Tales from the Trenches: I was SWATed

It's not made any better by describing it as "gamers taking the competition offline". Two problems; first, it's making it appear as some kind of a natural extension of playing a game / watching a game stream. Hey, it's just some competition, boys will be boys! Second, it's too symmetrical, basically spreading the blame between both the perp and the victim. Again if you can't see this, what would you say about describing this case as "some Twitter users taking their gender politics discussions offline"?

Are you sure? His opening 'graph is:

"It's worth noting that this is just the latest in a long series of episodes of harassment which Randi has experienced -- it's not just another case of gamers taking their competition offline, which is the most common swatting backstory I hear about these days."

This seems to me to say: "This isn't a one-off incident; it's yet another terrible incident in a very long string of related harassment incidents."

He goes on to say that Randi has done a huge amount of work to actively combat online abuse.

I don't see where cperciva makes the claim that all online harassment is severe. (Truly, not all online harassment is severe. When my boss uses email to get on my case for overdue deliverables, that's online harassment; but it's a) minor and b) justified.) [0] :)

[0] Or, look at like 80% of what happens in Eve Online for boatloads of examples of minor online harassment.

To me it was as a statement that because the long series of episodes of harassment which Randi has experienced, this specific case is much more than all those gamers who complain about getting swatted, as their problem is just another case of gamers taking their competition offline. That this case is different from the norm (as Manishearth phrase it bellow), and thus worthy of notice in contrast to the problems of "gamers".

To me, that is belittling. Maybe cperciva meant the opposite, that swatting is a real crime and not something to be perceived as just "gamers taking their competition offline", but it was not the impression I got from that comment.

I mean when police officers refuse to identify as such, ignorantly or willfully creating a situation where civilians think they're in danger. It's not safe for anybody involved.

> Especially with their new shiny uniforms.

I think they're updating the uniforms all over the EU, making them more alike. They do look snazzy. ;)

It depends on the political climate. I grant you - and as a German by birth I used to think about it a lot - that Germans are especially vulnerable to this. Honestly I witnessed abuse of power far more often from public servants (if you need to interact directly with a low-rung city official here you're pretty much hosed), and I won't deny that everyday citizen-on-citizen malice has a special quality in this country to this day.

But it's been my experience that police officers are indeed mostly in it to help people. Sure, they're extra suspicious about everything, but I think that's par for the job. If this is indeed changing, it's a result of international osmosis.

Raymond Chandler: "Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men."

The classic example is if the police think that evidence could be destroyed very quickly, e.g., electronic records.

We don't shoot many people, America do. It's such a huge, cavernous gulf in magnitude that I have no idea what point you're trying to make with your last paragraph.

This stuff doesn't have to be the standard. This is a fad borne of the fact that most people who are SWATed find boots on their necks and cuffs on their wrists before they're capable of explaining themselves. If they're lucky.

I'm doing my best to spare the diatribe about how the Oakland Police Department is essentially the worst police department in the US.

Let's just take a step back. In what world does someone who wants a ransom for a hostage call the police? This isn't something that happens, except in action movies. The entire narrative, including the police reaction, is straight out of a sophomore film student's twisted imagination.

The police, esp in the US, but in general, aren't designed to protect and serve, they're designed to eliminate threats to power. Right now Oakland has a new mayor who wants to make sure voters see that she is tough on crime.

This situation is an unfortunate collision of two worlds that know very little about each other. :/

Here's an example of a women with a knife making threats to kill people and ignoring police instruction where those police are clearly armed and prepared to kill.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/03/idaho-police-...

She was pregnant; the knife was a three inch blade; the police had less-lethal options available but chose not to use them; police did not just have their pistols - one of them had an AR15 rifle.

There were things the police could have done that would have avoided the death of the woman (and the risk of death or injury to bystanders). (I'm not talking about shoot to wound - I know enough to know that's misguided). The police could have used their tasers. They should have been given better training in de-escalation.

There needs to be a high bar for using it (maybe even "don't").

To put it in a fire department metaphor, if someone anonymously calls in a fire, naturally you send out the trucks. But you need to check for smoke before you turn the hose on, right?