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Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

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Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#61
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate to say, but it's a slippery slope The underlying problem is that police should not jump to lethal force and have proper training to contain dangerous situation, not kill people who are crawling on the floor under their orders. The problem is not distinguishing between a legit line and a spoof, it is having a police force that is not trigger happy who cowardly justify every killing with "I was scared for my l…

> Police who are so easy to be "scared for life" should not be in the force, in the same way someone with pyrophobia should not be a firefighter. I take your point, but at the same time, that's a very easy thing to say when it's not your life that is on the line. Unless you have first hand experience doing that kind of job, I would strongly advise a bit of restraint in being quite so judgemental.

I might be less judgmental if the police were ever willing to admit that they could have done anything differently.

IIRC, the victim in one swatting death was lying on the floor crying as two cops screamed contradictory orders at him, reached down to pull his pants up after crawling forward as instructed, and was shot dead. I might have been able to respect, at a bare minimum, a police response along the lines of "we need to review our procedures for this sort of situation." Instead the police chief gave a press conference about evil swatters and absolutely refused to accept any culpability at all.

As long as the cops keep ducking blame like a child with his hands over his ears, this shit is going to keep happening with every swatting.

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#62

Several things need to be done. These idiots should be charged with something along the lines of conspiracy to commit murder. The phone system needs to be updated to prevent apoofing of numbers. I know it jas its reasons for corporate exchanges and whatnot, but safety outweighs that. A Telco should be able to uniquely identify precisely who made a call. Along the way: no blocked numbers on caller ID. I dont answer a…

I'm a little surprised you didn't mention anything about police being held accountable when responding with unreasonable force to anonymous tips. If we are going to start talking about fixing this issue, I'm not sure getting rid of blocked numbers is going to materially impact these outcomes. Likewise, what is your recommendation on eliminating the threat of burner phones?

Technically, in the US the police doesn't have to protect you (search "no duty to protect"). And "holding them accountable" much beyond the existing threshold will ensure they won't show up at all except to collect the body.

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#63
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this only happens in America indicates that their approach is the wrong one. They could ask any other developed nation for advice.

Hostages are only taken by crazy people in America? I doubt that.

He's saying that swatting only happens in America. Which is pretty much the case.

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#64
I will say that there is a lot of pessimism in these threads which may be warranted, but it is good to see the judicial system beginning to take these people to task. Laws and regulations often move slower than we would like, especially when lives are at stake, but I remember years of this type of stuff going unpunished. This is a step in the right direction.

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#65
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that this only happens in America indicates that their approach is the wrong one. They could ask any other developed nation for advice.

Hostages are only taken by crazy people in America? I doubt that.

Of course not. It's just in other first world countries a regular police officer shows up first to assess any credible threat before further action is taken for a single anonymous call.

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#66
post #27

Twitter names @internetlord @defeat @tragic and @spared Those seem like some pretty high value names. Although internetlord and tragic don't look like what I'd expect a swatter's account to look like. They don't appear very popular or active so saying they're "known by" those names seems a little strange. Also strange how much more valuable those look compared to the mastermind's twitter names swautistic and goredtut…

swautistic is the most fitting name of the bunch.

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#67
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then they wouldn't be SWATting people then, they would, idk, order 10 pizzas to the place. Does this really need to be asked?

... yes? We have specific legal terms for death caused by actions where prosecutors don't think they can prove murder, and there's a reason for that

A SWAT team is a heavily armed killsquad. I think conspiracy to murder is pretty apt.

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#68
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the robust solution is for police/swat teams to treat unverified threats differently? Any real world system needs to be able to handle faulty inputs. If this particular system wasn't so terrible at that, bad actors would have no reason to make the false reports in the first place.

What happens when an unverified threat isn't considered quick enough, and the hostages are killed while the police are standing around outside taking a wait and see approach?

Has that happened, often?

This feels like the "We have to be allowed to torture terror suspects, because what if there's a bomb set to go off in an hour and the suspect won't reveal its location unless we torture him" argument. This kind of policy needs to be based on history, not hypotheticals.

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... yes? We have specific legal terms for death caused by actions where prosecutors don't think they can prove murder, and there's a reason for that

A SWAT team is a heavily armed killsquad. I think conspiracy to murder is pretty apt.

... which is presumably at least one reason you’re not a prosecutor

Re: Three Men Charged in ‘Swatting’ Schemes

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a police statement regarding the 2017 Wichita Swatting event: "Officers gave [the victim] several verbal commands to put his hands up and walk towards them. The male complied for a very short time and then put his hands back down to his waist. The officers continued to give him verbal commands to put his hands up, and he lowered them again." [1] I'm not well informed on the subject, but wouldn't equippin…

This is just the audio of the swatter though, right? I don't think there's any video of the actual incident is there? Maybe the dude didn't understand what the big deal was and kept dropping his hands? Someone probably jumped the gun? I wonder if that team had non-lethal weapons and just didn't get them out. If he didn't have a firearm, a beanbag rifle could have ended this much differently.

Yep, there’s video. A Google search will turn it up.
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