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

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201–210 of 864 posts

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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, why even bother with a trial? We've all read the news accounts, let's string him up! /s So due process is one concern here, but also, my concern here is more about the fucked up system we have. Is it reasonable to create a broken system, heavily arm cops, train them poorly, get them hyped up, and send them off with bad intel into (what they believe is) an incredibly high-stakes / high-stress environment, and…

>I know, why even bother with a trial? We've all read the news accounts, let's string him up! They have the weapon he fired, police body cam footage, the bullet, and the fact that there was no weapon on the victim, which means the cop did not see a weapon. So he just fired because the guy put his hands down and then obeyed commands to put them back up, which last I heard was not on the list of causes for justifiable…

Yeah, that’s not how due process works. You don’t know what happened or what the evidence is. And from your responses, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you have no law enforcement experience or training. Sorry, but the outrage you feel upon reading a few news stories online is vastly insufficient to imprison another human.

You’re talking about simple mob justice, that’s all.

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

#202
post #70
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…

they are describing a very threatening movement

Yes, that is what they are describing. Because of course they are.

What we don't have is video.

And what we don't have is the other guy's account of what happened – because they killed him.

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

#203
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's cut the BS US Military is facing unimaginably more dangerous situations on daily basis yet expected to obey engagements where rule often is do not fire unless fired upon. Police is not even in the top 10 list of dangerous professions in US. Situations that in most countries are handled by few police officers in US are handled by paranoid SWAT teams on armored vehicles with assault rifles in full tactical gear.

Police gunfights are typically at much closer range than the military’s. Soldiers have more armor and are often already in fortified positions when fired upon. The situations aren’t exactly comparable. Granted, combat troops probably have superior training to police.

I am not advocating for police to have a rule that disallows them to fire first. But police officers should be capable of acting cool under pressure and to use lethal force as a last resort not as a first tool to be used in any situation. I'd favor the rule that police should be filled with Army vets that have actually being on deployments and can keep their cool in an adversarial situations. There are plenty of footage of real firefights both involving police and Military in 80% of situation police looks like they are scared out of their mind and are acting purely out of being in uncontrollable fear which is a horrible situation.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I know, why even bother with a trial? We've all read the news accounts, let's string him up! They have the weapon he fired, police body cam footage, the bullet, and the fact that there was no weapon on the victim, which means the cop did not see a weapon. So he just fired because the guy put his hands down and then obeyed commands to put them back up, which last I heard was not on the list of causes for justifiable…

Yeah, that’s not how due process works. You don’t know what happened or what the evidence is. And from your responses, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you have no law enforcement experience or training. Sorry, but the outrage you feel upon reading a few news stories online is vastly insufficient to imprison another human. You’re talking about simple mob justice, that’s all.

> You’re talking about simple mob justice, that’s all.

Unfortunate turn of phrase, when it's the police who kill over a thousand citizens without trial or often arrest each year.

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

#205
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

they are describing a very threatening movement Yes, that is what they are describing. Because of course they are. What we don't have is video. And what we don't have is the other guy's account of what happened – because they killed him.

Oh … apparently we do have video. Off to find it now.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. That is demonstrably false. For reference, start with this case.

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.

> You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst.

I disagree.

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

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Could be a simple as calling the suspects phone or knocking doors at neighbors. If the suspect answered the phone and said he was asleep and said he would be happy to show the officers around his house, maybe things would have gone differently.

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to approach the situation prepared for the worst case scenario. Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. There's also a huge problem with the whole that macho, gun loving, power-tripping culture, it just makes things worse, wrong profile of people gets that kind of job.

That's not fair -- we don't know what kind of training the officer had, or what his attitude is. Maybe it's just really hard to train for this situation?

I was under the impression police office training regimes are public knowledge.

Regardless, we know that police, with very few exceptions, right across the world, are trained to respond with escalating violence.

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to approach the situation prepared for the worst case scenario. Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. There's also a huge problem with the whole that macho, gun loving, power-tripping culture, it just makes things worse, wrong profile of people gets that kind of job.

> Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. What you are asking them to be is super human, indeed even better than a computer could in the same situation. No amount of "proper training" or "discipline" can prepare you to make perfect decisions based on imperfect data (your sensory perception, plus all the data that isn't present such as must be read from…

>> 2. You wrongly kill and end up in prison

Actually, part of the problem is that you never end up in prison for wrongly killing.

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

#210
post #189

I don't see anyone here asking this: how many people are police killing who are not 100% innocent bystanders like in this case, but still didn't need to be killed? I mean, we're all outraged because they shot "some dude in his PJs" but doesn't that imply they must be shooting 10, 100x as many folks where we'd be thinking "well, he shouldn't have had a knife in his hand" or "he shouldn't have been high"? Where I live,…

> "well, he shouldn't have had a knife in his hand" Right. German cops, for example, are trained to shoot people in the leg in that scenario. It happens quite frequently and successfully. American cops seem like they're all on a hair trigger to kill at the slightest hint of danger, rather than as a last resort when they're truly threatened.

I remember a tidbit from the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive loading screen saying that the federal GSG-9 group only has fired shots on five missions throughout their existence. Wikipedia seems to back this up with some reportedly true information[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSG_9#Publicly_known_missions

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