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LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
121–130 of 864 posts
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#122What bothers me about these situations is just the entire idea of "SWAT" as practiced. You are a cop with 5+ other cops. You all pull your guns. 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. They are definitely confused/frightened/angry by your presence. We now begin the dice rolling process. Since every pol…
Like many problems, I think the root issue is money in politics. The police have a dangerous job and doing it right involves a balance between risk for the officer and risk for the citizenship. When police unions have the ability to exert large amounts of pressure ($$$) on politicians, the whole system folds to their inevitable inclination to shift that balance toward their personal safety.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#123I 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"?
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.
I get the impression somehow we've been brain washed into seeing this like unlucky folks being hit by a drunk driver.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#124What bothers me about these situations is just the entire idea of "SWAT" as practiced. You are a cop with 5+ other cops. You all pull your guns. 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. They are definitely confused/frightened/angry by your presence. We now begin the dice rolling process. Since every pol…
SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. So of course they are going to be ready with weapons drawn. Do you want them to just waltz into (probably) dangerous situations with their hands in their pockets whistling a tune? Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the b…
SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger.
That is demonstrably false.
For reference, start with this case.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
A typical body armor plate has much more surface area in contact with the body than a rifle butt does though -- we're talking roughly an entire square foot. Said body armor plate, if it's to stop a .50 BMG round, also will be thick enough to weigh as much as an M82. This makes up for the fact that the acceleration happens over a reduced distance. Also keep in mind that a rifle needs to be comfortable enough for many…
For point of reference, shotgun slugs can be stopped by modern armor. It still cracks people's ribs through sheer impulse. A 50 BMG has 5 times the kinetic energy and 3 times the momentum of that. It's simply not enough to stop the bullet at these kinds of impulses, you need something to distribute the force over time as well as space. Cars use crumple zones for this purpose - the time it takes the front to deform is…
If we allow for powered armor I can imagine armor with appropriate crumple zones. But I guess with powered armor you also get to carry ridiculously huge guns...
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#126At 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'? 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. This is something that many, many social commentators have warned us of, over the decades: the signs of a Police State. S…
In what kind of society does someone call 911, pretending to be homocidal, telling them they are pointing a gun at their wife and child, that they poured gasoline throughout the house, and are going to burn it down? The fact is there are people that really do this and someone needs to respond. The other fact is that other people think it’s funny, or a good way to get revenge on someone, by calling in a police force t…
Every society has assholes, monsters and others with perverted senses of humor. One very simple objective of a civilized society is to ensure that such people cannot exploit state sponsored violence to hurt people they don't like. The problem here is that the US system is seriously flawed.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. So of course they are going to be ready with weapons drawn. Do you want them to just waltz into (probably) dangerous situations with their hands in their pockets whistling a tune? Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the b…
Why not make sure that there is some danger first instead of just going off of an anonymous phone call? Seems pretty simple, just stand outside the house with the megaphone and say “hey what’s going on in there”?
The militarization of the police force precludes this. Whatever's in the house is Al Quaeda, and our hero boys in blue are here to frag some shit. /s
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. So of course they are going to be ready with weapons drawn. Do you want them to just waltz into (probably) dangerous situations with their hands in their pockets whistling a tune? Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the b…
Why not make sure that there is some danger first instead of just going off of an anonymous phone call? Seems pretty simple, just stand outside the house with the megaphone and say “hey what’s going on in there”?
At which point, if you're up against armed individuals, you've lost the element of surprise, and have created a hostage situation at best, and a shootout in a suburban neighborhood at worst.
Or, someone walks out and defuses the police, then their compatriots wipe all the police out unopposed.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#129Coming 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. 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…
> 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?
Keep in mind that most people in the U.S. care about issues like this in an abstract way. They think that improvements should be made, but when, say, the time comes to vote they won't bother taking 10 minutes to see where their representatives stand on this issue and vote accordingly. If you ask people who they voted for the day after a primary, most will have a hard time even recalling the names in the downballot races, let alone what the positions were. The people who do tend to vote for these positions tend to be extremely focused on particular policies - they only care if the politician supports or opposes some obscure regulation that benefits them personally.
So in the end you really are talking about a very small number of activists and groups that are trying to bring about change, and they're fighting against entrenched groups opposed to said change - or more often than not, just general political inertia (why rock the boat if most voters don't care?).
There has been traction in the effort to get more body cameras, though, so there have been some improvements. But there doesn't yet seem to be enough people who care and act accordingly to bring about the big changes that are needed.
Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police
#130At 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'? 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. This is something that many, many social commentators have warned us of, over the decades: the signs of a Police State. S…
> 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'?
The average citizen saw 20 1st-graders being shot 5 years and 2 weeks ago and decided it was OK with that. Citizens weaponising police (I have a hard time calling that law enforcement) against other citizens barely even ranks.