Swatting is obviously wrong and there should be consequences, but it's not as harmful as actually killing someone.
Yes, the fault ultimately lies with the person who pulls the trigger, but there's a reason mob bosses are considered murderers when they may have never physically killed someone. It's totally foreseeable that you are throwing an innocent person into a hostile situation; in fact, that's the whole point.
Even assuming they did not, they still knowingly involved their target in a potentially lethal situation. It might carry a lighter sentence than literally going to their target and killing them, but it should carry a significantly higher sentence than e.g. putting flaming shit under their target's doormat.
The caller is intentionally putting an innocent person in a lethal situation basically because the caller is an ass and thinks they're not responsible for what happens afterwards.
I'm not arguing about whether or not excessive force was used or if the police response was wrong in addition to being tragic (very well could have been) since that requires knowing a lot more about the case.
I'm arguing that a lot less nuance is needed to say the caller is responsible. I'd argue they intended to cause harm for bad reasons - maybe not death, but that would have been a known possible outcome.
In complicated areas people do the best they can and we try and have systems in place to lead to the outcomes we want. That's why there's complexity around these things in law and the context is important.
The long held "legal tradition" of establishing intent in US legal process is completely absurd.
You think that the SWAT pointed a gun on a man and presses the trigger completely unintentionally?
No, even with an accidental manslaughter nobody simply walks away from the charge.
As he should
> but the guy who murdered an innocent person has not faced any consequences?
The guy who sent the SWAT team at all, as a first response to a single phone call, should be facing consequences.
And the police in general in the US seem to need to calm the fuck down. Whether the guy that pulled the trigger should be culpable is definitely something that should be examined in court.
Seems like a whole series of bad actors.
I was just trying to point out that the person who murdered someone has clearly done more harm than the person who did the Swatting.
The police caused this man's death. Citing the investigation as proof the officer was not in the wrong is being obtuse. Look at the body cam video - what you'll see is the victim being shot without any effort to confirm what they were told, and no effort to try to subdue with nonlethal means.
I'm not saying the guy who made the phone call is innocent! Just that he's less guilty than the guy who pulled the trigger.