The Serial Swatter
nytimes.com
The Serial Swatter
1–10 of 86 posts
Re: The Serial Swatter
#2I feel like this will always be an issue, due to the heavy militarization of local police. When any swatting could be a real incident, I suppose they have no choice but to go in with guns drawn and ready for anything.
Re: The Serial Swatter
#3This kid DDoSed our site last year (League of Legends fan convention, http://www.summonerscon.com). I wondered what had happened to him.
Re: The Serial Swatter
#4This kid DDoSed our site last year (League of Legends fan convention, http://www.summonerscon.com ). I wondered what had happened to him.
According to the article, he is serving juvenile.
"In July, a judge sentenced him to 16 months in youth jail, with credit for time served while awaiting trial. He is scheduled to be released in March, at age 18."
Re: The Serial Swatter
#5> and from a police point of view, it’s better to ‘‘respond high and then downgrade’’
They're saying increased risk of killing innocent people = ok, which is a sub-optimal approach when you look at the thousand or so people shot and killed by US police each year.
Re: The Serial Swatter
#6I guess the kid was a sociopath- the one one in twenty or so who dont give an eff about anyone else.
Some anonymous posters are sociopaths.
Re: The Serial Swatter
#7> Around 6:30 a.m., her father jostled her awake and said she needed to come downstairs. When she got to the top of the steps, she saw her family’s living room ‘‘covered in cops.’’ There were at least five officers in riot gear, guns drawn. They had bulletproof vests and pads and helmets with visors.
This line doesn't make sense.
If officers showed up in SWAT/riot gear, they wouldn't let anyone leave their presence unsupervised, especially if someone else was in the house. SWAT only goes in for situations where they believe violence is imminent. Therefore they go room to room to clear/gather everyone, make sure potential victims are secured, and that no one is armed.
If her/NYT's description is accurate, they broke procedure and put themselves and any possible victims at extreme risk.
Are there any third party or police reports of this event?
Re: The Serial Swatter
#8> and from a police point of view, it’s better to ‘‘respond high and then downgrade’’ They're saying increased risk of killing innocent people = ok, which is a sub-optimal approach when you look at the thousand or so people shot and killed by US police each year.
To be fair, there are innocent lives on both sides of the equation. This article only describes one side of it. A week later someone will post a story about how 911 never responds to calls in Detroit, and the comments will have the opposite message.
It's easy to say what should and should not be done in each individual case. It's hard to build a bureaucratic system that intelligently evaluates each case with all information available and consistently makes high-quality decisions.
Re: The Serial Swatter
#9> and from a police point of view, it’s better to ‘‘respond high and then downgrade’’ They're saying increased risk of killing innocent people = ok, which is a sub-optimal approach when you look at the thousand or so people shot and killed by US police each year.
It would be really interesting to see the data supporting this: how often has a high response turned out to be the likely correct approach, how often has to "low" response gotten people killed?
Sadly I don't think this kind of stuff is tracked on a larger scale.
Re: The Serial Swatter
#10Many of the comments here about about the SWAT teams and militarization of the US police force, but the story I read is that this guy (and others) went after women gamers because of their gender.
Just the other day a woman programmer told me of some of the threats and abuse she'd suffered essentially because she's a programmer, a woman and has a public profile.
I find this so depressing.