LAPD arrests man on suspicion of making deadly swatting call to Wichita police • Hacker News Board

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

#611

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:08 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #178

meri_dian wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place. It completely mystifies me how people can think that people with guns were justified in fatally shooting someone with no guns . That kind of thing should just never happen, either subdue them or let them get away, why are you shooting them? What could they possibly have done, short of ran to the kitchen to get a knife and t…

> How can you mistake anything someone unarmed does for a deadly threat?

A person's bare hands can represent a deadly threat if he is close enough. Not that that was the case in this situation.

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

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Post by mr_spothawk » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:14 AM UTC

ZoomStop wrote: post #528

danso wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 of…

Its a life and death game of Simon Says in these situations. And you get to play regardless of guilt or innocence at the time.

this particular situation was not Life:Death. Which is the important thing to remember when the media becomes complicit in the coverup of police brutality.

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

#613

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:14 AM UTC

marsrover wrote: post #361

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? 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.

You can join/support a radical organization (and you should) but the basic reason there isn't something like an EFF is money. Sure, the EFF goes to bat for consumers against government and giant corporations, but there really aren't that many of them.

In contrast, there are a lot of law enforcement agencies, because there are 300 countries, many towns, most college campuses have their own police, most transit system s in cities have their own police, many federal agencies have their own police. The total is estimated to be about 18,000. If you use a narrower definition the total is still about 15,000.

That's a huge number for any single organization to keep track of or to hold accountable. Even if you just follow up on every single death with a law enforcement angle that's ~1000 homicides by police annually and ~4000 deaths in jails and prisons. That's a huge amount of data to collect and organize before you even begin to evaluate questions of avoidability or accountability.

Say it takes an hour just to receive information of a death, establish the identity of the person involved and the data and location and create a database record or standardized wiki page that can act as a stub for document submission and information collection. With ~100 deaths a week that's a full-time job for 3 people just to produce a barebones list, and I'm being really optimistic with the time estimates. Realistically it's probably 2 or 3 times as much.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/jul/10/...

Here's the report mentioned in the article, because it's no longer available at the original doj.gov link: https://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-p341-pub.pdf

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

#614

Post by ams6110 » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:21 AM UTC

lb1lf wrote: post #146

bastijn wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we have the exact opposite and police are often prosecuted for firing their weapon. Result is they get kicked, slapped, scolded and vocabulary assaulted by 13 year olds who know they would win the case for a judge if it comes to it (or otherwise get 40 hours of public service). Why? Because "police needs to know better and accept it as part of their job". Maybe US is a bit much to the other side but with the sta…

> You know what would help? If the police tells you to do something, do it without question or big mouthing. Cops tell you to put your hands where they can see them? Do it. Tell you to lie down? Do it. Fight them later for any unjust actions but while at gunpoint just beeping comply. -The problem, at least in some cases, is that you may get confusing, if not direct contradictory orders. Say, if one officer yells 'Put…

That's a good idea. And cadets at police academies are never armed outside of a firing range.

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

#615

Post by tacomonstrous » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:21 AM UTC

Dove wrote: post #546

burntwater wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't entirely agree. There are lots of situations you have to learn how to navigate safely in society. How to use a crosswalk. How to address a judge. How to prevent house fires. I think putting the burden of citizen safety 100% on police is like putting the burden of pedestrian safety 100% on cars. Yeah, the driver has greater responsibility and is held to a higher standard of caution... but this sort of thing re…

>I think putting the burden of citizen safety 100% on police is like putting the burden of pedestrian safety 100% on cars. Yeah, the driver has greater responsibility and is held to a higher standard of caution... but this sort of thing really is a lot more practical if people know to stay on sidewalks.

This doesn't make any sense. Many pedestrians are drivers at other points in time. They have some idea of what to expect when they're on the other side of the coin. It's not a good analogy.

>don't understand this whole "I shouldn't need to know" perspective. Of course you need to know. Police are part of society, and so we need to understand how to be around them.

Of course one should know that it is a good idea to obey instructions from a police officer. Beyond that, it is difficult for the average person to figure out how to act appropriately in a stressful situation that could possibly end in death if some gesture is interpreted in an unexpected fashion by a trained officer. You cannot train the general populace to tackle something like this! At least not at any reasonable scale, especially when different police officers have different standards for what constitutes dangerous behavior. It is incumbent on authorities to make sure that they train their officers appropriately to behave in a way that deescalates interactions with the civilian population.

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

#616

Post by anigbrowl » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:27 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #262

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.

Terrorism-as-object-lesson doesn't work and if anything is likely to have the opposite of the intended effect. Check out Erica Chenoweth's book on the subject (there's a link to the statistical data on this page): http://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw/

Now I don't actually agree with her in terms of nonviolence-as-optimal-political method because I feel it fails to account for social cost and essentially encourages organizing around martyrdom which leads to the most vulnerable members of society being used as a punching bag to effect political changes whose primary benefits will flow elsewhere, but that's getting into the weeds. It's still an important work in this field that should be studied carefully.

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

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Post by mmanfrin » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:30 AM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #567

sergers wrote: post #134

My wife's family house was mistaken for a drug house years ago, it was around the block. 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 This was in Canada. This happened ~15 years ago, my wife still traumatized and never leaves pets outdoors. Their family has quite the disdain for police overal…

I couldn't agree more, and I'm sorry to hear about your wife's family. Your thesis statement: > 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. Is exactly what I wish more people on this forum would read. There's so many people painting every cop with the brush of evil, or eithe…

Except that because of the 'Blue Shield', police are rarely ever charged with any misdoing. A cop is never wrong, unless there is more than a mountain of evidence against them, and that makes me see all police as complicit.

Those 'very upstanding citizens' are the same ones who sit by silently as hundreds of unarmed Americans are shot each year by police.

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

#618

Post by motherdearest » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:32 AM UTC

sctb wrote: post #552

katastic wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm gonna die by cop, they're at least gonna get a full body cam of my wang. A martyr's death.

Since we just told you we'd ban the account if you kept breaking the guidelines with unsubstantive comments, we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll start posting civilly and substantively. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You banned the guy over the wang comment? How is that any less constructive than the other 50 posts here?

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

#619

Post by sean_anandale » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:35 AM UTC

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…

You might have noticed if you observe them that nobody is in command of a group of cops. The notion of an officer in charge who is responsible for the actions of his subordinates is completely contrary to the attitudes of US police.

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

#620

Post by bashinator » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:42 AM UTC

r3bl wrote: post #454

Karunamon wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I’m concerned, they’re both equally liable. If this was a case of mistaken identity rather than a malicious call, we’d all be calling for the cop’s head even though it would have been the same error.

A caller just wasted the time of the SWAT unit. A SWAT unit shot an innocent man. It is very difficult for me to place both parties as "equally liable". Sure, there should be a punishment for the caller, but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. In no way, shape or form does that equal to "actually put a bullet in someone innocent…

He intentionally created a situation where it was very possible and forseeable that innocent people could be be killed. I believe that's more serious than voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.