Man Who Hired Deadly Swatting Gets 15 Months
krebsonsecurity.com
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Also, let us take a serious look at every other charge in existence in cases like this. If 15 months is the sentence for something resulting in death, every other lesser offence should be capped at 15 months. Illegally voted? Caught with drugs? Why are those things “5 years” then?
Finally, clearly SWAT itself needs reform. If you’re going to pack a dozen armed guys in a truck and drive over to somebody’s house to blast down the door, YOU NEED a system of double-checks and triple-checks to assess the damned situation first! Given such checks, it should be literally impossible to assault someone that is not actually a threat.
Is there a lawsuit against the SWAT team? And if not, why?
> it should be literally impossible to assault someone that is not actually a threat.
The swatting person usually claims that there is armed person with intent to kill. The SWAT guys come in quick and into potentially very serious situation with no time for 'surveillance'.
But that's not really all that strong of argument. edit: layout
1) if possible, shouldn't the court mete out the death sentence, instead of Judge Dredd, I mean, the police.
2) even from a completely tactical viewpoint, if you are dealing with more than one hostage taker, and you shot one of them, wouldn't you suspect the remaining hostage takers could get a little spooked?
With all the blame being placed on the person who placed the call, I don't have any faith that this same situation won't be repeated in the future either.
"Hmm, this guy in Call of Duty made me mad because he kept winning. Should I do something that puts me in prison for 15 years to get back at him? nah... Should I hire someone to do something that puts me in prison for over a year to get back at him? nah..."
"Should I hire someone do something that puts me in prison for over a year to get back at him"
Prior to this whole case playing out, I would have assumed "going to jail" would be an extremely likely outcome for the crime of swatting, especially if it had the (intended?) effect of killing the person involved.
The person who made the call was sentenced to twenty years. The person who got 15 months is the one who paid the other person to make the call, not the person who made the call.
The guy got 20 years. When he was in the temporary holding jail he gained access to the internet and was still tweeting about swatting people. This was BEFORE his sentencing. Absolutely moronic and showed zero remorse.
When the police are trained to de-escalate first instead of shoot first, swatting will stop.
You can downvote all you want, but the statistics are that police are much more likely to face someone with a weapon in the US.
Absolutely. And one reason we're supposed to respect the police is that they take these risks. If they instead start shooting people first, they aren't taking the risks, they are creating them.
Being a police officer interacting with citizens is more dangerous than being a citizen...but is it more dangerous than being a citizen interacting with the police?
That's not one of the instances of police, say, choking a guy selling cigarettes to death. It's a situation where even someone courageous is going to be pretty amped up.
There was multiple cops aiming rifles at this guy, who was raising his hands when he was shot. The officer that shot him said he saw him move his hands at that's why he shot him.
Even if the guy had a gun, there was no way he would've had time to raise it, aim it accurately (at cops who were behind cover) and take a shot without police being able to fire at him first after clearly seeing it was a gun. Plus, at that distance, he wasn't likely to hit a cop who was behind cover with a pistol anyway, even if he was able to shoot many shots.
Cops aren't saints in Italy where I lived for many years, not by a long shot. And yet this stuff happens less.
Please don't spread misinformation about a tragedy that's been used to create so much division in this country.
1. He resisted arrest. He clearly stated his intent to resist arrest. He was given the option to be peacefully arrested, which he declined. In the resulting forcible arrest he was choked, which is wrong, he shouldn't have been choked, but he absolutely wasn't "just standing on the sidewalk" - he was resisting arrest.
2. When you say he was choked to death people might get the impression that there was intent to kill him or that he died on the spot from asphyxiation instead of later from a heart attack. (edit: roughly a heart attack. The coroner listed several pre-existing conditions that contributed, including heart disease, but didn't say "heart attack")
Since we've had literal riots over things like this I think it's appropriate to ask that we all try to stick to the facts.
2. The choking caused his death. He was therefore choked to death.
We have riots because people like you keep defending murderers and they keep getting away with killing people.
When you expand the use of a word so widely, it ceases to have meaning. You could say a traffic stop is violence. Court-ordered searches and seizures could be violence.
The only reason most people don't resist is the threat of more violence if they do.
Is kidnapping someone at gunpoint not violence?
You refuse to admit the difference between a peaceful and by-force arrest because you're expanding the definition of the word violence and apparently would like to talk about it.
You've expanded the definition of the word 'murder' to no longer require intent.
You've expanded the meaning of "choked to death" beyond what any reasonable person would expect it to mean.
If the police had gone out there and violently murdered somebody by choking them to death I would be very angry. That's simply not what happened and if you believe it is maybe you should examine exactly how you came to that conclusion.
However, I can certainly be wrong about this detail. Nonetheless, if police are deciding that an anonymous claim allows them to move to kill-first mode, then they are forfeiting the respect that taking risks for the greater good entails.
Sometimes, the people on the front lines aren't great at looking at things from a system-wide perspective.
Less-lethal weapons leads to them just tazing more people for contempt of cop (people who would generally not be shot). The net amount of violence increases because police use less lethal weapons to force compliance in situations where they had not previously had that option.
It seems like part of the problem is that there's an arms race. The cops need SWAT teams because citizens have Uzis, etc. Then the criminals get even more Uzis because now the cops regularly have them. On and on.
Also:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/texas-no-k...
Impossible to know if it saved the person doing the shooting, or his girlfriend. Maybe. Given how incompetent everything else was done, it's not hard to imagine.
About the arms race, I agree. It's very unfortunate.
Who would not be more than a bit stressed if they believed this was the actual situation?
I don't know all the facts, and maybe reasonable people would conclude the cop acted in an unprofessional or even criminal way.
That's not the point: the point is this kind of thing will keep happening because of the mix of nervous people with lots of guns.
Yes, for a very good reason. Currently, incentives are such that police are rewarded with long careers and large pensions for avoiding mental healthcare.
Despite having excellent access to healthcare, police notoriously avoid accessing any type of mental health resources. They're afraid that they'll lose their jobs for it, which makes sense.
A cop's testimony is pivotal to most criminal cases, and if it is called into question because of the cop's mental health status, that can be a liability. Many places have strict policies concerning mental health and policing, as well.
It's absolutely necessary that the state implements mental health screening for police officers, because they refuse to implement it themselves.
Police are on the list... at #14.
Occupations more dangerous than being a police officer in the USA:
Logging.
Fishing.
Aircraft pilots and engineers.
Roofers.
Garbage and recycling.
Iron and steel workers.
Commercial truck drivers.
Farmers/ranchers.
Supervisors in construction and extraction.
Agricultural workers.
Grounds maintenance.
Supervisors of mechanics, installers and repairers.
Construction labor.
And then police.
Police aren't quick to fire because of their fear for their own safety. Police are quick to fire because they've been trained that way. Culture tells them that they are heroes, and then gives them guns.
Apparently he attempted to by asking Finch to raise his hands, and instead the hands went to pull up his pants instead.
If true, and police/swat are called to the scene of a murder with additional hostages, then a person leaving the residence reaches for their waist area instead of complying with a request to raise his hands...its simply tragic.
But I assure you, if the officer didn't shoot Finch, swatting wouldn't stop. Its not like these guys would have said well we swatted the address and swat didn't kill the guy...so lets stop swatting. They would have sat in the safety of their own home laughing and virtual high-fiving each other for a job well done and planning the next.
Its become a scapegoat for mass shootings, which is unfortunate, but people who do this are some combination of psychopath, mentally ill, and/or on drugs. Society simply has no interest in acknowledging or managing these people.
Are you talking about the police?
A lot of fingers are pointed at the officer, which may or may not be useful here. At the end of the day someone was shot and killed, and all we have is the officer testimony that he asked the person's hands be raised but the hands went to his waistband. Maybe it is bullshit (I hope there was video to at least confirm the testimony and it wasn't an outright lie), but the reality is the officer was responding to a hostage situation with 1 alleged death already. I get it we all want to see some officer magically save the day and stop these tragic events from unfolding. Maybe their training confirms this isn't a real hostage situation, its kids swatting someone over a stupid video game, but society doesn't train officers for that, they are trained to respond, and if you have responded to a hostage situation, demand to see hands, demand hands be raised, and instead the go to a waistband, what follows is what they trained to do.
I see this stuff every day in mental health court, and mental health court (in my jurisdiction) is new and its voluntary...and I can confirm no one has been trained to deal with these people and you can't expect more from teachers/officers/judges/attorneys without that training...and that training only comes from society demanding funding, but they don't.
Evidently after they declined to release his name he testified in the case. Name below is correct. Justin Rapp. Coincidentally, there's a videographer in the search results for the name. The blurb below the URL says "About Me Justin Rapp 2019-05-16T13:29:49-07:00. BORN TO SHOOT THE WORLD AROUND ME" Bad luck there bud...
I live in a bad neighborhood where gunshots are common. Since I've lived here there have probably been dozens of homicides within a .5 mile radius. Living here has changed my perception of officer involved shootings.
People don't realize how quickly things go from a slightly weird situation to bullets in the air. It goes from somebody standing funny, maybe they have a hand behind their back or they're holding a towel in a weird way, then bullets. Fast. A quarter of a second separates "that's weird" from "oh no somebody's shooting."
If you've ever dropped your phone and had to figure out what to do before it hits the ground that's about as much time as police have to make these life-and-death decisions.
In this particular situation, the police believed they were arriving to a hostage situation where somebody had already been killed.
What happened is tragic. If you've ever dug into this story it's heartbreaking. At the same time I don't think the anger at police lines up with what happened here at all.
You really think a police officer was in danger in that situation, even if the guy did have a pistol?
Obviously in retrospect the police were in zero danger, there was no hostage, the house wasn't really doused in gasoline. There was no way for them to know that. We've had 20 months to think about what happened that day from the safety of our homes. They had seconds to deal with the situation unfolding in real time while believing their lives and the life of a hostage were in danger.
Pointing a gun is a deadly threat and it's hard to believe (assuming this was a real hostage situation) he couldn't make out even one outline of a human to take aim at.
The police thought they were at the scene of a murder/hostage situation. They weren't just protecting their own lives, they were there to protect the life of the hostage from somebody who they believed had committed murder just minutes before.
Given ten minutes to think about the situation maybe the officer who fired the shot would take a different course of action. But he didn't have ten minutes, he had half a second.
Edit: I meant getting out before the full sentence is served, is a good thing. (I don't know anything about federal halfway houses.)
Kids playing video games and getting very angry at other players online, is going to happen. Is there something that can be done at this level?
I remember hearing things back in my high-school COD days. Kids are brutal, and terrible at coping with their emotions. Saying things like "I'll stab you! You ....", at the drop of a hat. I always wrote off these types of threats as a form of venting. But then again, I never shared any personal information with people online. So I wasn't worried.
Swatting... This has been going on for quite some time now. Maybe we can start here? Train responders to be aware of these potential scenarios - that the whole thing _could be_ BS, and you should approach the situation open-mindedly, rather than expecting a battle. De-escalation training, etc. Why are police not showing up and assessing the situation first hand these days? Before taking a 911 caller's word as gospel. Assess the situation, on-site.
Giving some kid more prison time will not dissuade others. There's a lot of research done to show that negative reinforcement like this doesn't work.
You shouldn't be able to call in a hit on someone by calling the cops on them.
Mandatory country wide minimal training standards for all LEOs, automatic investigation when a shot is fired, demilitarization, getting rid of trigger happy or clearly racist officers, lowering qualified immunity to a remotely sensible level, it's not like there wouldn't be approaches that work in other countries. Oh and of course doing something about America's gun culture on the other side would be another good start but that's never going to happen either.
The best response in the US so far seems to be registering on potential victims lists like in Seattle (https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-stop-swatting-before-it-h... - HN discussions exist if you're interested).
The victim list did recently prevent the attempted swatting of Seattle author Ijeoma Oluo: https://www.newsweek.com/author-so-you-want-talk-about-race-...
Don't get me wrong, swatting is bad for a bunch of obvious reasons and the swatter is the one with the malicious intent here but if we had a more professional police force (you'd think the swat team, supposedly the most highly trained cops, would have a little more restraint with the trigger finger) it would end this way a lot less often. Cops showing up expecting something where there is nothing should not result in anybody dying, it should result in confused cops and little more. This is very much a two part problem. If the cops didn't have an itchy trigger finger swatting wouldn't lead to outcomes like this.
If the officer doesn't engage out of caution and an innocent person in the residence (non officer) dies is that still ok?
This feels like a slippery slope fallacy.
"At home", the police already has control over the land. They have "won" almost by default. No opponent can challenge them, or have any interest in seriously taking them on.
The military, on the other hand often operates where they are instructed to "win the hearts and minds" and if they don't get local support, things can go very badly for them.
Which gives, it's unfortunate police not more often tries to "win hearts and minds".
I completely agree. I also think the man who "hired deadly swatting" should be immediately released with an apology from the society.
Whether they did it knowingly or not does not matter in this case. I still think this exposes a systemic problem that we need to address at a systems level.
This feels like monkey patching
if (x !== null) {}
In this case. there should have been no shots fired at all. I am not even saying the officer who shot should go to prison. I am just saying maybe the officer who shot shouldn't have had a gun or been there in the first place. They clearly didn't have proper training.
Sending the person who made the phone call to prison solves nothing. We have blameless postmortems for us. Why can't we have blameless postmortems in these cases which are more life and death? We don't live in an "eye for an eye" society, do we?
I disagree strongly with your characterization of this. The caller clearly knew what he was doing wrong (we can argue whether it was reasonable to assume that it would be responded to with lethal force, but that is not what you’re discussing). Likewise, the reaction of the police officer in this situation may have been a problem, but again it’s not relevant to the issue of willfully lying about a hostage situation to, at the minimum, waste the time of law enforcement and the SWATed person.
Consider, for example, a residential street where the speed limit is 5 mph: it’s pretty hard for anyone to get seriously injured in an accident if vehicles follow the rules. But if a car decides to barrel down the road at highway speeds, I’m not off the hook if I push you in front of the it. I can’t just say “I’m innocent, because you couldn’t have died if everyone followed the rules” and get out of it. I’d probably still be liable if I didn’t see the car coming. Just because someone may have done something illegally that made my actions worse does not absolve me from wrongdoing; it just makes it so there are two problems to deal with.
This is still treating a symptom and not the root of the problem. I don't care so much about "justice" for the victim as much as I care about the systems problem.
In your example, why was someone driving well over the speed limit? Could we make it less likely or even impossible to speed that much? What can we do to make these events less likely to happen in the future?
I doubt that either the guy who made the call or the guy who hired him wanted to kill someone. Having been around a number of cops and military personal though, I've seen plenty that are just in it to harm others.
There’s discussion about whether this was criminalized by the auto lobby, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> Should you get 15 months or even 20 years for it?
In any case, it’s a minor crime and the punishment, if any, is usually quite light.
> I doubt that either the guy who made the call or the guy who hired him wanted to kill someone.
In any case, I think we can agree that the people who were involved in making the call knew they were doing something wrong. At the very least, they were wasting police time and harassing an innocent person, which is a medium-level crime even if nobody got hurt. In this case we have a tragedy: I think it’s reasonable that the caller knew that this was a possible outcome and the results would make the case one for “accomplice to murder” or something similar. If we accept that the caller did not have an intention or expect for armed police to show up and start shooting (which is somewhat unlikely considering what he called for) this could be a manslaughter charge. (FWIW, I am not providing an opinion on what the sentencing for something like this should be, or whether the police officer should be charged with murder, as those are separate issues.)