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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

#741

Post by literallycancer »

tomxor wrote: post #726
vidarh wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wha…

I live in a country where guns are legal to own and the police still doesn't shoot random people for no reason. It's not that hard, just don't give the job to thugs.

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

#742

Post by dkns »

barsonme wrote: post #534
IgorPartola wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, I want to send my kids to school and be reasonably sure that some idiot can’t go down the street, buy a couple of rifles, and murder them and their classmates. Being able to go to the gun range once in a while and post on /r/guns is sorta secondary to that. Different priorities I guess. Edit: and funnily enough the above scenario doesn’t happen in the developed world, except in the US, where it happens multiple…

> See, I want to send my kids to school and be reasonably sure that some idiot can’t go down the street, buy a couple of rifles, and murder them and their classmates. Everybody does. Let's not be disingenuous, though: the chances one of our children dies from a gunshot wound at school is incredibly small. By my counts, 4 students have been killed at school shootings this year. 4 students out of ~50 million kids at ov…

That's 4 more students dying in school shootings more than in Europe for example.

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

#743

Post by themark »

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).

Firefox on iPad: needed to scroll right to left

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

#744

Post by ryanlol »

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.

So why not compare the US to the EU or parts of it?

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

#745

Post by glenneroo »

simonh wrote: post #698
vidarh wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It looks like a default approach to provoke and escalate confrontation. A few days ago I watched the video of a police officer armed with a rifle arderimg a drunk guy to crawl on the floor. The drunk crawled wrong, so he was shot and killed. Turns out he was unarmed and innocent of any crime. The officer apparently will not be charged. Here in the UK this would be completely unacceptable, but in the US it’s routine.

And I witnessed a suicidal guy walking around Portland at 5am holding a gun to his head. The police surrounded him on three sides, wearing bullet-proof armor and hiding behind large armored vehicles and even had snipers in the parking lot across the street. They seemed pretty secure in their positions and decked out with heavy weaponry from a safe distance. He had a small 6-shooter and was walking in circles. They called out to him to drop his gun, to which he replied that he needed help (they wouldn't admit him to the hospital for mental care because he couldn't afford it). He pointed the gun towards the ground and fired, upon which they shot him multiple times from multiple positions. Don't they have people trained in psychology to deescalate such situations? Or is that just a movie trope? Even if wanted to shoot a cop, from my vantage point, there was no way he would have hit any of them.

In the end it was labeled a police-assisted suicide i.e. he still shot himself and the police have 0% responsibility. The irony is that at the same time across town, the police chief of Portland was giving a conference about how the police will use less deadly force in such encounters in the future (because this wasn't the first time).

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

#746

Post by JoeAltmaier »

glenneroo wrote: post #745
simonh wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like a default approach to provoke and escalate confrontation. A few days ago I watched the video of a police officer armed with a rifle arderimg a drunk guy to crawl on the floor. The drunk crawled wrong, so he was shot and killed. Turns out he was unarmed and innocent of any crime. The officer apparently will not be charged. Here in the UK this would be completely unacceptable, but in the US it’s routine.

And I witnessed a suicidal guy walking around Portland at 5am holding a gun to his head. The police surrounded him on three sides, wearing bullet-proof armor and hiding behind large armored vehicles and even had snipers in the parking lot across the street. They seemed pretty secure in their positions and decked out with heavy weaponry from a safe distance. He had a small 6-shooter and was walking in circles. They ca…

Shoot pretty much any direction in a busy city, and hit somebody. He was a loose cannon, aiming a deadly weapon irresponsibly. It can be argued, he had to be taken down. Cruel, but when people put themselves in that position something has to be done, and quickly.

Not clear why a sleeping dart couldn't have been used though. Animal control does a pretty good job in such situations.

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

#747

Post by davemp »

ryanlol wrote: post #733
davemp wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s old I think.

I might try to dig up some more recent stuff.

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

#748

Post by gouggoug »

RobertoG wrote: post #54
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." Watching the video of the shooting in the hotel hallway a few days ago, I think that the answer is just go to the floor with your hands visible and don't move, never mind what they say. I think there is a training problem. For instance, in that video, they control the situation using fear, that it's, I think, the correct thing to do. But then, when they guy is…

> It's like they are trained for [...] video-games instead of police action.

There's an Ad for the US Army which is basically the Call Of Duty video game advertising the US Army...

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

#749

Post by kaitai »

Symmetry wrote: post #738
gutnor wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"Better tried by twelve than carried by six"

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

#750

Post by mbesto »

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…

> A focus on quick resolution at all cost rather than peaceful resolution.

The reason for this is simple. It just takes one situation (or at least one believably plausible situation) for people of power to justify a quicker resolution that ultimately gives them more power and meets their KPI goals (more arrests, less bad guys living).

In this case, imagine a real armed gunman shoots a hostage or a stray bullet hits an innocent bystander. Imagine the outcry of the public and SJW's: "OMG they should have just run in there and killed the SOB! Or better, shoot him in the leg! Do something police!"

Solution? A more swift resolution to the problem - i.e. SWAT style infiltration.

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