SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31 2017, @12:26AM (1 child)
The problem is that the police are not willing to risk their lives to reduce the possibility of a false positive. In addition, an obvious course of action in this particular case would have been to call the home at the given address to verify that it was the location of the caller.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 31 2017, @04:36AM
This has already been discussed. For example [soylentnews.org],
It was a different scenario, but the same problem, treating a person in a way that made it more likely that they couldn't comply with police instructions. That played a role [soylentnews.org] in the shooting of the story:
This is part of the militarization of the police. Too often they are more inclined to place a potential suspect in a tactically compromised position than doing their job. I have experienced the same about 16-17 years ago. I once had a police car tailgate my vehicle (which was in regulatory noncompliance due to an expired license plate tag) on a crowded highway and light up every flashing thing they had. Fortunately, the driver (who wasn't me at the time) was able to safely find their way across two other lanes to pull off the road, but neither of us could see what was behind us due to the ridiculous light show. Tactically, it was good for the police officer in question though since we would have been unable to shoot at him accurately with that sort of light show, and it was demoralizing.
But the problem with a military approach is collateral damage. What is good tactically for the police officer is often not good for the subject of the tactics and bystanders. If police officers aren't willing to take on reasonable risks to protect those who they are supposed to protect, then they shouldn't be police officers.