20 years for swatter who got a man killed
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The fact that it's possible for a child to trigger a "swat" where people can and have died highlights a significant vulnerability in the procedures currently used by police.
Why isn't more effort being put into making these processes safer for civilians?
I think the initial presumption, was that no one would be such a douchebag as to make such crank calls. In today's world, this is obviously a bad assumption. In today's world, we should presume that people are going to make such false assertions, and if there's a way someone can exploit an unconfirmed assertion, someone, somewhere will.
This is also why trials in the media are bad, and why due process is important.
As I suggested elsewhere, what if a plainclothes android could walk up, knock on the door, and calmly ask questions? (While SWAT are out of sight and not yet aiming their guns.) I think this isn't too far outside of our current abilities. Uncanny valley would be reduced in this context. All you'd need is a stone faced, but calm and pleasant demeanor. We already have walking robots, but the walks would have to be humanized. (The Uncanny Valley would be in full force for the body language part.)
EDIT: Actually, you could completely avoid the Uncanny Valley and even eliminate the need for AI. Just make the bottom part from a Segway. The top could be a literal teleoperated Muppet.
Unless you get “caught” Living While Black.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/us/living-while-black-police-...
It's always been a bad assumption; deliberate harm up to and including murder by deliberate false report to legal authorities is probably as old as legal authorities, and if your jurisdiction has a crime of false reporting (and it's pretty much guaranteed that it does) it's because the government is very much aware that this is a thing.
If police response procedures don't account for that, it's not because they've assumed it doesn't happen, it's because they've assumed that that when it happens they will have someone else ready at hand to blame for ant adverse effects, so that they have no need to mitigate them.
Do we only hear about it more now due to more reporting, or is it actually a recent trend?
I'm assuming that local PDs probably treat people calling them and saying “I’m totally not a criminal but people are likely to falsely claim I'm not only a criminal but one engaged in the kind of dangerous crimes that would justify a SWAT response”, without any supporting evidence that there are particular people likely to falsely target the particular person with that kind of action as an indication that the person is more likely than average to be a dangerous criminal.
I don't know if you're being serious or not, but some things are time sensitive, and a slow or underpowered response can be fatal.
It's not like the police force gets a kick out of deploying SWAT. Yes, obviously the response needs to be more precise, but hopefully not at the expense of quick response to real emergencies.
And so can a hasty, under-/mis-informed, and/or overpowered response.
I'm actually not quite sure about this, unfortunately....
An overpowered response at the expense of innocent lives are not in any way better. It's actually worse, since the people responsible for the killings don't face the consequences like everyone else.
If a ‘swatter’ called the police and said “Hey there’s a domestic disturbance going on next door”, then the response is basically sending a nearby squad car to check it out. That’s a pretty boring “prank” for a swatter if 2 cops just ring the doorbell and ask questions.
Thus the police have to be told something so serious sounding they would need to send SWAT. Something like “my neighbor is on drugs with a knife against his daughter’s throat threatening to kill his family, hurry!”.
These swatters are intentionally targeting people, so they can also BS enough personal details to make it sound plausible.
Human decency to not abuse this highly-serious system is not enough of a barrier to keep swatting douchebags from exploiting the system, so while the system needs adjusting, from an enforcement side this case is also a public reminder that swatting is not a cool prank that has serious consequences.
If an officer should choose between "low risk to self, high risk to civilians" and "high risk to self, low risk to civilians", which choice is appropriate?
SWATting works because American police have decided, for whatever reasons, that "low risk to self, high risk to civilians" is the appropriate path to take.
Should the police send an unarmed officer, an armed officer, or an armed SWAT team to respond to a phoned-in report of an armed hostage situation?
If they send an unarmed officer, the officer could die, but civilians won't (by the officer's hand).
If they send an armed officer, the officer could die, and civilians could too (by the officer's hand).
If they send a no-knock SWAT team, the officers won't die, but civilians probably will (by the SWAT team's hand).
And so this ties back to police militarization and a question that you will be hard-pressed to see police and police unions confronting openly: Should officers put the lives of citizens above their own lives — even if that means they occasionally die while responding to a call without a SWAT team, when it turns out to be real rather than fake?
I believe that, yes, police officers should select a "higher risk to self, lower risk to civilians" path than they do today, increasing the risk of police deaths in order to reduce the risk of civilian deaths at the hands of police officers. I make this statement even though I have former police officers as family and friends, because I'm tired of American police killing more American citizens each year than terrorists do [1]. Your view may vary. Those of police certainly do.
The core issue, where officers must either accept a higher risk of death or a higher risk of killing civilians, remains unsolved — and undiscussed — in America today.
[1]
https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2018/mar/16/cops-kill...
https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/8/13/17938170/us-police-...
https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_AmericanTerrorismDeaths...
You're wrong in one respect, though. They're not killing carelessly. They're killing intentionally, and are trained to do so when they feel it necessary. That their training seems to encourage them to feel it necessary is a side effect of our failure as a society to confront the philosophical problem.
As of 2006: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/7/12118906/police-training-mediat...
> police academies spend about 110 hours training their recruits on firearms skills and self-defense — but just 8 hours on conflict management and mediation
So, as of 2006, they're assigned 14x as many hours of training at reflexively shooting attackers before they get shot in return as they are in determining when to risk being shot to defuse a conflict. Of course they're prone to shooting — they never learn when it's not appropriate to!
I am not a police officer. If you're a police officer and your local department has better a training ratio of violence:deescalation than the nationwide 13.75:1 ratio from 2006, hooray! But you're probably an outlier.
EDIT — Random current news example:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie-mccoy...
Officer finds person asleep in car with gun in lap. Officer summons more officers. They study the sleeping person and prepare their weapons, determining that the gun has either 0 or 1 bullets left. The person twitches as they wake up. All six officers fire.
The police are trained to fire when someone's muscles twitch. It's hammered into them over a hundred hours of training to kill before they are killed. They exercised their weapons training competently.
Was it appropriate for the officers to draw their weapons and take aim for kill shots?
Answers vary, because that's the same philosophical problem. Either the officers take a less violent approach that puts them more at risk of being shot and killed, or the officers take a more violent approach that puts them less at risk of being shot and killed.
(In this specific example, it's clear that the officers were behaving inappropriately for quite some time prior to the shooting; I do not attribute all of their actions to this problem, and focused on highlighting the philosophical issue rather than analyzing other factors such as racism etc.)
I also say this as someone with family members who have served as law enforcement officers.
Wow! That’s scary, I thought SWAT was trained to assess the situation to be able to react accordingly. Now I’m afraid to visit the US in fear that the police will kill me just because I look suspicious. I didn’t know they were so afraid to the point of firing their guns in fear of being hurt.
Only if op stays in a residence (AirBnb, vrbo, friend's house) that could be confused with somebody playing a video game.
> Don't be ridiculous.
Unless some other person who may or may not even be in the country (U.S. caller id authentication and e911 systems are lacking) can provide a fiction that would wind up with the poster in the middle.
That the police trust a system with such flaws to an extent that they are willing to kill for it is troublesome.
Importantly, the man killed was not the intended target; The swatter effectively pressed pandora's button.
In a non swatting situation, this happened to a family staying in Georgia. An informant fingered a house for a drug dealer, and the police shot a flash-bang through the AirBnb's window right into a baby's crib, causing severe burns and other health concerns. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/attorney-child-hurt-swat-ra...
As a non-native English speaker, I’m not sure what exactly in my comment above is considered “trolling” or “flamewar”. I’m legitimately scared that if I visit the US I will be a target and SWAT will not be careful enough to assess the situation, and instead will decide to kill me based on false information.
You have commented —many times— that repetitive comments like this in the website will get a user’s account banned, so from now on I will be extra careful with my comments as to not offend someone that may end up affecting my presence in the community.
Thank you for the advice.
In case it helps, I took a quick look and your other recent comments seem fine.
I also don't think they should be.
EDIT:
This was just posted on HN
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie-mccoy...
As someone who’s foreign to the US judicial system, why? (genuinely asking)
That's not the only reason, nor is it always the case, but it's one of the big ones.
It's simple expected that, in the case of a report of violence, weapons, or drugs, that the police department will dispatch a large group of very heavily armed people many (or all) of whom will not be wearing obvious police uniforms, who will proceed to storm the building, often at night, using battering rams, sometimes flash bangs, and at least the threat of overwhelming force. There will usually be some yelling about them being police, but since then happens as the doors are being knocked down, and often while the targets are asleep, this can be easily missed.
These tactics were chosen to make it likely that the targets cannot flee, cannot dispose of or hide evidence, and that those who want to resist the police (standoffs, hostage situations, setting up ambushes, etc.) cannot do so effectively. These tactics are also intended, at least, to reduce the risk of police officers being injured or killed. They were chosen despite the knowledge that it will cause people who would not want to resist the police to do so anyhow out of confusion, and that it will lead to the death or injury of targets, bystanders, and pets.
So in the above story, the SWAT did what the team is designed to do. Why would there be consequences? The point of these units is to respond to reports of violence swiftly and with overwhelming force, which they did. That causes deaths, usually of the targets (or their pets, of their families) but sometimes (as here) of people entirely unrelated to the target. This is accepted by the courts (and more importantly, society) as perfectly fine.
There will be no penalties unless they go way over the bounds of what's accepted. If it comes out the police themselves faked the call, or planted evidence, then that will likely have penalties. But in most cases, mere violence will not.
See, for example, this story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/13/india...
Here a SWAT member tossed a flash bang into a room without even looking, it turned out it landed next to a 9 month old infant. That wasn't enough to get him disciplined or anything, but it did get the conviction of the targets quashed, and even that was really unusual and surprising. After all, there was a report of cocaine and a handgun, so obviously a military assault was needed, right?
We should be looking at different procedures around hostage situations, with the possibility of crank SWATing calls in mind. Putting people into these situations needlessly, on the basis of just one anonymous report, without checking and confirming the facts, isn't acting responsibly.
If there is no specific intent to kill, that's as wrong in 2019 as any other year. OTOH, it does seem to be the kind of act with extreme disregard to the risk to human life that, where death does result, the “depraved indifference” subtype of murder exists to address.
Even if not that, filing a false police report is a crime (depending on jurisdiction and circumstances it may either be a felony or misdemeanor) and the death is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of that, so either the felony murder or misdemeanor manslaughter rule should apply.
You are right about the lack of specific intent. In 2019, it should be considered common knowledge that doing this sort of thing creates the potential for loss of life. I would be just fine with 'the “depraved indifference” subtype of murder.'
The way the law was described to me, is that most crimes have approximately 3 levels:
* Criminal Negligence (Negligent Death / Involuntary Manslaughter)
* Criminal Recklessness (Manslaughter)
* Criminal Malice (Murder)
Things may get more detailed (Murder 1st degree usually has a "premeditated" clause), but that's the general pattern. The argument is that a Police Officer who shoots an innocent man would likely be either Criminally Negligent, or maybe Criminally Reckless, in his job.
Negligence is obviously the lowest bar for a crime. It is clear that the officer was negligent in confirming whether or not the suspect was reaching for a gun (because the suspect in this case was unarmed).
Recklessness might be a case if the officer drew the gun too early. Hard for me to say if this case fits the bar, especially because the prank caller would have biased the officers.
We all understand that there was no malice in the behavior. But guess what? A mother who leaves their underage child alone too long can be held criminally negligent if the child gets hurt. As a society, we expect all citizens (officers included) to do their job.
I think the record shows, that putting officers into that situation too often is a recipe for disaster. We shouldn't be using a force optimized for "takedown of fortified gang hideouts" for domestic violence cases. We shouldn't be letting pranksters deploy such forces.
So dozens of other officers were literally put into the same situation, but also haven't killed the suspect. Furthermore, swatting is (unfortunately) more common these days than it used to be, so officers need to keep that in mind when they're called into these situations.
Indeed, in one of the other cases, the officers were under active fire and STILL didn't kill the man: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/no-charges-man-who-shot-police-ch...
So even IF the suspect had a gun, its likely legal for them to use it on officers if they feel the need for self defense (if the officers enter unexpectedly).
> We shouldn't be using a force optimized for "takedown of fortified gang hideouts" for domestic violence cases. We shouldn't be letting pranksters deploy such forces.
I mean... yeah. But USA has rather liberal gun laws. At a minimum, officers entering a house unwelcomed need to be doing it with significant body armor, and under the assumption that the suspects are armed.
Because its totally legal for people in their own homes to use guns on intruders.
It may be evidence from which intent might be inferred, but on its own without additional evidence it is probably not strong enough to support intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
> You know what's likely to happen and you make that call.
That's not, in and of itself, intent. Intent means it's your goal, not merely something you know is a likely effect and accept.
> That's murder.
Sure, but absent an actual goal of killing, it's murder of the depraved indifference type, which is generally second degree, not the intent to kill type, which is first degree. (Though if the false report itself is a felony, it's murder of the felony murder type, which is usually first degree.)
Criminal responsibility doesn't work that way.
Heck, IIRC, civil responsibility for negligence usually doesn't work that way, even in jurisdictions with a comparative negligence rule, except between the plaintiff and the set of all defendants.
> Then are you arguing that that the cop should get 20 years for responding to a shooter threat and killing someone that he thought was reaching for a firearm and the kid that perpetrated the prank gets 2 years?
No, the cop should get 100% of the punishment for a crime somewhere on the range between voluntary manslaughter and murder (of the depraved indifference sort, which is typically second degree.) And the SWATter should get 100% of the punishment for filing a false police report and a homicide crime which might be any of involuntary (misdemeanor) manslaughter (if the false report is a misdemeanor in the jurisdiction), depraved indifference murder, or felony murder (of the false report is a felony.)
It should be an eye opener.
- a few dead innocent cops and some bad guys get away
- a few dead innocent civilians and less bad guys get away
To me it seems clear that the risk should lean towards officers, who chose to be in a dangerous profession, instead of random civilians who have no idea what is going on. Some bad guys getting away seems inconsequential compared to accidental death of innocents.
However, I find this part of the article biased:
It should not go unnoted here that Finch was unarmed and on his own doorstep when police killed him — with an assault rifle — reportedly because “he was reaching for his waistband.” Apparently the officer also “believed he saw a gun come up in Mr Finch’s hands.” Well, which was it, up or down? Was he reaching for the gun or raising it? Is it common for Wichita police to shoot someone within seconds of them answering the door, without assessing the situation — for instance, where the children are? As is sadly often the case in such shootings, the police are entirely without credibility here, and the officer involved seems to have faced no consequences.
1 - It's factually incorrect that Finch was shot by an "assault rifle." An AR-15 isn't an assault rifle. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting )
2 - Given what we know about the reliability of witnesses, especially in stressful situations, there isn't sufficient context in the article to come to such a conclusion.
3 - From the Wikipedia entry: Mrs. Finch reports that her 28-year old son "screamed and then they shot him". Moments after Finch stepped onto his front porch, police ordered him to put his hands up. According to officer testimony, he began to do so and then stopped.
The officer may well have been reacting to the scream or to the way Finch was moving.
That said, I have issues with police video simulation training, from what I've seen of it. I saw a video of a simulator session where the "right answer" was always to shoot. There were a sequence of scenarios, often looking innocuous, but then escalating very quickly to shooting. Again, there was no variation of whether the officer should shoot. It was only a matter of when.
I've been watching the YouTube channel "Free Field Training" which is produced by an Illinois police officer. His take on using a gun in police work, is that a police officer might need to draw a weapon hundreds of times a year, but should expect to fire it approximately zero times, with an error bar of somewhere between 0 and 1. (Granted, the situation is different with SWAT.)
> The officer may well have been reacting to the scream or to the way Finch was moving.
Why is that important?
If someone is going to draw a gun and fire on you, then you're a bit less than 1 second away from dying. If there was a scream, then the police officer was put into a situation where he was led to believe there was a good chance of this happening, then was subjected to an alarming stimulus, then had to make a split second life or death decision.
The fact that the above scenario can happen, resulting from a crank phone call, indicates there is something very, very wrong. Too much power is being made available to the behest of unchecked assertions.
If you put that power in the hands of potential pranksters, this sort of outcome is what you get in our current world.
What if we could send an android to calmly knock on the front door and ask questions?
Or hell, this is a great use for a camera drone. While I'm sure there's some handwringing about tipping off the perps it really shouldn't be any worse than a whole bunch of guys swarming the yard and surrounding the house. One of those little racing drones with the good camera would seem to be perfect for checking out the house before you send guys crashing through every window and chucking flashbangs into rooms blind.
I don't think it should be too hardware-ish. The officer android from "Detroit Become Human" would be just about right. (Without the coin juggling.)
SWAT tactics were seemingly designed around the assumption that the residence is a fortified gang base with lookouts and the like. This means the SWAT teams are going in blind because they don't want to alert the armed guards, but this leads to situations where flashbangs get tossed into cribs with infants because one of the cops transposed the street number of the house when calling in the report. It's exactly the opposite of what you would thing responsible policing should be.
It would have to be a very quiet drone. I think we could build such devices. (Not necessarily flying.)
SWAT tactics were seemingly designed around the assumption that the residence is a fortified gang base with lookouts and the like. This means the SWAT teams are going in blind because they don't want to alert the armed guards...It's exactly the opposite of what you would thing responsible policing should be.
I think we as a society need to revisit this assumption. We really want to avoid teams of armed, tense men running into a building with guns. Given a large enough number of iterations of such events, an accidental shooting is just a matter of when, not if.
I think those running fortified gang bases also want to avoid public hostage scenarios. The fortified gang base assault mode should be reserved for situations where there is solid intelligence, not on the call of some rando.
They can do this with IR cameras, they just can't use it for a search warrant.
'SWATting' as an attack is a problem, who knows what the solution to it is, but SWAT as a concept is kind of necessary in a country with a ridiculously armed populace, and even in countries without such a populace, there is usually an analog for situations that deem a similar response.
But once you have a SWAT department (which is expensive), people feel compelled to use them to justify their existence. It's questionable to me that these sorts of tactics were necessary for a reported domestic violence incident, but I'm sure there are cases in history where someone shot at/killed the cops after killing a family member.
Is there any actual evidence for this? People shouldn't throw around accusations of widespread racism so lightly.