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Comment by awakeasleep | Hacker News Reader

This article really hits me as the sort of “propaganda” writers create through blindly accepting the story of their culture rather than thinking about things critically.

By that I mean the real story here is that the police dispatched a sniper to execute someone without a trial. Blew them away as soon as he opened the door.

That shit is still the news! The facts of what happened here do not make sense in our idea of America.

Yet Wired doesnt even make a passing reference to it.

Feels similar to the way the media reports on “identity theft” as if your identity was the thing that was stolen, not that the bank had a security breach and they're forcing you to pay for it- completely looking at the situation backwards

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came here to post more or less exactly this reply. How many charges are the police being charged with for murder?

From https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article208812519.html

District Attorney Marc Bennett said the Wichita police officer who fired the shot that killed Andrew Finch after a swatting call will not face charges.

I am really surprised by not a single known case of vigilante retaliation on confirmed Police murderers.

it would be veeeeryyy upsetting if this comment gave someone any ideas

> Blew them away as soon as they opened the door.

Source?

My point was that "as soon as they opened the door" and "seconds later" are not the same thing. Go watch the body cam or do some research. There were 7-10 seconds with commands being issued to Andrew and he did not comply. Absolutely not his fault, I'm sure it was a very confusing situation. I'm simply pointing out that if we are going to talk about it, let's face the facts and not make bullshit up.

From literally the second paragraph in the article:

> When the cops showed up in force, 28-year-old Andrew Finch opened his front door to see what the commotion was about; seconds later he was dead, shot by a police sniper across the street

...it’s in the linked article, fairly obviously.

"When the cops showed up in force, 28-year-old Andrew Finch opened his front door to see what the commotion was about; seconds later he was dead, shot by a police sniper across the street."

From the article.

Here's a description of the events, including bodycam footage. Interpret as you will. But he was shot within seconds of opening the door, that is not disputed.

https://www.kansas.com/news/local/article208812519.html

EDIT: I will add that I am not endorsing the comment that he was "blown away" as soon as he opened the door, which has a very specific connotation.

I just watched the body cam footage. There is no effort on the part of the police to be judicious. I think the phrasing "blew them away as soon as they opened the door" is a fairly accurate description of what happened.

They do make somewhat of a reference at the end of the article by mentioning the victim's mother who is suing the Police Department

I am a pretty pro-police person. I gladly support law enforcement, because they have a tough tough job.

I am in complete agreement here, and I see agreement with this kind of libertarian sentiment even in the conservative circles I sometimes travel in. The police in the United States are over-militarized, under-trained, and way way too eager to engage in gun fire. SWAT 'deployment' (even that is a military term) should be a last resort, not the immediate reaction, especially to an unverified phone call.

That's not a tough job at all. Actual "enforcement" part in "law enforcement" does not constitute even 1% of their work even in so called "warzone" cities. No way to dismiss this argument. Even in an armed to the teeth nation of America, there is no real need for an ordinary patrol officers to be armed at all.

They can call the job taught when they would be doing policing in actual war zones.

Even with "below the sea level" standards of police professionalism you have in US, there are no way to deny that it doesn't meet even that. No matter how you evaluate the performance of American police, it is simply terrible. I have no idea how anybody can spin that in any other way than this.

> By that I mean the real story here is that the police dispatched a sniper to execute someone without a trial. Blew them away as soon as they opened the door.

This isn't even propaganda, it's just wrong.

The victim opened the door and was told to freeze. He started to reach for his pants (presumably to adjust the waist or pull them up) was told to stop, and didn't.

So I don't know if you're intentionally lying about the facts or just ignorant to them, but regardless your description of events is 100% wrong.

I find it disgusting that anyone would consider not obeying a cop’s orders to be a justification for an execution.

To be fair he's just pointing out a fact. If we're going to talk about this then let's get the facts straight.

I do not think he was justified in shooting but I also don't think the cop should face jail time or anything. We need to change our process in handling dangerous events due to swatting. It's the reality we live in.

> “just pointing out a fact”

No he’s not, it’s an authoritarian dog whistle. Stop supporting this crap.

In the context of conversations and the reasons people have them, "just" pointing out a fact (i.e. identifying an objective untruth for no other reason than to eliminate untruths from the domain of conversation) is vanishingly rare. In this case, the GP was offering another perspective an a subjective event by way of criticising the curt nature of the GGP's description - he was not just correcting an untruth.

As for the subject of the conversation, I think (not without years of pains of consideration for the two-sided complexities of the problem) that the officer's behavior, whether a result only of his personal decisions or of standard training, and the lack of repercussions for that behavior, is outside the boundaries of scenarios that are excusable by the danger of the profession, and is emblematic of one of the most devastating humiliations of human rights that the citizens of the United States continue to suffer.

Thank you for providing a full explanation; I really should put more effort into explaining the harm I see.

Have you ever listened to the Serial podcast? There is an interesting episode in season 3 where they touch on this. He reached for his pants is police speak for "I used violence against a person and I need an excuse".

Reaching for your pants isn't a crime worthy of an immediate death sentence.

The scenario is such that someone minding his own business, not committing any crimes, nor reason to suspect HE is the suspect of an alleged crime, reached for his pants (which may have been falling down, who knows, what would you do in that situation?) and was shot dead for that.

The fact that police were ordering him to do this really doesn't matter – we have a system where seemingly normal actions are suddenly immediate death sentences due to a rapidly changing context.

And if people jump on me and think I am saying you should not obey police orders, then you were not reading what I actually said and completely missed the point.

I bet if we had AI police robots shoot someone after classifying their pose as "reaching for pants" people would freak. Yet we have the best computer doing this and some people say it's a feature not a bug!

>and was told to freeze.

He was being shouted at by police from across the street who were issuing several conflicting demands.

The Wichita police showed up with the intention to kill him based on the false call and are hyper-prosecuting the swatter to make up for obviously murdering someone.

> The Wichita police showed up with the intention to kill him based on the false call and are hyper-prosecuting the swatter to make up for obviously murdering someone

1. You've got your jurisdictions mixed up. These charges are not from Wichita. These are Federal charges in California.

2. Hyper-prosecuting?

What in your opinion would be the correct level of prosecution for a couple dozen or so bomb threats all around the country to a variety of schools, shopping centers, apartments, and other public places plus a few swattings?

Please read the comment I was replying to so you can understand the context of mine.

I have no intention of defending a swatter. My intention is to point out the diversion taking place by prosecuting him, without looking at what law enforcement did wrong.

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