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

#721

Post by zuminator » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:12 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #557

dba7dba wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up a Youtube channel called PoliceActivity . It is a collection of dashcam/bodycam videos of US police involved in some kind of shooting/assault. They are not edited down to fit a news report so videos usually last 10-30 minutes. Some show cops stealing money/drug from suspects and US media actually showed such clips in news reports. But lots of the videos show actual circumstances leading up to shooting by poli…

Cops act like thugs because the overwhelming majority of people they arrest/hassle/shoot are guilty . Period. However, this does not justify any of the collateral damage to the ones who are innocent - the scales of justice are not a probability distribution! The entire point of the rule of law is to have a clear dividing line between the acceptable and the unacceptable - every innocent person assaulted by the police…

I 100% agree with your second paragraph but as for the idea that most people hassled by the cops are not guilty, well publicized stop and frisk statistics in NYC indicate the opposite. Besides, why does that even matter? Even if most alleged perps are guilty of something, that "something" isn't usually a violent crime, it's a traffic violation or public drinking or selling pot or a minor domestic disturbance. And I would argue that cops should not act like thugs in any circumstance. That comes from the attitude that asserting control over the situation is more important than protecting and serving the citizenry as the cop was hired to do. It comes from the attitude that some people are intrinsically less worthy of protection than others.

In the case of this SWAT call, the cops had plenty of time to secure their own safety and to wait out the hostage taker. First and foremost they did not even confirm what the situation was before rushing to action. And now the citizen is dead.

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

#722

Post by jacobr » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:13 PM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #535

danpalmer wrote: post #99

Having unfortunately seen a police body cam video of an obviously unarmed man being shot, and having read about this one, it seems to be a case of men hitching their trousers up because they aren’t wearing a belt, being mistaken for reaching for a gun. This is a normal thing, it’s an unconscious thing, we do it without thinking so can’t stop when told not to do it. People should not die because they’re wearing loose…

what are we supposed to do exactly?

Promote the view that you do not deserve to get instantly killed just because you are a criminal, even if you are violent. Because many people believe this is fine, they seem to accept "mistakes" where a non-criminal is killed as collateral damage. But neither is reasonable in a civilized society.

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

#723

Post by misnome » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:41 PM UTC

dingbat wrote: post #386

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…

if i recall correctly Shaver was not wearing pjs, he was wearing shorts. but yes, he appeared to pull up his shorts which were being dragged down because he was being forced to crawl on his hands and knees. i would bet that almost everyone being in such a position, or standing at their front door in front of their neighbors, who felt their bottom falling down, would instinctively reach down without thinking. some poi…

How was he “careless” in any way? Was it not completely legal for him to own it, and completely legal for him to show it to other people, especially in the privacy of a hotel room?

I thought the right to do this was for many the single most important principle of your country, shouldn’t the police have responded to reports of somebody with a gun with “Well this is the USA, nothing to see here?”

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

#724

Post by aidos » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:43 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #719

emacsgifs wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's that quoted section without weird formatting: > There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not to abolish them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual hostage situation or an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way out. They should never be used for routine search or arrest warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent target of the raid, but it undermines the tea…

What's rendered weird specifically, on your system? I'm always very puzzled when I have to do HN quoting/bullet points, so I thought 80-columns code would fit well (evidently, it doesn't). I also wonder why HN doesn't improve formatting, which has at least a couple of very common problems (the mentioned code and bullet points rendering).

When you're on mobile it's almost impossible to read.

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

#725

Post by mratzloff » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:46 PM UTC

pizza234 wrote: post #719

emacsgifs wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's that quoted section without weird formatting: > There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not to abolish them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual hostage situation or an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way out. They should never be used for routine search or arrest warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent target of the raid, but it undermines the tea…

What's rendered weird specifically, on your system? I'm always very puzzled when I have to do HN quoting/bullet points, so I thought 80-columns code would fit well (evidently, it doesn't). I also wonder why HN doesn't improve formatting, which has at least a couple of very common problems (the mentioned code and bullet points rendering).

Unreadable on iPhone and potentially other mobile devices.

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

#726

Post by tomxor » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:50 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #685

roenxi wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually a slightly more damning view of the situation here than the moral issues around police safety. The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened? When we look at the outcome here, they just killed some dude for no reason. If this is acceptable to the police force; why not have them call out to the room with a megaphone? Wha…

This to me seems to be the big difference between US policing and what we're used to in e.g. most European countries: A focus on quick resolution at all cost rather than peaceful resolution. UK police for example tends to respond with overwhelming force, clear the area if possible, and contain their potential adversary, and if possible often wait the situation out. They will use violence if they have to, but it ends…

> police defaults to avoid violence, and defaults to not even carry guns.

I think this might be more of a difference between the legality of guns in the US and UK. Guns are so rare in the UK because they are illegal to own for almost everyone. I can imagine that makes a big difference for a police officer's expectation of the likely potential danger of public adversaries... yes there are still knives and acid and whatnot but those are close quarter and improvised weapons that don't emerge so suddenly from a distance, I think those make you far less "jumpy" for lack of a better description.

PS. Please don't start an "anti guns" thread under here because we all know that never goes anywhere on the internet. I'm simply pointing out that the prevalence of guns will have a big impact on personal risk felt by law enforcers and that is a relevant difference between these two countries.

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

#727

Post by avar » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 12:56 PM UTC

glenstein wrote: post #696

avar wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the lethality of the weapon, but the police response that's the problem. In most (northern) European countries the response to somebody brandishing a knife would be to set up a perimeter around that person, rather than directly engage them. Only as a last resort would you resort to violence. Instead you try to tire them out. By comparison, the American police response would be to immediately subdue the perso…

If you really mean what you are saying, then you seem to be suggesting that police armed with butter knives, tazers, or guns all represent exactly equally dangerous situations that can't be distinguished from one another. It's not just lethality, but it's also not just the way police respond, because it's not one or the the other. If you don't agree that the lethality of the weapon is a significant input to whether o…

I'm mostly replying to the thread at large, which started with lb1lf pointing out that the police response was the problem, and this side-thread is now bogged down in the quagmire of arguing what constitutes as a non-lethal and lethal weapon.

Of course the weapon in question is also a variable, but I by far the biggest variable is police behavior in the US, where it seems every situation calls for force escalation and solving the matter at hand with a full-on assault of some sort.

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

#728

Post by guiambros » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 1:06 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #576

guiambros wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The root cause is that if the police show up they might open fire and kill someone. So how do you reduce the number of times the police shows up randomly at your doorstep? Four hundred times per year, more precisely? That's the definition of "root cause". I get it, this is HN after all, and most here feel outraged by police brutality, particularly in the US - myself included. But instead of putting the blame on pol…

Why do you think blame has to be singular? both the Swatter and the officer who fired can be criminally liable. You can't 'pay' for something like this because you can't buy someone's life back after they're dead. You can make the Swatter suffer as a disincentive to others, but that won't eliminate the behavior any more than harsh penalties for other crimes can be shown to substantially lower crime. Many countries ha…

As I said above: one thing does not exclude the other. They're BOTH liable for their acts.

Folks claiming "cops are murderers" without equally blaming the 400 idiots who did this intentionally to harm someone are letting their political bias cloud their judgement.

For context, here's the guy that (allegedly) caused it all [1]:

"Swautistic soon changed his Twitter handle to @GoredTutor36, but KrebsOnSecurity managed to obtain several weeks’ worth of tweets from Swautistic before his account was renamed. Those tweets indicate that Swautistic is a serial swatter — meaning he has claimed responsibility for a number of other recent false reports to the police."

"Among the recent hoaxes he’s taken credit for include a false report of a bomb threat at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that disrupted a high-profile public meeting on the net neutrality debate. Swautistic also has claimed responsibility for a hoax bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the Dallas Convention Center, and another bomb threat at a high school in Panama City, Fla, among others."

"Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that,” he wrote. “But I began making $ doing some swat requests.”

--

Lovely, isn't it?

Btw, Krebs' article [1] is excellent; wish it had being linked in the OP, instead of the local newspaper.

[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swa...

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

#729

Post by tveita » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 1:14 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #689

PeterisP wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In USA, the measure "number of mass shootings per year" doesn't have real outliers, it has a reasonable number every year. In Norway, it's different, you get a streak of zeroes, followed by a 1.

Norway has __considerably__ lower population than the USA. There has to be normalization or your comparison is just bogus.

The comparison is bogus, because you can make the numbers arbitrarily high by subdividing into tiny areas and then conveniently ignoring all the places where they are zero.

Why not subdivide further and claim that Buskerud is a veritable warzone, compared to the whole of USA on average?

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

#730

Post by qaq » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:16 PM UTC

guiambros wrote: post #728

anigbrowl wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think blame has to be singular? both the Swatter and the officer who fired can be criminally liable. You can't 'pay' for something like this because you can't buy someone's life back after they're dead. You can make the Swatter suffer as a disincentive to others, but that won't eliminate the behavior any more than harsh penalties for other crimes can be shown to substantially lower crime. Many countries ha…

As I said above: one thing does not exclude the other. They're BOTH liable for their acts. Folks claiming " cops are murderers " without equally blaming the 400 idiots who did this intentionally to harm someone are letting their political bias cloud their judgement. For context, here's the guy that (allegedly) caused it all [1]: " Swautistic soon changed his Twitter handle to @GoredTutor36, but KrebsOnSecurity manage…

None is questioning that idiots have to be punished. But the problem is Idiots can be a) mentally ill b) From countries outside of US reach e.g. Russia, Iran etc. So having tough laws will have 0 deterrence in those cases. Considering we are on HN the current system is basically similar to having a website with no authentication that has a kill button that will result in death of any US person when pressed. Would you consider that an acceptable system?