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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

> “just pointing out a fact”

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

>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.

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!

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