prank.

Yes they can. What the fuck? Isn't it American to say "hope for the best, prepare for the worst?".

Train shooting, teach restraint.

My ex was career military, in the infantry. One day when the news was on and talking about the war on drugs and how we should bring in the military to help with the war on drugs, he commented that it isn't what the world wants. The police are trained to wound you and take you alive. The military is trained to shoot to kill and, no, you aren't going to successfully short circuit that training for some short term assignment as a police adjunct unit.

A kinder, gentler SWAT team is one not actually prepared for the serious situations they are intended to be called in for. If you think that works, you just have no idea whatsoever what it takes to be both psychologically and logistically prepared for surviving and triumphing when facing genuine deadly force.

Meanwhile, it is perfectly possible for cops in just about any other western country not to routinelly shoot unarmed people.

One reason swatting is not done so much in Europe is that cops react in much different way.

Oh, so, in other words, you are suggesting that part of the reason it happens in the US is precisely because of the possibility that it will turn deadly. That this creates a thrill for the caller lacking in other countries.

And somehow in your mind this makes the caller less guilty of the death that results.

No: in other countries, they wouldn't send trigger-happy ninjas based solely on a dubious phone call.

In the few worse cases, it will mean some lost time, because the first responder cops will have to wait for assault teams. But in the 95% cases were a SWAT team wasn't need, it prevents unnecessarily violence escalation. And there are many more lives saved by non-escalation than lives lost to intervention delays.

Also, SWAT teams are considered elite forces (almost?) everywhere; but in some countries, elitism is based on sharpshooting abilities, in some others it's based on good judgement, clear-headedness and restrain.

My reply is to this:

One reason swatting is not done so much in Europe

Swatting is the act of making the prank call. It has nothing to do with how the SWAT team handles it. Nowhere have I argued that European police wouldn't have handled it better. That is a completely separate question from the question of how often these calls get made and why.

It has a lot to do with how police react. It is done to elicit aggressive response to punish victim for whatever. It was not done for fun here.

My position is that the caller needs to be held responsible. If you agree that it was not done for fun, then I really don't know why you are arguing with me at all. Everything you have said agrees that the caller acted with malice aforethought. I cannot comprehend how you think that justifies letting him off the hook.

General police violence in the US is not a justification for saying the caller should not be held responsible for their part in this.

It does not matter whather you punish him or how much all that much. The root cause is how police systematically reacts, how afraid they are and how little they value citizens lives.

I don't see people saying he should not be punished. They say that cops needs to change.

Focusing on his punishment is like adding yet another hack into badly engineered system - it makes people feel good and makes one bug go away, but it does nothing to address root cause which is bad system.

Look, I quoted what I was responding to, which was someone saying that the guilt of this guy was essentially irrelevant. They have since changed their remark.

Me asserting that it isn't okay to let him off the hook is not the same as me saying the system as a whole is fine and does not need reform.

Arguing with me from that angle amounts to putting words in my mouth.

If you swat in most of Europe, all you'll get is a police patrol ring at the victim's doorbell, and politely enquire about the situation.

That's pretty anti-climatic, as a prank, and that's why nobody will bother making it.

For like the umpteenth time in this discussion: How on earth is that justification for not holding the caller responsible for their role in this death?

> you just have no idea whatsoever what it takes to be both psychologically and logistically prepared

And you do? Based on which expertise.

> A kinder, gentler SWAT team is one not actually prepared for the serious situations

This is false dichotomy , nobody is asking for 'kinder,gentler' swat team, we are asking for professional who can professionally appraised the situation before using lethal force. It's about precision not about kindness whatever that means in this context.

The military is trained to engage a motivated organized enemy force. This is very different.

Police, including SWAT, should always assume people are innocent. And they should always strive to minimize violence, if you can avoid pulling your gun out it's a lot safer for everybody, cops and criminals alike.

Let's not pretend that there are many elaborate well armed hostage situations like you see on TV. Mostly it's drunk deranged desperate people who needs to be talked out of a bad situation. Few hostage situations are organized, most of them are just sad cases...

> The police are trained to wound you and take you alive

No, the police are trained (correctly) that any shooting is shooting to kill. There have been various people arguing that the US military rules of engagement are actually stricter than the police ones, e.g. http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/03/deadly_f... - because the military operating in Afghanistan are dependent on the fragile support of the local population.

Edit: the rules of engagement used by the British Army in the occupation policing of Northern Ireland: http://mikeb302000.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/rules-of-engagemen... - these required at least one of positive identification of a weapon, incoming fire, or a verbal warning.

> The police are trained to wound you and take you alive.

Police should be trained not to rely on firearms. The gun is a last-ditch option to protect the cop's life, not a way to neutralise citizens.

When a police officer shoots, he ought to shoot to kill, because there are very few and extreme situations that grant him the legitimacy to shoot. Very few officers experience such situations, not even once in their career.

Policing has very little in common with soldiering, and vice-versa (although we wrongfully use our soldiers as cops in foreign countries, with unsurprisingly poor results).

> tired of blow hard Europeans imagining they know what is best for internal matters of the US

We've been tired of blow hard Americans imagining they know what is best for Europe for some time, but that doesn't seem to have stopped anyone.

>> SWAT teams cannot be expected to be fully prepared for both a hostage situation and a so-called prank.

Seeing how often these "pranks" happen, I would say they absolutely have to be prepared that the entire situation is fabricated. I agree with OP - the officers should be charged with murder of an innocent person, the responsibility to identify the situation is 100% on them.

Seeing how often these "pranks" happen

That is a good argument for "We clearly aren't adequately discouraging this bullshit and need to do more to convince civilians this is not acceptable."

Given how they try to hide the origin of the call, it isn't like they don't know this is bad behavior. They just seem to think it won't really be that big of a deal if they are caught.

I mean, it's not a "let's punish the prankster OR the police" - we can do both. Charge the officers with actual murder, the prankster with whatever charge is appropriate here. The responsibility lies with both parties, it's just that I think the murder charge should be on the people actually pulling the trigger since it's their whole job to not kill people.

Since I never suggested otherwise, I have no idea why you are arguing with me. I am only suggesting that not holding the prankster responsible cannot help but increasingly warp things until SWAT teams have an impossible job to do. That doesn't mean their role should not be investigated. It means that it is unreasonable to say the caller is fine and then let this crap get increasingly crazy while only holding the police responsible in a situation where clearly they are equally victims of the caller's bad acts.

You can charge them with murder all you like, but while brandishing as control is considered standard police practice, you will find it almost impossible to prove any intent.

> I get rather tired of blow hard Europeans imagining they know what is best for internal matters of the US

I guess we could try to hide our empathy, after all if it's only Americans killing other Americans, who cares? I don't get the impression that Americans do.

Yes, do that. And while you are it, spare me your sarcasm, superiority complex and contempt.

Thank you.

Or maybe you could at least wait until the 80 million or so Europeans murdered by their own governments in the last century fade from living memory. 60 million from Stalin, 20 million from Hitler, smaller numbers from lesser murderers --Franco, Mussolini, Kadar, Honecker, Ceaucescu, etc. -- plus the occasional freelance genocide, such as the troubles in the Balkans.

Note that this isn't counting the Europeans killed by wars between countries, only those killed by their own government or quasi-government entities.

About 400 Americans are killed by cops every year. At that rate, we'll surpass the European 20th century toll for being murdered by one's own government in about 200,000 years.

well I was with you to the end but then I figured turnabout is fair play, and blow hard Europeans imagining they know what is best for the internal matters of the US is a couple of magnitudes less than blow hard Americans blowing the other way with often even less knowledge of what they're blowing about.

At any rate I believe the parent to your comment is misinformed, in the European countries I'm familiar with if your funny prank leads to a death, especially a foreseeable death, you're probably going to have a bad time in court explaining why you don't have any responsibility.

TBF, blowhard Americans who think they know what is best for the world when so many of us have hardly set foot outside our own country equally get on my nerves.

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