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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

#161

Post by oh_sigh »

alkonaut wrote: post #139
meri_dian wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. So of course they are going to be ready with weapons drawn. Do you want them to just waltz into (probably) dangerous situations with their hands in their pockets whistling a tune? Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the b…

There is just one way this isn’t a massive police screwup, and that’s if the person SWATed reacted in a way that was (very) threatening, such as grabbing a gun, or something that is reasonable the police could believe was a gun. My hunch here is that, just like you are suggesting, Swat teams are used incorrectly as first response in unconfirmed situations. No investigation by anyone has confirmed the threat. At the e…

What kind of investigation would you suggest take place before hand about a situation where there is supposedly a person with hostages who has already killed one?

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

#162

Post by nitrogen »

contravariant wrote: post #58
sumeno wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3) Anyone implying that the police need to change is labeled anti police by a large portion of the population because this has become a political issue in the US and given the current political climate of identity politics there is really no reasoning with those people.

>given the current political climate of identity politics there is really no reasoning with those people. Can I just point out the irony of saying there's no reasoning with 'those people' because of identity politics.

It's the symmetric property of identity inequality. The fundamentally incompatible axioms of some worldviews make communication nearly impossible in either direction, within a timeframe and level of effort most people are willing to expend.

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

#163

Post by rdl »

jokoon wrote: post #150
rdl wrote: post #143

I am pretty cynical about humanity, but I don't understand why there aren't hundreds or thousands of swatting incidents per day, given the availability of anonymous communications, payment, and surplus of bad people in the world. It seems like it would be trivial to set up a dark web service to SWAT on demand. For 0.1 Monero or whatever, place a credible spoofed SWAT call. Maybe hold payment in escrow and follow poli…

If terrorists were really organized, they would obviously use swatting... I wonder if police units can even detects fake hostage alerts...

Yeah, flooding 911 with legit-seeming calls for weeks would seem to be an effective DoS on the 911 system.

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

#164

Post by burntwater »

qaq wrote: post #94
burntwater wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps one answer here is to require military service before becoming a police officer. That potentially could solve two issues; better trained police, and employment for veterans.

I wonder why you are being down voted? Many military guys have served in way more dangerous places while observing in many situation rules like do not fire unless fired upon etc.

I wondered the same thing! But didn't bring it up since complaining about votes is frowned upon. But I really was puzzled. Is it that controversial of a statement/question? I don't see it.

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

#165

Post by hinkley »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #117
meri_dian wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. So of course they are going to be ready with weapons drawn. Do you want them to just waltz into (probably) dangerous situations with their hands in their pockets whistling a tune? Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the b…

If any rando can call in a 'dangerous situation', then yes, they should be more circumspect. There is just no excuse for killing an innocent civilian. It's outrageous. Response to the parent's edit: These are supposedly trained officers who acted with absolute incompetence leading to a completely needless death. How is one supposed to empathise with this? It's a complete and utter fuck-up.

Someone here is trying to increase the consequences for killing suspects and they had a rep from the police union arguing against it because it could have unintended consequences like “people dying”.

I ended up yelling at my radio, “PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DYING!”

What the rep meant was cops dying. But the statement, as worded, makes it sound like cops don’t consider the rest of us to be people. Which is exactly the thing a lot of Americans are terrified is actually true.

In the end I expect he made the case for the people arguing for bigger penalties.

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

#166

Post by keyboardmonkey »

Dove wrote: post #70
lb1lf wrote: post #18

Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice, it never ceases to puzzle me how the solution to any situation appears to be to shoot anything that moves on the flimsiest of assumptions, then figure out what happened afterwards. Now, I appreciate that the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does; this surely…

I don't think it's reasonable or effective to entirely expect police to solve this problem. Here is the account from the article: Livingston said when the door opened, officers gave Finch commands to put his hands up and walk toward them. He complied for a "very short time" and put his hands back down. He raised them again, and then lowered them for a second time, Livingston said. "The male then turned towards the of…

an absurdly violent culture with too many guns. the culture needs to reduce the violence, and remove the guns already... or simply state how many innocent people you're perfectly fine with being killed for any reason each year, including if that happens to be your own family because you believe guns are fine that it's someone else's issue.

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

#167

Post by tinymollusk »

bastijn wrote: post #108
api wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blame can be placed on both. The person who faked a police report is guilty of homicide, but this was made possible by an overly trigger happy police force.

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…

This is anathema to the American self-image of independent/free.

Growing up, in my civics classes, we were taught that police were no more privileged than an ordinary citizen. It was WW2 Europe where your papers were required. If you were being bullied by a cop, you can stand up for yourself and be shown to be right by the justice system.

Of course, even as a kid, I knew this was self-delusion. I have always distrusted police and treated them as super powerful combatants who weren't targeting me, but would put me in their crosshairs if they didn't personally like something about me.

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

#168

Post by r00fus »

username223 wrote: post #147
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…

> This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged. Unfortunately, as a US civilian you need to be smart about de-escalating encounters with underpaid rage-monster cops with something close to legal immunity. Your goal should be to avoid injury or death until you can get to a lawyer.

This was a mistaken address SWAT ing. How was the person supposed to know?

Police officers that shoot ppl should be held liable as well as the SWAT caller.

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

#169

Post by stordoff »

glenstein wrote: post #48
lb1lf wrote: post #18

Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice, it never ceases to puzzle me how the solution to any situation appears to be to shoot anything that moves on the flimsiest of assumptions, then figure out what happened afterwards. Now, I appreciate that the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does; this surely…

To your point about non-lethal weapons: it seems to me that we haven't yet claimed the low-hanging fruit in the US when it comes to this problem. Why not indulge the most base impulses of both silicon valley and police militarization with high tech, non lethal weapons? It will probably introduce new problems, such as even more unnecessary use of force. It addresses absolutely none of the cultural or institutional pro…

A Taser can kill. Removing the presumption that you are shooting to kill seems like it would make the police more readily, and in more situations, use the weapons, so I'm not sure it's clear that a switch to less-lethal weapons would be a net positive (in terms of deaths).
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