Fatal Call of Duty Swatter Pleads Guilty to 51 Charges
kotaku.com
kotaku.com
That doesn't mean more training couldn't hurt, but at a certain point, training in a live situation will always go out the window. People are not perfect.
No, sorry, but the first task for the police is to protect innocent civilians. Even if it causes harm to the policemen themselves (this is why they get all those jackets and equipment). Murdering them is not protecting, how can you defend the type of police that goes and kills a gamer in his house with no other proof than a phone call?
On the other hand, the First Rule of Policing is "get home for dinner."
Actually, you might as well give me a raise because I haven't killed anybody in the process either.
Is that in US? Because in my EU country, "Protect life" is pretty much what they're trained to do. That includes life of civilians, themselves and criminals in this order. Killing anyone is seen as a failure which results in an investigation into why hurting someone was necessary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
The first task for police is to keep crime reduced. Notice the police don't usually arrive until after a crime has happened. Not to say they won't genuinely do their best to help you, but that isn't their job. Their job is to keep crime down. The only person responsible for your safety and protection is yourself.
> Even if it causes harm to the policemen themselves
A fair bit of cops get killed in the line of duty. A lot more are "lucky" and only get injured - that might mean losing an eye, permanent spinal cord injuries, or just losing a few fingers or toes. Sucks to be the police officer, also sucks to be their family.
Cops deal with the worst of the worst on a daily basis - the rapists, the murderers, the drug dealers - and they have to constantly make life and death decisions. Is that junkie reaching into their pocket to grab their ID or a used needle to stab you with? Would you take a bullet for a serial rapist or a spouse abuser?
It's easy to cast stones. It's a lot harder to be the one driving up to a potential hostage situation where innocent lives may depend on you. Sure, it might be a prank - or it could absolutely be a barricaded suspect with innocent family inside the house with them.
> keep in mind that if you did this in a thousand neighborhoods
Sure, but if so few people can cause so much damage only with a phone, do you really think the police is still not part of the cause of the problem?
I don't think it's worth it to have the police react this way to a call. I'd rather see criminals get away than innocent die because of swatters.
> People are not perfect.
Exactly, and that's the same for swatters, you will always have a good supply of people idiot enough to do that.
So what is the solution, putting future idiots in jail and let future innocents die of swatting?
I'm not american and I often hear about police issues in the US.
The phenomenon of police shooting innocent people without a SWATter being involved seems to be a more powerful and direct illustration of that, but, sure.
The emphasis on speed is not to arrest the criminal but to stop innocents from dying. Swatting calls always involve hostages.
Right now, I see no movement with police higher officers to improve police response protocols to reduce fatal encounters.
The narrative is not about "all people are different" and "some neighborhoods are bad" and not about "some officers can use more training"; I think there is an institutional problem, with police protocols that prescribe police chasing/hunting, swarming, incapacitating, shooting, all topped up with officers having no strong knowledge of the law, and not being punishable for lying on duty and unnecessarily hurting during arrest.
Here's a crazy idea, maybe the police should reconsider their approaches in these situations. I don't understand how this is even possible.
Why isn't there more steam behind this?
While this is terrible, police have no choice but to operate under the assumption that the 911 call is in good faith. From what I read, the police seem to have been acting appropriately for a hostage situation. I would certainly be wary of ruses to make me drop my guard if I thought I was entering a hostage environment.
Pulling up your pants is not a reason to get shot. Other jurisdictions don’t seem to have the same problem of shooting people who have already surrendered.
EDIT: You are right, that was a poor example for this situation. I can't reply to you, but the only point I'm trying to make is that it is very easy to see this situation after the fact. But I would imagine it is next to impossible to verify some of these facts in real time with confidence.
Back in reality the police shot a man who already surrendered and was unarmed. This would be a war crime on a battlefield, but the police are held to a lower standard.
You say that, but... they do. How many hostage calls are real, vs. fake? Why don't police approach all cars they pull over with their guns drawn?
> How many hostage calls are real, vs. fake?
How do you propose verifying if a situation is real vs fake short of entering the premise prepared for a real situation?
For starters; he had to call a general, city line, to get the public (non-local, 10 digit) line for the dispatchers, so he could actually call the '911' (three digit) line.
From what I gather, The area code itself is a give-away.
If you say 'what about people who just moved, but haven't changed their number yet,' then I'd say that the dispatchers (should) be able to see if it was a honest 911 (three digit), or the public line (10 digit.)
Easily spoofed, and the phone company will laugh in your face if you ask them for the billing address of the person who called you at 10:37pm on Nov 12, 2018.
(I think this is tough in the general VoIP case because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency—which in my opinion are usually good things that are not primarily used to murder people. Even if VoIP operators verify some kind of information about subscribers' identities before allowing them to establish service, it's not completely clear what they should ideally report to 911 services in all cases because they'll presumably never be certain of the end-user's identity and location at a particular moment. And for other purposes, users of the phone network might want to reduce how much the phone companies know about their whereabouts.)
Yeah, I didn't say the information didn't exist, I'm saying the phone company makes it basically impossible to get, and certainly the most difficult for home customers.
because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency
I don't care. If you're calling me, I should be able to find out who's paying for the call, and the phone company knows this info. Sure, there's still an "over 9000 proxies" bug, but that's not the problem. The problem is robocallers and telemarketers, and I should be able to configure my line to block every call that originates from any portion of that billing entity. Heck, when I describe it that way it could be blockchain'd!
I meant statistically. Most cops don't approach a car with their guns drawn, because statistically most car stops don't end up with anyone getting shot. (Although some do.) How many hostage situations are actually a danger to anyone, vs. not?
"There is no evidence to suggest that the officers did not honestly believe that Dorner was in the vehicle, nor is there evidence to suggest that the officers did not honestly believe they were being fired upon."
What would be an acceptable figure of those that aren’t immediately at risk of harming others being killed? What about injured? The media rightly tends to focus on killings, but what about unnecessary shootings or use of force that don’t result in death.
Currently that’s a non-zero number and we know that the man killed in this case was not a threat as well.
Unless the US police is worried about being shot by innoscent civilians that is no justification. And if they are then why on earth aren’t they doing a better job of verifying credible threat in these situations before they enter?
Even if there were a genuine hostage taker, shooting them on sight isn't the right thing to do. They usually succeed in talking them down.
Why the hell not? Swatting is a well-known phenomenon, and even if that weren't true, killing somebody without a single shred of direct evidence that the situation calls for that level of response is insane. We absolutely have to do better. Police cannot (responsibly) put themselves in completely unknown situations and then start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger.
It seems that police departments have started to respond to the threat of swatting with streamer whitelists and such. That's good. It's just a shame that someone apparently had to die for them to sit up and take this obvious problem seriously.
What I mean is, it's very easy to say that they can't put themselves in these completely unknown situations. Unfortunately that simply is the job of the response teams and often of local law enforcement. How do you verify quickly and accurately that a call is not a trap? How do you do so consistently -- that is, how do I know the NEXT call is NOT a trap? A streamer whitelist does no good if swatting can be done to anyone.
I don't mean to assume that there aren't already answers to these questions, but to say that they are being irresponsible when dispatching officers and teams is making light of the issues.
Are you implying that I said that? I said no such thing, anyway.
I will say, again, that "police cannot (responsibly) put themselves in completely unknown situations and then start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger."
Speaking of things I never said... I also didn't say streamer whitelists would completely fix this problem. It's a good start, and should help officers to go into these situations with more information. That makes everybody safer.
Overall you've put a lot of words in my mouth and you seem to be implying this false dichotomy in which officers either "aren't taking the call seriously" or are justified in pulling the trigger on someone with zero direct evidence that they're actually in any danger. That dichotomy is bullshit.
I'll admit I didn't think too much about the whitelists (I assume it's just a list of streamers kept somewhere, not people sending their names in if they're a streamer to be placed on the list). It is a good idea because streamers are most often targeted by swatters (citation needed), though it obviously can't solve the problem since not all people swatted are streamers. I apologize.
You will often see this phrase, or something very similar, whenever the police intentionally kill an unarmed person. It seems to work very well as an excuse.
99.9999% (more likely far more 9's) cases are your normal, everyday dealing with police (if you even encounter the police at all!).
They aren't out to kill, hurt, jail or ruin your day just for funsies.
An infinitesimally small percent of police are the "bad actors", while the overwhelming majority wake up each day and set out to help their community.
America is a big country, with a lot of people...
The article says that NPR reported that the Deputy Police Chief said this, but is there video evidence of it? Was this Deputy Police Chief even on the scene? Finch was shot within seconds of stumbling out of the door with his hands up, lets not forget that.
There are definitely cases when there are multiple officers shouting different instructions at you. If I was in a situation like this I would keep my hands up and slowly get on the ground face down with my hands on my head and hope I'm not shot at....it's pretty sad when it comes to that
Its easy to say they should follow directions when you are safe and comfortable at home. Quite another when you don't know why angry police are pointing their guns at you and any false move could mean death.
And if you had a bad time, well, they can always claim you reached for your waistband.
I'm in mobile, but there is body cam footage of the cop who shot him.
At the same time police would be much less likely to shoot if guns were banned in America (like Australia).
Because of a culture that glorifies guns.
Nobody should ever, EVER misdirect police or emergency responders in such a way. There are all kinds of downsides and NO upside.
Was this guy raised by animals, or is he some kind of sociopath? Either way, I hope enough publicity is raised that anyone else remotely considering such a stunt is discouraged.