Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kansas.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 864 posts

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

#461

Post by anigbrowl »

tomschlick wrote: post #445
rbetts wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If sound tactics get innocent people killed when nobody was under actual threat --- those are shitty tactics.

Tactically, what would you do different? You cant send people up to the door, as you have to assume the person is telling the truth and has the means to shoot through the door at them. When someone has a gun, distance and cover are your friend. You then get everyone you can out of the house so you can clear it and assist the victims. That is what any police force in the civilized world would do if they had what they…

How about asking the guy on the porch some questions? Like 'what's your name? Do you have any weapons? Did you call 911?'

It seems not to have occurred to you (and a lot of other people) that yelling commands at people is not an effective way to handle many common situations.

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

#462

Post by scaryclam »

prepend wrote: post #412
computerex wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea this answer is total and utter crap. We aren't asking law enforcement to be super human, we want them to be educated and competent. The fact that the U.S is both lacking in training and competence is a well established fact. Law enforcement in the United States has proven itself to lack training and discipline by firing on innocent unarmed citizens many many times. I don't believe any other country in the world h…

Michael Slager was sentenced to 20 years for the shooting of Walter Scott, an unarmed suspect on December 7th. So it does happen that a cop (not sure if white cops get convicted less than black cops) goes to jail for shooting people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Walter_Scott

The murder charge was dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on civil rights charges, which is what the 20 years was for. Even with an eye witness and a clear tape of the offense the officer still wasn't convicted of murder.

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

#463

Post by sodosopa »

r3bl wrote: post #454
Karunamon wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I’m concerned, they’re both equally liable. If this was a case of mistaken identity rather than a malicious call, we’d all be calling for the cop’s head even though it would have been the same error.

A caller just wasted the time of the SWAT unit. A SWAT unit shot an innocent man. It is very difficult for me to place both parties as "equally liable". Sure, there should be a punishment for the caller, but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. In no way, shape or form does that equal to "actually put a bullet in someone innocent…

Swatting is a form of domestic terrorism. The caller wasn't someone trying to waste time, that was someone who wanted to potentially turn someone else's life upside down.

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

#464

Post by qw »

ryanlol wrote: post #414
davemp wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the USA is behind Norway, Finland, and Switzerland in mass shooting deaths per 100k population [1]. For typical gun related homocides it is most certainly correlated with poverty and education. [1]: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/sTbiw2S8fHl89qyY6AXbohcKkv...

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 number from Norway is from a single mass shooting in 2011 where a man shot children trapped on an island. There have never been anything like that before or later. He killed more people than the total number of murder victims in an average year.

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

#465

Post by moogly »

kbar13 wrote: post #326
valuearb wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't they prepare for the most likely scenarios, i.e. it's a bogus call or misrepresented whats happening, or that the perp just wants to surrender? How often do these calls turn out to be actually dangerous? One in a dozen? A hundred? Should cops wearing body armor use sniper rifles to shoot someone on their porch several hundred feet away just on the off chance they might have a pistol in their waistband?

if you worked a job where your life is legitimately at risk then you would know that you prepare for the worst every time.

With unaccountable murder machines freely roaming the streets with the power to kill you at the slightest provocation (real or perceived), you don't have to have be in a particular profession to fear for your life.

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

#466

Post by r3bl »

krapp wrote: post #458
r3bl wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A caller just wasted the time of the SWAT unit. A SWAT unit shot an innocent man. It is very difficult for me to place both parties as "equally liable". Sure, there should be a punishment for the caller, but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. In no way, shape or form does that equal to "actually put a bullet in someone innocent…

>but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. How do you know his intent, or what he thought?

Because it's a gaming community, so they're not really trying to shield their identities, which led to this article, in which I read the news first (note: different than the source of this thread): http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html

And there's also this in the WaPo, claiming the same social media content: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/3...

Idiot that should face consequences, definitely. Had the intention of killing someone, highly doubt it.

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

#467

Post by anigbrowl »

falcolas wrote: post #128
hungerstrike wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not make sure that there is some danger first instead of just going off of an anonymous phone call? Seems pretty simple, just stand outside the house with the megaphone and say “hey what’s going on in there”?

At which point, if you're up against armed individuals, you've lost the element of surprise, and have created a hostage situation at best, and a shootout in a suburban neighborhood at worst. Or, someone walks out and defuses the police, then their compatriots wipe all the police out unopposed.

The element of surprise in coming to the house of the person who had supposedly called them in the first place? A possible hostage situation in what was described to them on the phone as an already-existing hostage situation?

Also, who are these multiple individuals and 'compatriots'? I thought this was about a guy who claimed to have shot a family member and was holding others hostage while threatening to burn the house down. When did this one guy turn into a foreign invasion force?

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

#468

Post by krapp »

djsumdog wrote: post #456
dclowd9901 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst case scenario? I’m pretty sure that is the scenario that played out. Police should be prepared to die wearing the badge, with civilian casualty being an absolute last resort. It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police.

> It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police. The military is part of the state's monopoly on violence. We dress it up today and make it seem all noble, and selectively forget all the torture at Abu Ghraib, drop weapons [1], the famous song about the "Little Haji Girl," .. and the list goes on. The military get away with much more murder and torture than police. Many p…

>> It works this way for the military. I can’t fathom why it doesn’t work this way with police.

>The military is part of the state's monopoly on violence(...)

But the police are a part of the state's monopoly on violence as well - they're the ones who commit the violence on behalf of the state, and the ones whose violence the state legitimizes.

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

#469

Post by Sephr »

If you want to solve the issue of over-militarization of civilian police and SWAT, replace their guns with something safer but still effective at quickly subduing threats.

Carfentanil gas smart bullets with auto & manual per-shot dose control (handled by the launcher/gun device) could be equally effective and slightly less dangerous.

I imagine that the decrease in medical costs would vastly outweigh the increase in weaponry costs.

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

#470

Post by goblins »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #385
williamscales wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try finding enough people willing to do that. I'm not willing to die with the badge on, so I will never be a police officer. But I suspect that if you ask police officers the same question, many of them are also not truly willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. I'm not really sure what to do about this. Surely many of those who are willing to make that sacrifice are already police officers or other first responders.

Yet, plenty of people go into the military. I call bullshit. And frankly the only people I want wearing the badge are ones who are willing to sacrifice themselves, even if it’s a much smaller number of officers being paid much more and are much more skilled.

I call bullshit on this.

These cops have to be willing to consider their lives less important that everyone else's. Bullshit.

Yes plenty of people go into the military. For myself it was because I could not get a better job. Was I willing to die for my country, yes, but I sure as hell wasn't of the opinion I wouldn't be doing everything in my power to make sure I wasn't.

I was just reading the other thread on here about the original story. The police got a proper doing on it.

I bet myself before clicking the link for this one "I bet no one is speaking about the linked story just slagging the polic." Correct.

Why is no one commenting on what this idiot did?

Post reply on HN