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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

#371

Post by reificator »

StavrosK wrote: post #327
reificator wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, I'm contrasting it with my country, where calling in such a situation would be very unlikely to get someone killed, because the police are much more reticent to shoot people. Yeah, but I don't think that's reasonable to do. If you live in the U.S. you know this is a problem, choosing to still do it is more damning.

I think the disagreement here lies in that people think "given that the police is likely to kill someone, the person who called in an innocent man is a murderer", and I agree. However, I contend that the police should not be likely to kill someone, exactly because they might be killing innocent people. The police are the ones with guns and ostensible training.

> However, I contend that the police should not be likely to kill someone

I'm not arguing that they should. I'm saying that they are, and having knowledge that they are makes the one calling in the threat seriously in the wrong. I can't stress enough, the caller's twitter handle is SWauTistic. They know full well what they're doing.

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

#372

Post by millzlane »

dingbat wrote: post #159
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

Funny, this happens often in my neighborhood where people wear pants too big for their waists with no belts.

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

#373

Post by lowbloodsugar »

pfortuny wrote: post #216
jeffdavis wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the appropriate response in this kind of situation?

None. That situation should not occur, at all. Unless you can handle it, in which case you should be a drug lord or similar. It is a travesty of the Rule of Law.

"Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law."

Unless you are murdered by the police for pulling up your pants.

Unless you are murdered by the police "restraining" you.

Unless you are murdered by the police in your cell.

Unless you are mentally incompetent and are tricked into signing a confession.

Unless you are mentally competent and are persuaded by the evidence (not of the crime, but the evidence that the system is corrupt) that you should plead to a lesser crime.

You have to make it to the court before that little sound-bite of freedom kicks in.

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

#375

Post by Spooky23 »

bww wrote: post #301
joe_the_user wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see much of a plausible argument that lack of gun control makes American police more trigger happy. And I say that as someone with no particular stake in gun rights. America doesn't have that high a murder rate, it just has a high rate of killings by cops. Lack of training, poor training and overall problematic police-culture seem to be the main offenders.

Easy access to guns in this country means it’s plausible that anyone the police encounter may be armed. As a result all the police also have guns and are reasonably concerned about being shot themselves – especially in tense situations. That’s a pretty direct connection from more guns in the public to more heavily armed, twitchier police.

There’s more connection to excessive traffic stops than to gun ownership.

Guns are definately a problem, but a bigger problem is the idea that we Officers at high risk so that they can be gloried toll collectors. If you cut traffic stops by 80% and used cameras for speed enforcement, you’d dramatically reduce Officer shootings and attacks on officers.

Train them to be EMTs and paramedics instead. The police and public should not be afraid of each other.

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

#376

Post by ryanlol »

kbar13 wrote: post #326
valuearb wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't they prepare for the most likely scenarios, i.e. it's a bogus call or misrepresented whats happening, or that the perp just wants to surrender? How often do these calls turn out to be actually dangerous? One in a dozen? A hundred? Should cops wearing body armor use sniper rifles to shoot someone on their porch several hundred feet away just on the off chance they might have a pistol in their waistband?

if you worked a job where your life is legitimately at risk then you would know that you prepare for the worst every time.

The death of a single innocent civilian is objectively worse than the death of a single police officer.

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

#377

Post by davemp »

IgorPartola wrote: post #328
throwaway7312 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know what it is? You seem quite confident. Americans have 101 guns per 100 citizens. Finns have 34.2 guns per 100 citizens. Icelanders have 30.3 guns per 100 citizens. America has 110x the murder rate than Finland has. America has 13,000x the murder rate Iceland has. Whatever the cause is, 3x the guns ≠ 110x the murder rate (or 13,000x the murder rate). A more interesting comparison might be to examine countrie…

> We know it's not guns. So what's the cause? You misspelled “I want to believe it’s not guns.” I am from Ukraine originally. Poverty is the reason there. So yeah let’s have that proper safety net instead. But when we are talking about this, let’s break it down a bit between different types of violence where guns are used: police shooting suspects, gang violence, run of the mill murder, and acts of terrorism. You don…

Apparently the USA is behind Norway, Finland, and Switzerland in mass shooting deaths per 100k population [1]. For typical gun related homocides it is most certainly correlated with poverty and education.

[1]: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/sTbiw2S8fHl89qyY6AXbohcKkv...

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

#378

Post by danso »

dingbat wrote: post #159
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

This seems to me to be what happened in the Daniel Shaver case, who was drunk and in his pajamas when police (responding to a report of a brandished gun being spotted in his motel room window) confronted him. He was facedown and yelled at for ~4 minutes before being shot when officers mistook him pulling up his waistband for reaching for a weapon:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/us/police-shooting-vid...

The officer who shot him was exonerated but IMO, the officer belligerently shouting confusing instructions at him should have faced scrutiny. Instead, he got to retire with a full pension while testifying on behalf of the officer who did pull the trigger.

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

#379

Post by dingbat »

millzlane wrote: post #372
dingbat wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Funny, this happens often in my neighborhood where people wear pants too big for their waists with no belts.

do you personally sleep while wearing form-fitting pants with a belt?

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

#380

Post by CalChris »

Bud wrote: post #347
trophycase wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And pension.

Whatever. Also don't forget, then, the cost of living in the Bay Area (astronomical) and the difficulties of policing in Oakland (formidable). Pension is something we should all expect. Not resent.

Pension is something we should all expect at 50? Really?
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