8 ms·

Man charged after US gamer is shot by SWAT following hoax terrorism call

128 points by neverminder 10y ago

tener 10y ago
How come there is no protocol to ensure authenticity of such claims?
- jenoer 10y ago
  Agreed. In a hostage situation you'd expect someone to gather intelligence of the situation before entering the building the hostages are claimed to be in. For example, heat cameras could be used to make a map of the room and the situation in it.
  - dkersten 10y ago
    At a minimum, they should find where the hostages are, how many, how many threats etc.
- masklinn 10y ago
  These actions are emergency response teams, the goal is to stamp down the situation as quickly as possible then assess. You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage situation, that would render the concept worthless. Though at this point one can easily wonder whether SWAT rapid response is such a good idea, it would be interesting to compile SWAT emergency response actions, see if the emergency response was actually necessary (versus sending a beat cop ringing the door or whatever) and weigh that against swatting abuse.
  - hd4 10y ago
    This has happened enough times that there really needs to be some kind of process in place to verify what the fuck is actually going on at the 'swatted' address. It is pathetically stupid and laughable that the same police force can be hoaxed so many times without setting up some kind of response to future hoaxes. If it was a new phenomenon, I could understand, but this has been happening since streaming became a thing around 2004/5 (or earlier, but that's going back as far as I know).
  - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
    I understand and agree with this, although I'd like to add a bit of context. SWAT teams were initially designed to de-escalate already violent situations, not bring overwhelming violence to a peaceful situation. Sure, overwhelming violence may in many times be needed. In many times, however, it is not. This is why we recon before we act. Unless it's an active shooter situation (the responding officers can hear gunfire and/or explosions), then it's not evidently clear that there is a violent situation that needs de-escalating. We've seriously lost our way with SWAT. I used to say we need better training, but I'm not so sure that dismantling the moniker "SWAT" and establishing some new brand name and certification system isn't required. SWAT just means "Rambo" to too many people, laymen and LE alike.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      > SWAT teams were initially designed to de-escalate already violent situations No, SWAT teams were initially designed to end already violent situations (armed robberies, riots, hostage situations, …), however they were designed to be called in after threat assessment and tentative deescalation (by regular police units or negotiators) > We've seriously lost our way with SWAT. I couldn't agree more. SWAT teams were never designed for "first response" but for "overwhelming response", they're police's special ops/SMU, but nowadays they're just a cowboy unit being sent on any trouble without any sort of situational awareness or threat assessment, better training of the SWAT units would be unlikely to help. Not to mention with the militarisation of US police (hands-me-down army and the like) having a "SWAT team" and using it for any and every thing has become a mark of rank/pride for every fucking podunk town sheriff or police office. Back in 2014 there were ~80000 SWAT actions per year in the US, and only about 7% even remotely had anything to do with the original purpose of SWAT teams (hostage situations, barricades, significant armed robbery, …): https://www.aclu.org/blog/another-day-another-124-violent-swat-raids https://www.aclu.org/blog/another-day-another-124-violent-sw...
      - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
        I hate to quibble with somebody I'm agreeing with so much, and perhaps I'm just mincing words, but I don't think you're right with your statement that SWAT teams were formed solely to "end already violent situations" Yes, that's part of their job. But surveillance is also part of their job -- which doesn't involve violence at all. They should be adept at performing normal policing activities in unusual environments, like hanging from the side of a building, or in an NBC environment. The point is that there just isn't a "weapons" part of SWAT; there's also a "Tactics" side. And tactics is a lot more than no-knock raids. SWAT teams are not supposed to be shock troops, some half-assed version of Delta or DEVGRU. They're supposed to be expert in various policing activities that require unusual weapons or tactics. As an aside, there are a lot of soldiers returning from overseas with tons of counter-insurgency training. A vast majority of this training is not applicable to domestic police work. But I'll bet you twenty bucks it ends up being part of it anyway, whether we need it or not. That's a really bad thing for all involved.
  - macspoofing 10y ago
    >These actions are emergency response teams, And was there an actual emergency? The fire department also has emergency response teams, but if there's no fire, the water cannon doesn't come out.
  - RivieraKid 10y ago
    This is pretty exploitable though. Someone could just spam the police with fake reports to waste their resources. I remember that once someone reported a bomb on a railway station - but he didn't say which railway station, so they closed and search all of them (in a 10 mil country), lol.
    - eeZah7Ux 10y ago
      Millions of innocent people are at risk of having their home invaded, being beaten, shot, even killed by this small private army after a prank phone call and you talk about wasting resources? In various other countries half of the swat company would be in prison after this.
    - Cthulhu_ 10y ago
      I remember that happened not too long ago, lots of schools getting fake bomb threats. The problem is that you can't ignore the threat, just in case one of them is correct. That's why I think terrorism isn't nearly as big a problem as people claim it to be. It's relatively simple to create bombs; a malicious actor could first bomb a lot of places already, but also send bomb threats for weeks on end until nobody believes them anymore, then do the real thing. So IMO, either terrorism isn't that big a deal, OR, all of the security measures and secret services are actually working and defusing (ha) the situations before they can act; the only recent terrorist attacks were ad-hoc things (grabbing a truck and driving through people) or from unexpected angles (the occasional school shooting).
      - vidarh 10y ago
        Frankly, terrorism both isn't that big a deal and they're clearly not particularly smart. If it was a big deal and they were smart, there'd be a lot of escalating fear by combining lots of fake threats with a certain, low, proportion of actual attacks: Enough attacks that every threat causes fear and contributes to a siege mentality, and exploiting fake threats as a threat multiplier. I think part of the reason we're not seeing that is that a large proportion of the attacks we see are not the work of terrorist "masterminds" pulling strings, but mentally unhinged people who decide tying their murder-suicide to a political cause makes it "mean something". Because it'd be easy to multiply the fear in various ways if they were planning this out properly.
  - manarth 10y ago
    What's more disturbing is that there reportedly was contact/a conversation between the SWAT team and the residents, which the team then ignored: Officers reportedly ignored his father, Tom, and his cousin telling them there was no hostage situation and that the so-called hostage taker was actually asleep.
    - belovedeagle 10y ago
      Of course police ignored that; if they'd listened they'd have lost their chance to play 007 or soldier or whatever else they like to think of themselves as.
  - Udo 10y ago
    The response to this cannot in good conscience be "oh well, that's how it's supposed to work and there isn't any other way". It's only a matter of time before people get killed this way, and if you're one of the people who say that's an acceptable risk, you're just wrong. > You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage In the context of having just a random phone call to go on, with no other sign that anything may be wrong, yes: you absolutely need to have a bloke ringing the door and asking. If you don't want to send a bloke to check on the situation, there are plenty of equivalent measures available - especially if you're a militarized police force. You can send probes, you can use thermal imaging, you can ring the phones in the house, you can even use a megaphone. It's clear that storming in and shooting anything that moves without even so much as a thought wasted on assessing whether the individual is a danger shows a blatant disregard for human life, even the lives of hostages.
  - mfukar 10y ago
    > You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage situation, that would render the concept worthless. "can't" by virtue of "didn't"? That's not sound logic. It makes no sense to even send in a SWAT team when a situation is not first assessed. And for that, you have to communicate.
    - masklinn 10y ago
      > "can't" by virtue of "didn't"? No can't by the virtue of can't, the entire idea is a rapid response to a possible threat. What you can do is scrap the entire concept, but don't pretend to keep it and make it completely useless by removing the one idea at the root of it.
      - mfukar 10y ago
        I see you're not exactly clear on the reason a SWAT team would be deemed necessary, so I guess we can stop here.
- Aharit 10y ago
  I'm just as worried, maybe more worried, that the first response to a hostage situation with explosives involved is to breach and clear with no apparent surveillance / investigation.
  - beaconstudios 10y ago
    and no negotiation, which would both establish whether there was a real situation and whether it could be de-escalated without violence.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Which makes me wonder when we'll see the first terrorist attack involving bundling a bunch of hostages in a house, rigging it to explode, and calling a swat team for maximum effect.
keithpeter 10y ago
"Taking the threat seriously, armed police then raided Mr Dobbs’ home and shot the 20-year-old between the eyes and in the chest with rubber bullets, breaking bones in his face and bruising his lungs. Images taken after the incident show him with a heavily swollen, bruised and cut face." UK resident: my memories of seeing television reports of rubber bullets used in Northern Ireland during the troubles suggest that the bullets were designed to be bounced off ground or wall first. That they were primarily a riot control round. When did the police start using them as direct ammunition? Is that generally regarded as OK?
- 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
  In france at least, they started to outfit many police departments with them, as tit sounds better in the news to say they are "sub-lethal" weapons instead of real guns. It is illegal for them to aim at the upper body or fire below the 7 meters range, though they do it constantly (and even though people already died due to them and lose eyes every year; a rubber bullet going at 360km/h can be quite lethal).
  - afarrell 10y ago
    If you are breaching a building rather than controlling a street, isn't your training going to be to shoot someone directly? Since officers are acting on training rather than reflection, isn't expecting them to bounce bullets rather foolish?
    - 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
      I can see why they wouldn't want to come in a building firearms blazing due to a random phone call, though.
    - avip 10y ago
      Assuming it's the same kind of "rubber bullets" used to neutralize riots, it's completely unsuitable for breaching houses. The min-range is impossible to keep to start with.
tomohawk 10y ago
It's good they caught the callers, but whoever dispatched the SWAT team was negligent, allowing the team to be used as a weapon. The SWAT team itself was also negligent, not adequately assessing the situation on the ground. Control of SWAT should really not be at the local police level, but at the state level. The fact that SWATing is a thing shows just how broken the current model is. The use of SWAT should be extremely rare.
- Maxious 10y ago
  "SWAT team use has spiked from around 3,000 strikes per year in 1980 to as many as 80,000 raids a year now. A battering ram or other forced-entry device is used in two-thirds of these raids, nearly 80 percent of which target private homes. The great bulk of SWAT raids are in service of the drug war, though nearly four out of 10 find no contraband at all." https://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-teams https://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-team...
  - Cthulhu_ 10y ago
    40% is a fairly high success rate though, I think. Of course, it's probably usually just small amounts, a small bag of something or another here and there.
    - simonh 10y ago
      Would the success rate be significantly lower if normal police procedures were followed instead? To count as a 'success' fro SWAT they would need to show that SWAT methods were appropriate and necessary.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        It's even worse, as to count as a success, they would also need to show not just that they find something in more cases than without swat, but that the extra disturbance they cause when they don't find anything is worth it too. Not to mention that what they find should be worth found too (e.g. some kid's stash of weed or some guy's coke is not to be counted among the "successes" -- you don't send a SWAT team for that, you send it to major dealers).
sundvor 10y ago
I for one am hoping the caller gets locked away for a very long time.
- GordonS 10y ago
  I'm hoping the shooter gets locked away. Little chance.
tibarun 10y ago
This episode shows just how dangerous it is to have a militarized police force, behaving as if they were in a war zone. And it's also terrible that the Independent didn't focus it's reporting on the whole militarized police issue.
- Chathamization 10y ago
  Yeah. I remember once looking into the military reserves in the U.S. They had a list of occupations, and the civilian jobs the occupation would prepare you for. So, if you're a military base electrician, it prepares you for being a civilian electrician, etc. For infantry, they said that it prepared you well to be a police officer. So the U.S. government is taking up a large chunk of young people's prime years and teaching them few transferable skills. But they need to pretend like they're not just wasting they're lives, so they tell them that now that they know how to fight a war they know how to be a police officer. Then, unsurprisingly, we get police officers who think they're soldiers.
anentropic 10y ago
USA: failed state
izacus 10y ago
At least here in EU the SWAT member and whole chain would go through a rigourous disciplinary action to determine why the police was shooting at someone innocent and how to prevent it. Is this going to be the case in UK as well?
- manarth 10y ago
  The SWAT event was by an American SWAT team, in the USA. The UK angle is that the guy who made the false report lives in the UK and made the call from the UK.
  - izacus 10y ago
    Oh, I misunderstood the article then. Still, does USA (or the relevant state) have such mechanisms?
    - Ntrails 10y ago
      Yeah, they do it by giving the Swat team medals for valour
    - mter 10y ago
      At worst the officers will get a paid vacation then will be back to work after the police investigate if the police did anything wrong.
    - Chathamization 10y ago
      What often happens is that if there is sufficient negative attention, the officer will be placed on paid leave pending an administrative review. Then after the public moves on to something else, the administrative review finds that the officer did nothing wrong and that it was the unarmed victim's fault for being shot.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      The UK has a national(+) police complaints commission which would automatically investigate fatal shootings. The US does not. (+) in practice, a different one for each of the four nations
raphael_l 10y ago
This article [0] seems to be much more in-depth and explains the situation a bit better (if factually correct). I'm not so much baffled about actually showing up with a SWAT team before the threat could be identified as a hoax, but rather how an allegedly sleeping man could be shot twice. Once in the face. The interesting parts are the following: > Dobbs himself said when police woke him up with a call on his cellphone, he said he told them he would come outside. Dobbs said he walked around the apartment looking for something to put on because it was a cold February night. He said he walked out to the living room, saw the SWAT{ } team, and heard police yelling at him to come out. He said he turned around to go get his girlfriend but was shot. He said he doesn't remember anything after that rubber bullet him in the face. And: > Police say Dobbs was shot twice with two rubber rounds to prevent him from reentering the apartment. A Howard County Police Department spokesperson said Dobbs repeatedly refused to obey officer's commands, and also allegedly had his hand in his shirt, though police do not have video evidence of it. When asked, Dobbs denied having his hand in his shirt, and said he had nothing in his hands at all. The department said Dobbs was shot in the face as he was "falling forward," according to a written statement to 7 on Your Side. [0] http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is-a-growing-crime-trend-both-locally-and-nationally--115595 http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is...
- mfukar 10y ago
  I was scanning the article while, sure enough, I saw it: > ...refused to obey... Zero tolerance, zero patience.
  - simonh 10y ago
    That's according to the police on the scene who shot him. Also this is not the first time I've seen police claim someone they shot 'had his hands in his shirt'. Of course they can't claim he had something in his had if there's no physical object on the scene, so 'in his shirt' now seems to be the standard go-to phrase.
  - kbart 10y ago
    According to a cop who fired shots and who, as always during such incidents, "forgets" to wear camera to backup his claims.
xroche 10y ago
The main problem is per se not the hoax call, it is the grotesque accumulation of incompetence from the authorities, and the inability to handle a situation from the SWAT team, due ot a probable lack of proper training. And, also, the impunity security personnel tend to have - shooting someone without reason should be prosecuted as for any regular citizen. What is happening in your so-called free country, dear Americans ?
- vidarh 10y ago
  Exactly - a hoax call should be a nuisance, not potentially lead to violence. As it stands, it's almost surprising that no terrorist group has tried to exploit it, e.g. by calling in large numbers of fake reports to different police departments and sit back and wait for the mayhem.
ballenf 10y ago
The local new channel has a much better summary of the situation from before the caller was identified: http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is-a-growing-crime-trend-both-locally-and-nationally--115595 http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is... The police statement on the issue has additional detail that, if true, puts the victim in a slightly different light. https://www.scribd.com/document/271698829/Howard-County-Police-Statement-on-Swatting-t https://www.scribd.com/document/271698829/Howard-County-Poli... My conclusion is that the guy had a small stash of pot and was panicking thinking they were there for that. So he was going around his apartment trying to hide it instead of coming out when directed. Police interpreted that as hostility and shot him. They claim the shot to the face was because the guy "fell into" a shot intended for the torso. I really don't know how they said that with a straight face. The advice in the first link to call your local police if you think someone might try to SWAT you sounds very helpful.
- misnome 10y ago
  So, he deserved death because he panicked?
  - rkangel 10y ago
    No. That's why he was shot with non-lethal rounds. He suffered serious injuries certainly, and the whole case is deplorable, but it was a fairly reasonable response to his actions at that moment.
    - caf 10y ago
      They're not "non-lethal", they're "less lethal". People can and do die from rubber bullets.
    - GordonS 10y ago
      > That's why he was shot with non-lethal rounds In the face - not his legs or torso (Not that he should have been shot at all).
- panic 10y ago
mtgx 10y ago
Welcome to America - we shoot first, ask questions later. There really needs to be a complete overhaul of law enforcement training in the US, and the government needs to actually enforce the law against its own agents, too.
- geomark 10y ago
  If anything needs disrupting it's law enforcement. Been waiting for VC's to put out a call for startups that would try to do that.
  - lj3 10y ago
    Privatized law enforcement. That has the ring of sanity to it.
- krapp 10y ago
  America has the police culture it has because the American people wanted it. We wanted aggression in the wake of 9/11 and the War on Drugs. We wanted police to come in, guns blazing, with zero tolerance and take down the evildoers. We voted for prisons and hard time and three strikes and zero tolerance policies in schools. Lawyers and judges run for office touting the number of people they sent to the death chamber, promise more death if elected and get elected. We can't overhaul law enforcement without overhauling American culture first.
  - thatcat 10y ago
    >zero tolerence in schools, acceptable police aggression, war on drugs, expansion of post 911 power... These all seem like things that were lobbied for by police unions rather than the people electing the representatives enacting these policies.
  - lj3 10y ago
    > America has the police culture it has because the American people wanted it. I disagree. This has been used as a rationale for all sorts of nasty things, like replacing American culture with a globalist culture that's going to be even worse. In any case, no matter what the news may tell you, the American people did not want this. The politicians saw an opportunity to get more power and money and took it. When both sides of a two party system see an opportunity to increase their power across every level of government (local, state, federal) they take it and the voters don't have much say in the matter. It's one of the biggest flaws of a two party system.
mtempleton 10y ago
Police brutalize and bloody a man in process of ejecting him from plane: outcome > corporation to blame Police shoot, mutilate and nearly kill man sleeping at home during hoax: outcome > citizen to blame I'm sure I could go on for a while. The point is, are we not allowed to hold government accountable for illegitimate use of violence? Isn't that... a really big problem?
- csomar 10y ago
  You can't really blame the "Police Offier" if he is doing his job correctly (following orders). The one to be blamed should be the one giving the orders.
  - zwbanks 10y ago
    Yes, you can. It has been a concept at least since the Nuremberg trials. Of course the one giving the orders should take an even higher blame.
  - Doxin 10y ago
    > You can't really blame the "Police Officer" Yes you can. And I feel like we should. Just because you get an order to murder someone doesn't mean you then get to switch off your brain and be absolved of any guilt. I suggest you have a listen to this video[1]. "Just following orders" is the cause of some of the biggest grief in the world, now and historically. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYR9qGVtBXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYR9qGVtBXQ
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    That's the Nuremberg defense and it doesn't really work. (Of course this isn't exactly war-crime level stuff, but there's at least _some_ culpability on the part of the officers.)
  - kakarot 10y ago
    By the same logic, we shouldn't prosecute street thugs and should only target gang leaders.
callesgg 10y ago
These fake incidents are from a certain perspective quite good as they highlight the issue of making dangerous decisions based on non grounded fear.
tici_88 10y ago
Yes, hoaxes especially like this one that end badly should be punished accordingly. At the same time the SWAT team is also responsible. After all, it was them who fired the bullets. Note that in this case it was multiple bullets not just one as SWAT shot the innocent guy multiple times. It is not just a 'oopsie, we pulled the trigger by mistake, our bad' kind of a situation on their part either.
coldtea 10y ago
The SWAT team should be charged too. Prank calls are a fact of life (and people doing them can be charged, provided they can even be tracked). Sending a whole SWAT team for a prank call, and having it get to the point to shoot people without any actual threatening situation is unacceptable.
peterkelly 10y ago
The most disturbing part about this is that it demonstrates the police will essentially act as hitmen for you, for free. All you have to do is call them up anonymously and tell them your target is a terrorist, and they'll believe it, shooting first and asking questions later. It's those responsible for ordering and carrying out the raid that deserve the harshest penalty.
pvaldes 10y ago
This guy had a crazy good luck. Seriously. Unfortunately this woman walking on the streets of Barcelona and passing by chance next to a manifestation didn't had the same luck. Policemen were found not guilty in 2016. http://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/Absueltos-acusados-reventar-Ester-Quintana_0_520398071.html http://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/Absueltos-acusados-reventar... Somebody that try to shoot you a rubber ball in the face 'by error' is not different to somebody that try to stab you in the face 'by error'.
im3w1l 10y ago
Illustrates why presumption of innocence is so important: Not just to prevent honest accidents, but also to prevent the justice system from being used as a weapon.
abalashov 10y ago
The problem I see is that anyone can just "call" a SWAT team on anyone. Should there not be at least a cursory effort to ascertain whether the threat is genuine before sending people in to do shooting?
makecheck 10y ago
In a society that can sometimes have absurd levels of red tape, it’s amazing to me that something like an armed raid is apparently as easy as flipping a switch. There should be an unbelievable number of forms for these people to fill out before they can issue a raid. They should have to conduct prior investigations and find corroborating evidence of the original claim that requested the raid, etc. They should need multiple signatures from different levels of command. And heck, they should probably require a video recording of an officer walking up and knocking on the door at least once before moving in any troops.

128 points by neverminder 10y ago

tener 10y ago

How come there is no protocol to ensure authenticity of such claims?

jenoer 10y ago
Agreed. In a hostage situation you'd expect someone to gather intelligence of the situation before entering the building the hostages are claimed to be in. For example, heat cameras could be used to make a map of the room and the situation in it.
- dkersten 10y ago
  At a minimum, they should find where the hostages are, how many, how many threats etc.
masklinn 10y ago
These actions are emergency response teams, the goal is to stamp down the situation as quickly as possible then assess. You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage situation, that would render the concept worthless. Though at this point one can easily wonder whether SWAT rapid response is such a good idea, it would be interesting to compile SWAT emergency response actions, see if the emergency response was actually necessary (versus sending a beat cop ringing the door or whatever) and weigh that against swatting abuse.
- hd4 10y ago
  This has happened enough times that there really needs to be some kind of process in place to verify what the fuck is actually going on at the 'swatted' address. It is pathetically stupid and laughable that the same police force can be hoaxed so many times without setting up some kind of response to future hoaxes. If it was a new phenomenon, I could understand, but this has been happening since streaming became a thing around 2004/5 (or earlier, but that's going back as far as I know).
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  I understand and agree with this, although I'd like to add a bit of context. SWAT teams were initially designed to de-escalate already violent situations, not bring overwhelming violence to a peaceful situation. Sure, overwhelming violence may in many times be needed. In many times, however, it is not. This is why we recon before we act. Unless it's an active shooter situation (the responding officers can hear gunfire and/or explosions), then it's not evidently clear that there is a violent situation that needs de-escalating. We've seriously lost our way with SWAT. I used to say we need better training, but I'm not so sure that dismantling the moniker "SWAT" and establishing some new brand name and certification system isn't required. SWAT just means "Rambo" to too many people, laymen and LE alike.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > SWAT teams were initially designed to de-escalate already violent situations No, SWAT teams were initially designed to end already violent situations (armed robberies, riots, hostage situations, …), however they were designed to be called in after threat assessment and tentative deescalation (by regular police units or negotiators) > We've seriously lost our way with SWAT. I couldn't agree more. SWAT teams were never designed for "first response" but for "overwhelming response", they're police's special ops/SMU, but nowadays they're just a cowboy unit being sent on any trouble without any sort of situational awareness or threat assessment, better training of the SWAT units would be unlikely to help. Not to mention with the militarisation of US police (hands-me-down army and the like) having a "SWAT team" and using it for any and every thing has become a mark of rank/pride for every fucking podunk town sheriff or police office. Back in 2014 there were ~80000 SWAT actions per year in the US, and only about 7% even remotely had anything to do with the original purpose of SWAT teams (hostage situations, barricades, significant armed robbery, …): https://www.aclu.org/blog/another-day-another-124-violent-swat-raids https://www.aclu.org/blog/another-day-another-124-violent-sw...
    - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
      I hate to quibble with somebody I'm agreeing with so much, and perhaps I'm just mincing words, but I don't think you're right with your statement that SWAT teams were formed solely to "end already violent situations" Yes, that's part of their job. But surveillance is also part of their job -- which doesn't involve violence at all. They should be adept at performing normal policing activities in unusual environments, like hanging from the side of a building, or in an NBC environment. The point is that there just isn't a "weapons" part of SWAT; there's also a "Tactics" side. And tactics is a lot more than no-knock raids. SWAT teams are not supposed to be shock troops, some half-assed version of Delta or DEVGRU. They're supposed to be expert in various policing activities that require unusual weapons or tactics. As an aside, there are a lot of soldiers returning from overseas with tons of counter-insurgency training. A vast majority of this training is not applicable to domestic police work. But I'll bet you twenty bucks it ends up being part of it anyway, whether we need it or not. That's a really bad thing for all involved.
- macspoofing 10y ago
  >These actions are emergency response teams, And was there an actual emergency? The fire department also has emergency response teams, but if there's no fire, the water cannon doesn't come out.
- RivieraKid 10y ago
  This is pretty exploitable though. Someone could just spam the police with fake reports to waste their resources. I remember that once someone reported a bomb on a railway station - but he didn't say which railway station, so they closed and search all of them (in a 10 mil country), lol.
  - eeZah7Ux 10y ago
    Millions of innocent people are at risk of having their home invaded, being beaten, shot, even killed by this small private army after a prank phone call and you talk about wasting resources? In various other countries half of the swat company would be in prison after this.
  - Cthulhu_ 10y ago
    I remember that happened not too long ago, lots of schools getting fake bomb threats. The problem is that you can't ignore the threat, just in case one of them is correct. That's why I think terrorism isn't nearly as big a problem as people claim it to be. It's relatively simple to create bombs; a malicious actor could first bomb a lot of places already, but also send bomb threats for weeks on end until nobody believes them anymore, then do the real thing. So IMO, either terrorism isn't that big a deal, OR, all of the security measures and secret services are actually working and defusing (ha) the situations before they can act; the only recent terrorist attacks were ad-hoc things (grabbing a truck and driving through people) or from unexpected angles (the occasional school shooting).
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Frankly, terrorism both isn't that big a deal and they're clearly not particularly smart. If it was a big deal and they were smart, there'd be a lot of escalating fear by combining lots of fake threats with a certain, low, proportion of actual attacks: Enough attacks that every threat causes fear and contributes to a siege mentality, and exploiting fake threats as a threat multiplier. I think part of the reason we're not seeing that is that a large proportion of the attacks we see are not the work of terrorist "masterminds" pulling strings, but mentally unhinged people who decide tying their murder-suicide to a political cause makes it "mean something". Because it'd be easy to multiply the fear in various ways if they were planning this out properly.
- manarth 10y ago
  What's more disturbing is that there reportedly was contact/a conversation between the SWAT team and the residents, which the team then ignored: Officers reportedly ignored his father, Tom, and his cousin telling them there was no hostage situation and that the so-called hostage taker was actually asleep.
  - belovedeagle 10y ago
    Of course police ignored that; if they'd listened they'd have lost their chance to play 007 or soldier or whatever else they like to think of themselves as.
- Udo 10y ago
  The response to this cannot in good conscience be "oh well, that's how it's supposed to work and there isn't any other way". It's only a matter of time before people get killed this way, and if you're one of the people who say that's an acceptable risk, you're just wrong. > You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage In the context of having just a random phone call to go on, with no other sign that anything may be wrong, yes: you absolutely need to have a bloke ringing the door and asking. If you don't want to send a bloke to check on the situation, there are plenty of equivalent measures available - especially if you're a militarized police force. You can send probes, you can use thermal imaging, you can ring the phones in the house, you can even use a megaphone. It's clear that storming in and shooting anything that moves without even so much as a thought wasted on assessing whether the individual is a danger shows a blatant disregard for human life, even the lives of hostages.
- mfukar 10y ago
  > You can't exactly have a bloke ringing in at the door and asking if there's really an active shooter/hostage situation, that would render the concept worthless. "can't" by virtue of "didn't"? That's not sound logic. It makes no sense to even send in a SWAT team when a situation is not first assessed. And for that, you have to communicate.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    > "can't" by virtue of "didn't"? No can't by the virtue of can't, the entire idea is a rapid response to a possible threat. What you can do is scrap the entire concept, but don't pretend to keep it and make it completely useless by removing the one idea at the root of it.
    - mfukar 10y ago
      I see you're not exactly clear on the reason a SWAT team would be deemed necessary, so I guess we can stop here.
Aharit 10y ago
I'm just as worried, maybe more worried, that the first response to a hostage situation with explosives involved is to breach and clear with no apparent surveillance / investigation.
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  and no negotiation, which would both establish whether there was a real situation and whether it could be de-escalated without violence.
- vidarh 10y ago
  Which makes me wonder when we'll see the first terrorist attack involving bundling a bunch of hostages in a house, rigging it to explode, and calling a swat team for maximum effect.

keithpeter 10y ago

"Taking the threat seriously, armed police then raided Mr Dobbs’ home and shot the 20-year-old between the eyes and in the chest with rubber bullets, breaking bones in his face and bruising his lungs. Images taken after the incident show him with a heavily swollen, bruised and cut face." UK resident: my memories of seeing television reports of rubber bullets used in Northern Ireland during the troubles suggest that the bullets were designed to be bounced off ground or wall first. That they were primarily a riot control round. When did the police start using them as direct ammunition? Is that generally regarded as OK?

4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
In france at least, they started to outfit many police departments with them, as tit sounds better in the news to say they are "sub-lethal" weapons instead of real guns. It is illegal for them to aim at the upper body or fire below the 7 meters range, though they do it constantly (and even though people already died due to them and lose eyes every year; a rubber bullet going at 360km/h can be quite lethal).
- afarrell 10y ago
  If you are breaching a building rather than controlling a street, isn't your training going to be to shoot someone directly? Since officers are acting on training rather than reflection, isn't expecting them to bounce bullets rather foolish?
  - 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
    I can see why they wouldn't want to come in a building firearms blazing due to a random phone call, though.
  - avip 10y ago
    Assuming it's the same kind of "rubber bullets" used to neutralize riots, it's completely unsuitable for breaching houses. The min-range is impossible to keep to start with.

tomohawk 10y ago

It's good they caught the callers, but whoever dispatched the SWAT team was negligent, allowing the team to be used as a weapon. The SWAT team itself was also negligent, not adequately assessing the situation on the ground. Control of SWAT should really not be at the local police level, but at the state level. The fact that SWATing is a thing shows just how broken the current model is. The use of SWAT should be extremely rare.

Maxious 10y ago
"SWAT team use has spiked from around 3,000 strikes per year in 1980 to as many as 80,000 raids a year now. A battering ram or other forced-entry device is used in two-thirds of these raids, nearly 80 percent of which target private homes. The great bulk of SWAT raids are in service of the drug war, though nearly four out of 10 find no contraband at all." https://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-teams https://theweek.com/articles/531458/troubling-rise-swat-team...
- Cthulhu_ 10y ago
  40% is a fairly high success rate though, I think. Of course, it's probably usually just small amounts, a small bag of something or another here and there.
  - simonh 10y ago
    Would the success rate be significantly lower if normal police procedures were followed instead? To count as a 'success' fro SWAT they would need to show that SWAT methods were appropriate and necessary.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      It's even worse, as to count as a success, they would also need to show not just that they find something in more cases than without swat, but that the extra disturbance they cause when they don't find anything is worth it too. Not to mention that what they find should be worth found too (e.g. some kid's stash of weed or some guy's coke is not to be counted among the "successes" -- you don't send a SWAT team for that, you send it to major dealers).

sundvor 10y ago

I for one am hoping the caller gets locked away for a very long time.

GordonS 10y ago
I'm hoping the shooter gets locked away. Little chance.

tibarun 10y ago

This episode shows just how dangerous it is to have a militarized police force, behaving as if they were in a war zone. And it's also terrible that the Independent didn't focus it's reporting on the whole militarized police issue.

Chathamization 10y ago
Yeah. I remember once looking into the military reserves in the U.S. They had a list of occupations, and the civilian jobs the occupation would prepare you for. So, if you're a military base electrician, it prepares you for being a civilian electrician, etc. For infantry, they said that it prepared you well to be a police officer. So the U.S. government is taking up a large chunk of young people's prime years and teaching them few transferable skills. But they need to pretend like they're not just wasting they're lives, so they tell them that now that they know how to fight a war they know how to be a police officer. Then, unsurprisingly, we get police officers who think they're soldiers.

anentropic 10y ago

USA: failed state

izacus 10y ago

At least here in EU the SWAT member and whole chain would go through a rigourous disciplinary action to determine why the police was shooting at someone innocent and how to prevent it. Is this going to be the case in UK as well?

manarth 10y ago
The SWAT event was by an American SWAT team, in the USA. The UK angle is that the guy who made the false report lives in the UK and made the call from the UK.
- izacus 10y ago
  Oh, I misunderstood the article then. Still, does USA (or the relevant state) have such mechanisms?
  - Ntrails 10y ago
    Yeah, they do it by giving the Swat team medals for valour
  - mter 10y ago
    At worst the officers will get a paid vacation then will be back to work after the police investigate if the police did anything wrong.
  - Chathamization 10y ago
    What often happens is that if there is sufficient negative attention, the officer will be placed on paid leave pending an administrative review. Then after the public moves on to something else, the administrative review finds that the officer did nothing wrong and that it was the unarmed victim's fault for being shot.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    The UK has a national(+) police complaints commission which would automatically investigate fatal shootings. The US does not. (+) in practice, a different one for each of the four nations

raphael_l 10y ago

This article [0] seems to be much more in-depth and explains the situation a bit better (if factually correct). I'm not so much baffled about actually showing up with a SWAT team before the threat could be identified as a hoax, but rather how an allegedly sleeping man could be shot twice. Once in the face. The interesting parts are the following: > Dobbs himself said when police woke him up with a call on his cellphone, he said he told them he would come outside. Dobbs said he walked around the apartment looking for something to put on because it was a cold February night. He said he walked out to the living room, saw the SWAT{ } team, and heard police yelling at him to come out. He said he turned around to go get his girlfriend but was shot. He said he doesn't remember anything after that rubber bullet him in the face. And: > Police say Dobbs was shot twice with two rubber rounds to prevent him from reentering the apartment. A Howard County Police Department spokesperson said Dobbs repeatedly refused to obey officer's commands, and also allegedly had his hand in his shirt, though police do not have video evidence of it. When asked, Dobbs denied having his hand in his shirt, and said he had nothing in his hands at all. The department said Dobbs was shot in the face as he was "falling forward," according to a written statement to 7 on Your Side. [0] http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is-a-growing-crime-trend-both-locally-and-nationally--115595 http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is...

mfukar 10y ago
I was scanning the article while, sure enough, I saw it: > ...refused to obey... Zero tolerance, zero patience.
- simonh 10y ago
  That's according to the police on the scene who shot him. Also this is not the first time I've seen police claim someone they shot 'had his hands in his shirt'. Of course they can't claim he had something in his had if there's no physical object on the scene, so 'in his shirt' now seems to be the standard go-to phrase.
- kbart 10y ago
  According to a cop who fired shots and who, as always during such incidents, "forgets" to wear camera to backup his claims.

xroche 10y ago

The main problem is per se not the hoax call, it is the grotesque accumulation of incompetence from the authorities, and the inability to handle a situation from the SWAT team, due ot a probable lack of proper training. And, also, the impunity security personnel tend to have - shooting someone without reason should be prosecuted as for any regular citizen. What is happening in your so-called free country, dear Americans ?

vidarh 10y ago
Exactly - a hoax call should be a nuisance, not potentially lead to violence. As it stands, it's almost surprising that no terrorist group has tried to exploit it, e.g. by calling in large numbers of fake reports to different police departments and sit back and wait for the mayhem.

ballenf 10y ago

The local new channel has a much better summary of the situation from before the caller was identified: http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is-a-growing-crime-trend-both-locally-and-nationally--115595 http://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/fbi-says-swatting-is... The police statement on the issue has additional detail that, if true, puts the victim in a slightly different light. https://www.scribd.com/document/271698829/Howard-County-Police-Statement-on-Swatting-t https://www.scribd.com/document/271698829/Howard-County-Poli... My conclusion is that the guy had a small stash of pot and was panicking thinking they were there for that. So he was going around his apartment trying to hide it instead of coming out when directed. Police interpreted that as hostility and shot him. They claim the shot to the face was because the guy "fell into" a shot intended for the torso. I really don't know how they said that with a straight face. The advice in the first link to call your local police if you think someone might try to SWAT you sounds very helpful.

misnome 10y ago
So, he deserved death because he panicked?
- rkangel 10y ago
  No. That's why he was shot with non-lethal rounds. He suffered serious injuries certainly, and the whole case is deplorable, but it was a fairly reasonable response to his actions at that moment.
  - caf 10y ago
    They're not "non-lethal", they're "less lethal". People can and do die from rubber bullets.
  - GordonS 10y ago
    > That's why he was shot with non-lethal rounds In the face - not his legs or torso (Not that he should have been shot at all).
panic 10y ago

mtgx 10y ago

Welcome to America - we shoot first, ask questions later. There really needs to be a complete overhaul of law enforcement training in the US, and the government needs to actually enforce the law against its own agents, too.

geomark 10y ago
If anything needs disrupting it's law enforcement. Been waiting for VC's to put out a call for startups that would try to do that.
- lj3 10y ago
  Privatized law enforcement. That has the ring of sanity to it.
krapp 10y ago
America has the police culture it has because the American people wanted it. We wanted aggression in the wake of 9/11 and the War on Drugs. We wanted police to come in, guns blazing, with zero tolerance and take down the evildoers. We voted for prisons and hard time and three strikes and zero tolerance policies in schools. Lawyers and judges run for office touting the number of people they sent to the death chamber, promise more death if elected and get elected. We can't overhaul law enforcement without overhauling American culture first.
- thatcat 10y ago
  >zero tolerence in schools, acceptable police aggression, war on drugs, expansion of post 911 power... These all seem like things that were lobbied for by police unions rather than the people electing the representatives enacting these policies.
- lj3 10y ago
  > America has the police culture it has because the American people wanted it. I disagree. This has been used as a rationale for all sorts of nasty things, like replacing American culture with a globalist culture that's going to be even worse. In any case, no matter what the news may tell you, the American people did not want this. The politicians saw an opportunity to get more power and money and took it. When both sides of a two party system see an opportunity to increase their power across every level of government (local, state, federal) they take it and the voters don't have much say in the matter. It's one of the biggest flaws of a two party system.

mtempleton 10y ago

Police brutalize and bloody a man in process of ejecting him from plane: outcome > corporation to blame Police shoot, mutilate and nearly kill man sleeping at home during hoax: outcome > citizen to blame I'm sure I could go on for a while. The point is, are we not allowed to hold government accountable for illegitimate use of violence? Isn't that... a really big problem?

csomar 10y ago
You can't really blame the "Police Offier" if he is doing his job correctly (following orders). The one to be blamed should be the one giving the orders.
- zwbanks 10y ago
  Yes, you can. It has been a concept at least since the Nuremberg trials. Of course the one giving the orders should take an even higher blame.
- Doxin 10y ago
  > You can't really blame the "Police Officer" Yes you can. And I feel like we should. Just because you get an order to murder someone doesn't mean you then get to switch off your brain and be absolved of any guilt. I suggest you have a listen to this video[1]. "Just following orders" is the cause of some of the biggest grief in the world, now and historically. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYR9qGVtBXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYR9qGVtBXQ
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  That's the Nuremberg defense and it doesn't really work. (Of course this isn't exactly war-crime level stuff, but there's at least _some_ culpability on the part of the officers.)
- kakarot 10y ago
  By the same logic, we shouldn't prosecute street thugs and should only target gang leaders.

callesgg 10y ago

These fake incidents are from a certain perspective quite good as they highlight the issue of making dangerous decisions based on non grounded fear.

tici_88 10y ago

Yes, hoaxes especially like this one that end badly should be punished accordingly. At the same time the SWAT team is also responsible. After all, it was them who fired the bullets. Note that in this case it was multiple bullets not just one as SWAT shot the innocent guy multiple times. It is not just a 'oopsie, we pulled the trigger by mistake, our bad' kind of a situation on their part either.

coldtea 10y ago

The SWAT team should be charged too. Prank calls are a fact of life (and people doing them can be charged, provided they can even be tracked). Sending a whole SWAT team for a prank call, and having it get to the point to shoot people without any actual threatening situation is unacceptable.

peterkelly 10y ago

The most disturbing part about this is that it demonstrates the police will essentially act as hitmen for you, for free. All you have to do is call them up anonymously and tell them your target is a terrorist, and they'll believe it, shooting first and asking questions later. It's those responsible for ordering and carrying out the raid that deserve the harshest penalty.

pvaldes 10y ago

This guy had a crazy good luck. Seriously. Unfortunately this woman walking on the streets of Barcelona and passing by chance next to a manifestation didn't had the same luck. Policemen were found not guilty in 2016. http://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/Absueltos-acusados-reventar-Ester-Quintana_0_520398071.html http://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/Absueltos-acusados-reventar... Somebody that try to shoot you a rubber ball in the face 'by error' is not different to somebody that try to stab you in the face 'by error'.

im3w1l 10y ago

Illustrates why presumption of innocence is so important: Not just to prevent honest accidents, but also to prevent the justice system from being used as a weapon.

abalashov 10y ago

The problem I see is that anyone can just "call" a SWAT team on anyone. Should there not be at least a cursory effort to ascertain whether the threat is genuine before sending people in to do shooting?

makecheck 10y ago

In a society that can sometimes have absurd levels of red tape, it’s amazing to me that something like an armed raid is apparently as easy as flipping a switch. There should be an unbelievable number of forms for these people to fill out before they can issue a raid. They should have to conduct prior investigations and find corroborating evidence of the original claim that requested the raid, etc. They should need multiple signatures from different levels of command. And heck, they should probably require a video recording of an officer walking up and knocking on the door at least once before moving in any troops.