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from the yellow-stripe-down-the-back-of-the-uniform dept.
From the NY Daily News (and covered almost everywhere):
A Kansas man shot to death by police earlier this week was the victim of a misdirected online prank known as "swatting," according to social media chatter.
The victim, identified as Andrew Finch, was gunned down on Thursday night after cops responded to his Wichita home amid a false report that he had shot his father to death and was holding his mother, brother and sister hostage.
A responding officer fatally shot Finch, 28, when he came to the front door, Wichita deputy police chief Troy Livingston said during a press conference. Livingston declined to comment on what triggered the officer to open fire and would not say whether Finch was armed.
Police briefing (10m8s). Body camera footage (53s).
I'm speechless.
takyon: The swatting was quickly linked to a dispute between two Call of Duty players:
On Twitter, more than a dozen people who identified themselves as being in the gaming community told The Eagle that a feud between two Call of Duty players sparked one to initiate a "swatting" call. After news began to spread about what happened Thursday night, the people in the gaming community, through Twitter posts, pointed at two gamers.
"I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION," said one gamer, who others said made the swatting call. His account was suspended overnight.
According to posts on Twitter, two gamers were arguing when one threatened to target the other with a swatting call. The person who was the target of the swatting gave the other gamer a false address, which sent police to a nearby home instead of his own, according to Twitter posts. The person who was to be the target of the swatting sent a Tweet saying, "Someone tried to swat me and got an innocent man killed." [...] Dexerto, a online news service focused on gaming and the Call of Duty game, reported the argument began over a $1 or $2 wager over the game.
Update: 911 Call from suspect (4m58s).
Brian Krebs conversed with the apparent suspect over Twitter.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by leftover on Saturday December 30 2017, @06:02AM (17 children)
What I see in the responses so far is a distinct lack of outrage. Outrage is definitely warranted here, folks. A completely innocent man was gunned down in his own home due to fuckery and incompetence of multiple other people, unknown to him. Said 'other people' are now backing away from any responsibility and they are likely to succeed. This is sickening on multiple levels and it should have consequences for each of the 'other people'. The police response in particular needs to be microscopically reviewed, leading to changes in staffing decisions and training. Maybe even [Gasp!] psychological monitoring of the police operators before sending them out into residential neighborhoods.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday December 30 2017, @06:13AM (8 children)
Listen to the police briefing. They have already blamed the victim for repeatedly putting his arms near his waistband instead of up in the air. Although they have only released a 7 second portion of the body cam footage and it's not easy (for me) to see what happened.
I'm not shocked that some police officer killed an unarmed victim. It's going to happen again and again. I am shocked that there doesn't seem to have been any documented case of a swatting leading to a death until this day, despite years of swatting incidents, the rise of video game streaming, lots of media attention, and some state legislation.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BK on Saturday December 30 2017, @07:33AM (6 children)
The guy that called this to 911 will go to jail. That part's easy.
Shot for failing to follow directions. Wtf.
The police were at least 50 feet away and were shining lights in the guy's eyes to confuse him. Standard police tactics / procedure. Even if he had a pistol in his waistband -- and he didn't -- at 50 feet away, he wasn't all that threatening. Maybe if it was a 50 cal rifle... but they don't fit in the waistband.
The cop who shot should be tried for murder. But he'll probably get off because the prosecutor won't try really hard.
Wtf
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by esperto123 on Saturday December 30 2017, @12:31PM (2 children)
And the worst part is that everyone is concentrating on the swatting thing (which is bad and must be punised if just for diverting resources), but the actual problem in this trigger happy police force, the guy had no idea what was going on, as you said, was quite a distance away with strong lights on his face and wasn't really a threat by any means, and could possibly being turning around asking to his family members to get back or something.
Shit like this happens again and again, and one thing that I noticed that is common to most if not all cases, is that police do not let the other party to talk or actually listen when they do, they shout instructions and get pissed if you try to respond, that also happened very clearly in another murder by a police officer in a hotel were someone confused an airsoft with a real gun and called the police, the guy was drunk, the police officers were shouting contradictory instructions, shouting to the guy shut the fuck up, and from what I could see, the guys pants were falling down and he was trying to keep them up, and got shot for it.
I don't know what or when it happened, but police officers are being taught to shoot to kill at any percieved danger, not much warning, no proper assessment of the situation, which includes talking to the person on the other side of the scope.
I think they whatched too many movies where people go from drunk to expert marksmans in 0.5 second flat and can shoot them all between the eyes while running the other way.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 30 2017, @02:33PM
Actually it seems more plausible that the cops in that hotel video were just looking for someone to murder.
Because if you think a suspect is a threat you would ask the suspect to stay face down on the ground with his hands on top of his head and to NOT MOVE AT ALL. Then one cop approaches the guy and cuffs him while the other person covers him. If both cops are too chicken they could ask the guy to stay still while they call and wait for backup till there are enough cops to take some drunk guy face down on the ground.
But instead they asked the guy to crawl TOWARDS them and do all sorts of stuff (cross legs etc) till the guy made a "mistake" and gave them an excuse to kill him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 30 2017, @05:57PM
What I get from the hotel video is to remain lying on the ground with arms outstretched, waiting for the cops to come in for the arrest and not saying a word. If they shoot, the wounds will be in the back (as little as that may help to prosecute them).
That will probably get me beaten up once the body cameras "malfunction", but it beats getting shot.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Saturday December 30 2017, @12:43PM (2 children)
SidAlpha has some comments on this, and also includes the 911 recording:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n3enM3jjbU [youtube.com]
At about 6:25 in the YT is a portion of the 911 call, where the shitwit swatter says he's "poured gasoline all over the house" and might "just set it on fire". At this point the police will be twitchy as fuck about any sudden movement as a danger, gun or not.
(Score: 3, Touché) by BK on Saturday December 30 2017, @07:11PM
If you're too twitchy to even approach the place, you're too twitchy to go on the call. If you believe that shooting into a place that you legitimately think could be coated in gasoline is a good plan, you are, or should be, too dumb to hold a job that involves guns.
#disarmthepolice
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 30 2017, @07:16PM
ahh, protecting the evidence. they'll do anything to get their perp.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Saturday December 30 2017, @07:37AM
There are a lot of SWAT raids. These don't typically result in police shootings, much less actual killings. Swatting is much rarer, so it's not surprising that no one has been killed to this point. There have however been a number of deaths [reason.com] from SWAT raids that were disproportionate to the suspected crime.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday December 30 2017, @06:58AM
Check out the ten plus pages of comments on Ars.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday December 30 2017, @07:46AM (4 children)
Outrage? Well, it's certainly deserved, but I think you're seeing that people are just tired. The police forces in the US are almost never held responsible for their errors. In any civilized country, killing someone who was not threatening you in any way is a ticket to jail. In the US, police are immune to any sort of consequences, whether they tossed a grenade into a baby's crib, shot an Australian tourist who was trying to report a crime, or (this is not a first) held a heavily-armed SWAT raid on the wrong house.
As for the gamer who called in the SWAT raid defenitely deserves some consequences. Maybe not manslaughter - if the police were competent, no one would have died - but at a minimum he abused emergency services and knowingly endangered people.
The guy who gave a fake address? That's dumb, but probably not actionable. The question is: why did he give any address at all?
The real target of outrage must remain the police. Military gear, military mentality, kindergarten-level skills. This, apparently, at all levels from local cops to the feds. And the entire government at all levels backs them up. For this, along with many other reasons: Y'all need to fix your government. Only, like the hick told the lost tourist: If you want to get *there*, you don't want to start from *here*.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 30 2017, @12:11PM (1 child)
I thought I would just leave this here then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser_incident [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 30 2017, @01:03PM
he said civilized
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday December 30 2017, @09:24PM
He is going down big time. He is an easy defendant upon whom the prosecutor can shift as much blame (away from cops) as possible. Each word in his 911 call will be scrutinized to illustrate that he intentionally arranged the most deadly SWAT response. He couldn't be sure, of course, that the homeowner will be shot for trying to keep his pants up, but he made everything possible to make it happen.
Not a lawyer, but it looks like he will not get out of this unscathed. He felt danger, but instead of reporting it and solving the situation properly, he pushed someone else into the dangerous spot. If the criminal law won't reach him, the civil lawsuit will.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @06:41AM
The situation that actually occurred was both likely and expected, due to the nature of police response to such calls. This gamer called 911 fully intending for the police to respond exactly as they did.
It is morally no different from calling a hitman. In this case, the hit was successful (well, other than the target being wrong), so that would be a murder. And the police officers involved were the hitmen.
The difference here is that for some reason the hitmen will not also face consequences.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday December 30 2017, @04:11PM (1 child)
Oh, we're outraged. But what is to be done? Yes, the police were trigger happy incompetents and idiots. With all the SWATting that's been going on, you'd think the police would have realized they have to engage in a little skepticism. And, yes, their training needs a hard look. Also, need more screening to weed out the type of person who is attracted to police work because they enjoy the feeling of power it gives them to point weapons at citizens and make them endure humiliations, make them crawl on their bellies, and even hope they get a chance to kill, and want to commemorate that with notches on their revolvers. I'm thinking the cops ought to put the guns away. I understand British bobbies do not have guns. Guns have their uses, but they are seriously overused in the US.
I'd suggest the root of this goes beyond the police to the 2nd Amendment flag waving, gun loving US subculture. Having a gun handy is like keeping a spare can of gasoline on the fireplace, or building a swimming pool underneath some power lines. There are many ways a gun may get its owner or loved ones killed, from accidents to being turned on the owner by an acquaintance or relative turned hostile, being grabbed by a burglar and used on the owner, providing the means to act on impulsive suicidal or homicidal thoughts, and inciting and scaring police into using lethal force against the owner. A gun is a very bad thing to have handy if the owner ever suffers a mental breakdown, maybe overdoses on some hallucinogen possibly even by accident because it was mislabeled as something light such as aspirin. Dr. McCoy at the start of the famous Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever is not someone I want to see armed with a phaser. Yep, his phaser got someone killed. Not that mental cases can't throw themselves off high bridges or crash their cars at high speeds into walls, but guns make it far too easy. The police know there are a lot of well armed citizens. It's not just the police who need to put the guns down, it's everyone. But I see no letup anytime soon. Expect the body count to keep growing, for now.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 31 2017, @05:00AM
It's a red herring since it is irrelevant to the swatting or the police response.