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LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

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Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#151

Post by Silhouette »

meri_dian wrote: post #107
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #100

What 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…

It's sad to see how many people here view police as the bad guys

Apparently they just killed a totally innocent man, entirely avoidably.

In this case, they are the bad guys.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#152

Post by burntwater »

masklinn wrote: post #142
burntwater wrote: post #14

I'm glad this person is an adult located in the U.S. Hopefully this makes for swift and severe justice. I'm sad to learn the victim was the father of two children. 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. I said yesterday that, as a hearing-impaired person, if I'm ever in a position wher…

> I'm honestly not sure what I can do to prevent that. Nothing, it seems. If you find yourself in that situation, it's a roll of the dice whether you're getting a jumpy or stressed-out cop who'll end up shooting you no matter what, and having no hearing issues probably won't help as stumbling, twitching or otherwise being confused by contradictory orders will get you shot anyway. In the long term, probably fighting f…

> wearing a bulletproof vest

You joke, but I've considered it. Of course, the vest is probably visible and would be perceived as a threat.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#153

Post by tomschlick »

y7 wrote: post #112
meri_dian wrote: post #107

Earlier 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…

> when it's clear there is [...] danger Shouldn't they at least verify for themselves whether there is actual danger?

How? Are you going to send an officer to the door to ask someone if there is a murder going on?

This was a bad shoot, but the tactics were sound. Don’t correctly they would have called him out of the house from a distance with lethal cover from multiple angles and then cleared the house.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#154

Post by qaq »

meri_dian wrote: post #107
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #100

What 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…

Let's cut the BS US Military is facing unimaginably more dangerous situations on daily basis yet expected to obey engagements where rule often is do not fire unless fired upon. Police is not even in the top 10 list of dangerous professions in US. Situations that in most countries are handled by few police officers in US are handled by paranoid SWAT teams on armored vehicles with assault rifles in full tactical gear.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#155

Post by dopamean »

wl wrote: post #92
dopamean wrote: post #51

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.

It doesn't take a weapon to kill someone. A rather infamous example in recent years is the death of Eric Gardner. Deadly force is deadly force—regardless of the form it comes in.

It takes a weapon to kill someone from 30+ feet away.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#156

Post by Silhouette »

meri_dian wrote: post #145
grey-area wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Police were responding, in this case, to a call made by someone claiming to be armed and holding his family hostage. You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst. What happened to the civilian is a tragedy. He should not have been killed. But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.

You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst.

We're talking about literally a life or death situation here. Why on earth would you assume anything, rather than being cautious and trying to confirm for sure what the situation actually is?

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#157

Post by nitrogen »

Chathamization wrote: post #129
lb1lf wrote: post #18

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. 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 wher…

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.

IMO this is backward. Representatives should choose their issues by the voice of the people, or people should vote on issues and the appropriate candidate suggested automatically.

We will always get suboptimal results when people are forced to commingle their opinions on everything from science to security into a single binary choice.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#158

Post by burntwater »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #98
Dove wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I can understand that, but I recommend caution when it comes to judgement. Combat is every bit as technical as system architecture, and I think it requires related experience to judge fairly. Movies prepare you to critique a fighter about as wel…

>Pretend the cop is a dinosaur or something and sudden movement will provoke him. It's really perverse that I have to train myself to deal safely with a purported practised officer of the law.

This. The burden should be on the few police to be trained well enough to recognize body language, not on the mass population to train how to avoid being shot.

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#159

Post by dingbat »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #100

What 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…

and being woken in the middle of the night, wearing boxers or pajamas with hands in the air, better pray that they don't happen to slip down causing you to instinctively "reach for your waistband" in order to hitch them up

Re: LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police

#160

Post by nasredin »

v64 wrote: post #35
lb1lf wrote: post #18

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. 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? I'm from the southern US, which is historically more conservative than the rest of the country. I'm not in any way claiming that the following viewpoints are universal and accepted in this region, but a large enough port…

>1) Anyone who gets shot by cops must have done something to warrant being shot.

Done something like being poor, minority or both?

I've recently read a nice piece (Vox IIRC) on authoritarian personalities and I think this is the new norm.

A decade ago I would have just written that type of comment as trolling, but now it's a different world.

People genuinely hold this cryptofascist beliefs.

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