What bothers me about these situations is just the entire idea of "SWAT" as practiced.<p>You are a cop with 5+ other cops.<p>You all pull your guns.<p>Someone comes to the door, groggy in the middle of the night. They may or may not understand you are police. They may or may not believe you are the police.<p>They are definitely confused/frightened/angry by your presence.<p>We now begin the dice rolling process.<p>Since every police officer with a gun drawn is now a DECIDER they get a dice roll.<p>Every single millisecond, all these dice are rolled simultaneously for the entire arrest process as the "suspect" is ordered around like they haven't been since grade school gym class.<p>This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged.
Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice, it never ceases to puzzle me how the solution to any situation appears to be to shoot anything that moves on the flimsiest of assumptions, then figure out what happened afterwards.<p>Now, I appreciate that the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does; this surely goes some way towards explaining their apparent eagerness to shoot first, then ask questions later.<p>However, what puzzles me most is this - if the police around here shot but one innocent, there'd be cries for resignations, perhaps even going all the way to the secretary of justice; we collectively would expect - nah, demand - that the police come up with policies and training which would make it less likely that another, similar incident would ever occur, &c.<p>So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect?<p>Say, requiring better people skills, more use of non-lethal weapons (and, if sufficiently effective non-lethal weapons do not yet exist - to have them developed), more passive safety for police officers (say, if you are wearing body armour which will stop a cal. 50-round, maybe you do not have to fire the first shot) etc?
I don't see anyone here asking this: how many people are police killing who are not 100% innocent bystanders like in this case, but still didn't need to be killed? I mean, we're all outraged because they shot "some dude in his PJs" but doesn't that imply they must be shooting 10, 100x as many folks where we'd be thinking "well, he shouldn't have had a knife in his hand" or "he shouldn't have been high"?<p>Where I live, small town in the middle of the US, to my knowledge the cops have killed at least two people who were no real threat to them in the past few years. If that death density is consistent across the country there must be hundreds of events like this every year.<p>I get the impression somehow we've been brain washed into seeing this like unlucky folks being hit by a drunk driver.
My wife's family house was mistaken for a drug house years ago, it was around the block.<p>Police came in cuffing them and shot the family dog when it got aggressive trying to protect the yard, and noone in family being able to restrain him as they were in cuffs<p>This was in Canada.<p>This happened ~15 years ago, my wife still traumatized and never leaves pets outdoors.
Their family has quite the disdain for police overall since..<p>Over use of police force happens everywhere, and just more known in these communication real-time times.<p>The guy who requested to take the "hit" out, definitely the guy who made the call, and I doubt but also the officer most of all should all be charged.<p>Hope they make an example of the guy making the false reports as he has history of doing it, and blew off the consequences of his joke.<p>I can't believe the police didn't verify the situation before escalating.
Even if it was a real situation, the guy who had his life stolen could have been the hostage.<p>Police have made these mistakes without false information... I put the biggest blame on them, also important to not label all police officers the same as some are very upstanding citizens.
I always grew up thinking that police had to wait until somebody <i>shot at them</i> to shoot back.<p>It seems like "we thought he had a gun and he motioned towards his waist" has now replaced "he shot at us".<p>I really wish that the police had to adhere to the same laws as anybody else does. They are civilians after all.<p>If had a gun (I don't) and pointed it at somebody to intimidate them, even if they were trying to break into my house, I could get in trouble for "brandishing". Yet civilian police pull their guns out and point them at people all the time.<p>The can't believe that we allow these people can put themselves into a position where they're deciding if they're going to <i>kill you</i> or not, and the mere press of a small lever on their hand <i>KILLS YOU</i> and that this is just considered okay...<p>It's just absolutely ridiculous to me.
Is the policeman who killed an unarmed man at his house going to be charged? Ideally this wouldn't be a rhetorical question.<p>How long until the police give themselves the right to kill someone annoying by anonymously phoning in a warning then making sure they're amongst the ones who turn up?
Having unfortunately seen a police body cam video of an obviously unarmed man being shot, and having read about this one, it seems to be a case of men hitching their trousers up because they aren’t wearing a belt, being mistaken for reaching for a gun.<p>This is a normal thing, it’s an unconscious thing, we do it without thinking so can’t stop when told not to do it. People should not die because they’re wearing loose fitting trousers.<p>Americans need to be doing more about their fellow citizens being murdered by the people supposed to protect them.
I'm glad this person is an adult located in the U.S. Hopefully this makes for swift and severe justice.<p>I'm sad to learn the victim was the father of two children.<p>And I'm mad that police are shooting people, innocent or not, based on vague gestures that sorta, maybe, if you look at it from the right angle, looks a little threatening.<p>I said yesterday that, as a hearing-impaired person, if I'm ever in a position where police are pointing guns at me and shouting instructions, I expect I will be shot. I'm honestly not sure what I can do to prevent that.
At what point does the average citizen look at "SWAT death as an option for what could happen to me today" and think, 'well .. this is okay'?<p>I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but there has to be real moment of respect for the fact that Americans are living in a "dial-a-death" state of existence.<p>This is something that many, many social commentators have warned us of, over the decades: the signs of a Police State.<p>Sure, American. Most likely you are aware of the nature of law enforcement.<p>But for those of us observing things from places where such actions as this are a real, honest, facet of the past history: this shit is scary.<p>Like, come on. A rational society allows this?<p>Please fork, reboot, and continuously deploy these notions of freedom under the protection of violent force. This is a paradox which is delivering injustice, broad and wide, instead of narrow and thin. A moment of disgrace.
The principal issue is: why was an unarmed
man shot on his doorstep by the police.
This focus conveniently absolves the police
of wrong doing; e.g. "if someone didn't call
in a problem, no one would be dead".
"When confronted by a police officer,
you must keep your hands up or on the drivers
wheel at all times."<p>This seems to be the new reflex we must learn
and practice? Perhaps the rule should be
codified so that officers know they can't
ask you to do anything else with your hands.
People have been shot while complying with
a request, ie, getting car registration from
the glove compartment or moving closer to the
officer by crawling. Just because one officer
gives a command does not mean that another
officer heard it.<p>Since this is a life or death sort of reflex,
perhaps we must be teaching/practicing in elementary
school and refreshers as part of drivers training.
One thing with all of this which puzzles me as a non-American, how does the "acceptance" of people getting killed by the police fit together with the whole anti-gorvernment thing which seems fairly common in the US as well?<p>One would think that if one does not like the government, one would be extremely upset about the gouvernment randomly killing people. But for some reason this does not seem to be the case.<p>I guess similar things could be said about gun ownership/self-defence argument etc. I guess if one decides to shoot back at the police one is truly screwed?
Most of the comments have to do with the police interaction. My question is, what can be done to discourage swatting?<p>My reflex reaction is to give everyone involved long prison sentences, and some aggressive prosecution of other incidents, so that people tempted to engage in swatting are discouraged by some realistic chance of doing real prison time for doing something so reckless and stupid.<p>The guy who made the call was fairly unconcerned about the prospect of real punishment when he was interviewed a few hours before he was arrested.[1] His voice tone during the call was also fairly flat.[2]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCHOI39nJPM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCHOI39nJPM</a>
[2] <a href="https://scallywagandvagabond.com/2017/12/tyler-raj-barriss-swautistic-gamer-arrest-andrew-finch-swatting-prank/" rel="nofollow">https://scallywagandvagabond.com/2017/12/tyler-raj-barriss-s...</a>
I will never, ever be able to accept that it is ok for the police to shoot a person who they do not see carrying a weapon. There is no circumstance in which you can say you feared for your life if you did not see a weapon. And if you legitimately did fear for your life when you didn't see a weapon then maybe you shouldn't be a police officer.
Stories like this is going to make every encounter with a cop a lot more frightening for me.<p>As a teenager I was once yelled out by undercover cops that came out of no where. They yelled at me to "not put your hands in my pocket" or "put my hands up"... I really do not recall the exact words. I instinctively put my hands in my pocket. I couldn't help it, I do not think I even processed what they said. Luckily they didn't shoot but they were mad and warned that I could have been shot. I really do not understand how they expect people to understand them when they are yelling and surprise the sh!t out of you.
Since we're mostly debating the police action here, there's a short video available now of the fatal moment:<p><a href="http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html</a><p>The victim really does make a fairly unfortunate movement right before he's shot. Still I'm hardly in a position to say how far this mitigates the shooter.
Link to video of the shooting: <a href="http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html</a><p>Couple things are clear:
1. Police took shelter behind cars, outside of handgun range, but within the range of their own rifles.
2. The victim clearly didn't carry a rifle, or any weapon with a range that can threaten the police
3. The police didn't know if the victim, who was being shouted at and shined at with high beam and confused, was the supposed hostage or hostage taker, and shot him anyways.<p>It's a fuckup, and the police should serve better.
What if person who made a call is outside of US? Or we are unable to track it? Who are we going to blame then?
The "911" seems like an open line for terrorists or some other nation to kill anybody they want... Or terrorize anybody they want...
The USA have a truly messed up culture.<p>I wonder how it can be fixed. Some things seem to be going in the right direction, for example gun ownership is on the decline (from 47 % of households owning gun in 1971 to 31% in 2014 <a href="http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun...</a> ) .
However the number of guns keeps increasing, so it looks like some people are stockpiling. Nonetheless if gun ownership continues to decrease they will be marginalized.<p>At the same time, police is very violent and its militarization is a sad, messed up, joke.<p>And violent deaths in the USA are still an order of magnitude higher than those of other developed countries.
If this is a potential consequence of online gaming, then I don't want any of my children gaming online.<p>We all know that the police response to this issue is going to be inadequate. What I'm curious about is the gaming industry and community's response.
The SWAT team should <i>never</i> be the first line of defense, unless pre-authorized by a warrant. They should only be involved after escalation from a normal police patrol, and should <i>never</i> be involved due to an anonymous tip.
The immediate reaction seems to be that the police are too militarized or not disciplined enough, but it's not clear to me that these claims apply in this situation.<p>Police militarization is a real problem when it happens for non-violent crimes. But this was thought to be a serious hostage situation, and I'm not sure there were a lot of good options here.
It seems like the police is trying to shift the blame 100% on the caller. He might be a terrible human being who deserves punishment, but indeed the sole responsibility lies with the police who pulled the trigger.<p>But yeah, instead of training for more people skills, let us give them more military-grade weapons.
People do realize that it was a random address, not any of the call of duty players addresses'.<p>A random person was killed over this stupidity.<p>This is so enraging it's not even funny.
Here is an interview with the person who claims to have made the call that prompted the swat:<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cCHOI39nJPM&feature=youtu.be" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cCHOI39nJPM&feature=youtu.be</a>
Swatting should be considered domestic terrorism and not a prank. Just listening to the video describing the events and how many lies the caller provided to convince the police there was a hostage situation is sickening.
If you want to solve the issue of over-militarization of civilian police and SWAT, replace their guns with something safer but still effective at quickly subduing threats.<p>Carfentanil gas smart bullets with auto & manual per-shot dose control (handled by the launcher/gun device) could be equally effective and slightly less dangerous.<p>I imagine that the decrease in medical costs would vastly outweigh the increase in weaponry costs.
I think of a lot of the replies here miss the point of why the police are in "such a hurry". Usually, they believe that the person has hostages that are in imminent danger. I'm sure there is a big component of macho gun buzz, but the fact that they're in a rush is an understandable component of the situation. That's why they don't sit in the car and try to have a chat with the "hostage taker".<p>Obviously, the fact that a random person can essentially order a taxpayer-funded death squad to an arbitrary home is a huge problem, and the people actually making those calls are only a small part of the problem.<p>The fact that these death squads are on the payroll sitting around bored waiting for "action" is an issue too.<p>However, I don't think it's as clear-cut as "don't kill anyone". I'd hate to be the guy with my life threatened while they cautiously announce their presence to my attacker.<p>What's missing is some basic "is there really a hostage situation going on here" step that I don't have the law enforcement knowledge to define.
Some interesting excerpts from <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/126473/american-cops-100-times-deadlier-finnish-police" rel="nofollow">https://newrepublic.com/article/126473/american-cops-100-tim...</a><p>- By contrast (to the US), national standards in most European countries conform to the European Convention on Human Rights, which impels its 47 signatories to permit only deadly force that is “absolutely necessary” to achieve a lawful purpose.<p>- Killings excused under America’s “reasonable belief” standards often violate Europe’s “absolute necessity” standards.<p>- In Europe, killing is considered unnecessary if alternatives exist. For example, national guidelines in Spain would have prescribed that Wilson incrementally pursue verbal warnings, warning shots, and shots at nonvital parts of the body before resorting to deadly force.<p>- In the US, only eight states require verbal warnings (when possible), while warning and leg shots are typically prohibited.
This guy is part of the culture / training problem:<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-s...</a><p><i>When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions. Among the most influential voices on the subject, he has testified in or consulted in nearly 200 cases over the last decade or so and has helped justify countless shootings around the country.</i><p><i>His conclusions are consistent: The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back. Even when witness testimony, forensic evidence or video footage contradicts the officer’s story.</i>
What I don't understand is (or rather do understand) - I know that it is freaking hard to hit anything with a handgun even at best conditions at 25m range, with two hand hold, preparation etc. Here there people are hidden behind cars, with hand rests for steady shooting, very big range for a handgun, in a dark and suspect is blinded with torches and not even in a shooting stance. Police of all people would know that they are 99.99% safe from any shooting he may do. This is pure bullshit from police side and clear abuse of power and it must be prosecuted accordingly.<p>PS: swatter is also an a55hole and a criminal of course (since he admitted doing it already).
In the video, police shouted from across the street while the man peeked out from the side of his doorway. It is unclear whether he knew the commands were for him. And did the yeller have lawful authority to order him out of the house?<p>Hope my local department is better than that.
I think I posted it here the last time some poor guy got gunned down by a swat team by mistake, but Radley Balko wrote a really good book about the history of how this kind of thing became commonplace in the states; Rise of the Warrior Cop. Fascinating read.
Do the police have to shoot to kill? Is it possible to aim somewhere else? Or shoot into the air? Also, I think in my country they are obligated to shout out "stop, I will shoot" or something to that effect.
I am pretty cynical about humanity, but I don't understand why there aren't hundreds or thousands of swatting incidents per day, given the availability of anonymous communications, payment, and surplus of bad people in the world.<p>It seems like it would be trivial to set up a dark web service to SWAT on demand. For 0.1 Monero or whatever, place a credible spoofed SWAT call. Maybe hold payment in escrow and follow police radio or blotter to confirm they were deployed and then release payment, or just do a reputational system.
I see a lot of idealistic opinions about how it should be in regards to police violence but what can we actually do? Is there anything that people of this country can do to change this or is it just a waiting game to see where it's all headed?<p>Why isn't there an EFF for this sort of thing? I know there is the ACLU but at this point I feel like we need something solely for police violence.
I'd like to know what the facts on the ground were that led to have an roe of shoot to kill. Something did go wrong with the process leading up to this clusterfuck. I hope it's identified and fixed. There _might_ be some change in wichita, but I'm not hopeful nationally.
When tasers were introduced, isn’t this the exact problem they were here to solve? You use them instead of shooting to disable the suspect to de-escalate the same situations?
I think a machine learning assisted scene assessment could be more accurate in this scenario.<p>Considering AI is better at image processing than humans, finding whether the subject in the view point is carrying a weapon should be able to give the officers a second opinion when needed under these circumstances.
Edit: I didn't realize that it takes about 40 minutes for a tranquilizer to take effect, if they hit the target in the right spot.<p>I apologize for my stupidity.
I'm very sad and ashamed to voice such an evil idea but I think the only way to change US police into something resembling first world country law enforcement agency is to have mass anonymous random swatting campaign with dozens, perhaps hundreds of causalities.
> Los Angeles police have arrested a 25-year-old man on suspicion of making the swatting call that ended with a Wichita man being killed by police.<p>What crime are they charging him with? I don't think we have the right crime on the books for this at present.<p>The guy who phoned this in is a scumbag, no doubt.<p>But Andrew Finch's death is 100% on the cops who showed up. As we've seen time and time again, their selection process and training lead them to be hyper-aggressive.<p>Look at stories from just the last year where the cops show up and shoot someone's dog, or shoot the random lady in a nightgown, or shoot the guy running away, or shoot the guy who says he's not armed, or shoot the guy for not getting down on the pavement fast enough, or shoot the guy...<p>It's disturbing that in each of these cases the system protects the cops. At some point, and my preference would be soon, we need to work to dismantle and rebuild this system.