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

#731

Post by gutnor » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:17 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #697

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…

You are reading too deep into it. The situation is that the cops have too little downside and too high an upside: since they never get convicted for these crimes, you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine. Cops need to go to jail for this. Its as simple as that. And they will find the way to not shoot like that anymore.

> you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine.

I'm disturbed by that line of thought. A normally educated human being from a developed country should feel bad about using deadly force, and worse after using it. The whole point of military training is to break the human instinct no to kill and even with the pressure of actual combat situation (where the upside is much higher, the downside much lower than for SWAT teams), killing breaks the soldier mentally.

What kind of people is the US is selecting (or what kind of training) for its police force that only some fear of criminal prosecution is keeping them from shooting people ?

After shooting dead an innocent, you would expect a police officer to be mentally wrecked. Even worse as he utterly failed at his primary mission of protecting the citizen which, as a Police officer, should normally be pretty high up in his list of personal priorities. So I can of understand going easy of the Police, from a legal point of view. But if the kind of people you have in the police are the one looking for the license to kill to assuage their most primal instinct, the problem is not with the legal side, you are hiring/training really wrong. That's not a police force, that's a criminal cartel.

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

#732

Post by mannykannot » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:34 PM UTC

scoot wrote: post #639

nwjtkjn wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video is sickening. That man was murdered.

Technically not murder, as that requires premeditation. However it is apparent that this is a no-win situation for the victim, the officer is clearly intent on creating a situation for a "justifiable" homicide. What's just as horrifying is that the jury acquitted.

Being 'intent on creating a situation for a "justifiable" homicide' would itself be a form of premeditation, would it not?

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

#733

Post by ryanlol » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #691

ryanlol wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which year is this for? The Finland numbers don't seem right at all. Neither do the Norway ones. The numbers are in fact so wrong that one has to seriously question the motivations of the author, it seems like this is a propaganda piece with made up numbers designed to make the US appear slightly less terrible.

The data appear to be correct. Maybe you’ve ingested to much propaganda to believe these numbers. I’m always skeptical of statistics about highly politicized issues as the interpretations and sampling can be very irresponsible/biased.

The data is for a really arbitrary timespan, why 2000-2014?

It’s clearly missing data, Finland for example had more than two mass shootings during those years.

The numbers look bad because they are bad, they may however be bad for different reasons than I originally suggested.

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

#734

Post by justherefortart » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

grafporno wrote: post #214

dekhn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ostensibly because he reached for his waistband instead of immediately putting up his hands.

Having seen the video, it looked more like he was trying to shield his eyes from the light the police was shining directly at him _from across the street_. I don't know why this isn't reported more accurately, they shot the guy from what looks like a good 20-30 meters away.

Because they're already laying the groundwork that it was his fault, not the trigger happy cops.

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

#735

Post by danpalmer » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

tmnvix wrote: post #586

solotronics wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are we supposed to do exactly?

Reduce the number of guns in the US. People should still be able to own guns, but they should need a valid reason (such as hunting or farming). Shooting people (this includes self defence) should not qualify as a valid reason. This is how it works in most developed nations with sometimes quite high rates of gun ownership (0.2+ per capita) but without the endemic gun violence of the US. It's worth noting that these so…

Agreed. If there were far fewer guns, Police wouldn't be assuming a concealed weapon anywhere near as much as they do now.

I think Police training needs to be changed significantly as well though. Training Police to de-escalate situations, and to deal with normal people who are scared, in danger, and unpredictable but not malicious - this is the significant majority.

Police in America seem to act like soldiers, and forget that the people in front of them deserve protection as much as everyone else, not least because they are innocent until proven guilty in a court.

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

#736

Post by mannykannot » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

brucephillips wrote: post #662

aswanson wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that any living human in your presence can be interpreted as a 'threat to your life ' and the law is too loose and allows cowards and nervous people with badges to get away with preventable murder.

> My point is that any living human in your presence can be interpreted as a 'threat to your life ' Not reasonably, no, which is why all people, including cops, must continue to be allowed to defend their own lives when their is a reasonable threat . Can you really not imagine a situation where a cop would reasonably fear for their life? Really?

> Can you really not imagine a situation where a cop would reasonably fear for their life? Really?

This is just a blatant straw-man argument. The real issue is whether unreasonable claims that an officer acted out of a fear for his life should effectively be 'get out of jail' cards.

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

#737

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:09 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).

it's formatted as code, which is slightly weird but does not really decrease legibility for me.

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

#738

Post by Symmetry » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:12 PM UTC

gutnor wrote: post #731

conanbatt wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are reading too deep into it. The situation is that the cops have too little downside and too high an upside: since they never get convicted for these crimes, you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine. Cops need to go to jail for this. Its as simple as that. And they will find the way to not shoot like that anymore.

> you need little to nothing to convince you that deadly force is fine. I'm disturbed by that line of thought. A normally educated human being from a developed country should feel bad about using deadly force, and worse after using it. The whole point of military training is to break the human instinct no to kill and even with the pressure of actual combat situation (where the upside is much higher, the downside much…

You're right, US police officers are trained to be less hesitant in using force than would be natural. They are taught that at any moment they could be in a life and death struggle and that they have to have a "warrior mindset" to react quickly before it is too late.

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

#739

Post by j9461701 » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

trhway wrote: post #707

j9461701 wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be rude, but did you not understand what I wrote above? >the momentum conservation means that the 5 pound of steel would be moving with the speed of 18m/s after full momentum transfer from the 45g bullet hitting it at 900m/s. 5lb at 18m/s - is like somebody would hit you with a frying pan. The change in momentum over time is what matters, not the momentum itself. As I said above, think of a car. The m…

>The momentum change over the distance of 2 inches produces a force of about 360,000 Newton you're right that the force will be huge, and you're dead wrong about the force effect. lets say we stop the bullet over the distance of 1cm instead of 2 inches - the stopping force to act upon bullet would be even bigger - 1.8M Newtons (30 elephants!). The same value force will be acting upon our 5lb armor plate. This force w…

>lets say we stop the bullet over the distance of 1cm instead of 2 inches - the stopping force to act upon bullet would be even bigger - 1.8M Newtons (30 elephants!). The same value force will be acting upon our 5lb armor plate. This force will be acting until the bullet stops, ie. for about 0.02 milliseconds. During that time the force would accelerate the armor plate to the speed of 16m/s and the armor plate would travel less than 1mm - only starting to compress the padding under the armor plate. So, 0.02 milliseconds after the bullet impact we have a stopped bullet and the armor plate moving with the speed of 16m/s through the first millimeter of the padding - the situation is no different than being hit by a frying pan.

That's not how impulse propagates. The force carries through the plate, into the person, and does its damage as a compressive wave. Think about seatbelts in a car during a high speed crash - they don't often penetrate the torso of people, but they can and do pop organs through compressive effects if they're worn too high. Yet calculate the momentum of the seat belt at 100 mph and you'll find it's tiny, like a light slap.

But let's assume your analysis is true. Why then does a shotgun slug, with considerably less momentum than the .50 cal and even a frying pan, crack ribs through armor? Why can I put a piece of AR500 steel in front of a watermellow, hit the steel with a .308, and have the watermellon explode despite nothing getting through?

But I'm done. I've explained this same concept 5 different times, and I'm still having to cover basic physics with people too proud to admit their layman's interpretation is wrong. If you think you could survive a .50 with armor, you're welcome to go buy a 1 inch plate from shootsteel.com and an M82 and test if out yourself. Remove one more prideful fool from the gene pool.

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

#740

Post by dingbat » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

misnome wrote: post #723

dingbat wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?”

it was called in because he was pointing the rifle out of his hotel room window.

i guess it's up to you to decide for yourself whether or not that could be called "careless". or whether it would be reasonable for a passerby to call in a report of someone pointing a rifle outside of a hotel room window, a couple months after Las Vegas.