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Wow. Let me take a breath here. I'm British and the words you just wrote sound insane to me. The key point here is that the threshold for the use of lethal fo

Wow. Let me take a breath here. I'm British and the words you just wrote sound insane to me. The key point here is that the threshold for the use of lethal force by the state should be much, much higher than merely an anonymous call. If that makes me "anti-police" then I'm very happy not to live in your great nation.

tptacek 9y ago
What do you think happens in a real scenario where someone has shot someone and is holding a group of other people hostage? You think they get some agents on a jet from Quantico to start collecting evidence? That's what makes this crime so evil: the people doing it are deliberately trying to put the police in the worst possible scenario. Police need more training and better procedures and they are certainly abusive, but it's this exact situation --- when it's really occurring, and isn't just some troll --- that drives most of those abuses.
- grw_ 9y ago
  > when it's really occurring, and isn't just some troll I don't know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA, but I read about instances of 'swatting' constantly. Given the false-positive rate of such reports, it's no surprise that sending military-style squads to 'shoot on sight' ends in tragedy again and again.
  - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
    > I don't know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA Often. Mostly domestic violence barricading scenarios, which are usually handled by front-line officers with sidearms and negotiation. SWAT deployment is usually discretionary at such a scene, predicated on an active shooter, and anticipates forced entry. In an active shooter scenario, front-line officers will typically defer to SWAT to force entry, given the risk. But yes, it does happen. A lot of domestic violence ends badly.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      A lot of domestic violence ends badly because police actions ensured that it would. E.g. instead of leaving the bastard the woman develops a sort of codependent relation with local cops so that every busted lip she suffers means the bastard gets a tag-team beatdown from everyone on duty. Nightly entertainment for the whole neighborhood! I'm no fan of wife-beaters, but somehow every other nation on earth has figured out less violent ways of dealing with them. Yes, in many cases "the way" is to simply accept that wives will get beaten. Admitting this is no more an acceptance of police violence than admitting that not all nations are governed with perfect justice would be an acceptance of all of our damned wars. This is a "won't somebody please think of the children?!" level of argument.
      - jacobolus 9y ago
        I think a big compounding problem is the overall prevalence of guns. In most places domestic abusers aren't untrained gun nuts living in a macho wave-your-gun-whenever-you-want culture. People can obviously do plenty of damage beating each-other with objects, slashing with kitchen knives, or whatever, but guns seem to lead especially often to escalation from shoving to instant death. When police show up, if someone has a gun everything is a lot more difficult/dangerous.
- gregmac 9y ago
  While SWAT should respond, shouldn't they cordon off the area and try to make contact? Actually going inside seems like it should be the last resort, after there is no response or there is observable probable cause or imminent threat. Especially if the call is anonymous with few concrete details -- the police should consider why does this caller know the info they know? Why is the call anonymous or otherwise untraceable? How many times have lives been saved by SWAT entering after a call like this vs an innocent person getting injured or killed? How many anonymous, untraceable calls to 911 have even turned out to be legitimate?
  - DrScump 9y ago
    Actually going inside seems like it should be the last resort and they did not go inside to shoot the victim.
  - danenania 9y ago
    It definitely seems like some simple heuristics could help a lot in giving police a sense of the probability that it's a false alarm. They will of course still need to assess the situation, but systemic police accountability issues aside, harming completely innocent people is still no picnic for the officers involved, so knowing when the fraud likelihood is particularly high should help them calm down and take a more measured approach. Apart from call tracing, I'd expect simple things like whether the caller stays on the line and cooperates with the dispatcher (vs hanging up immediately) to be quite predictive.
    - fleitz 9y ago
      Or like getting their name and address so they can verify in person?
  - pps43 9y ago
    Not in the active shooter scenario. The standard approach now is to not even wait for SWAT, but to go in as soon as at least two officers are on the scene. The rationale is that active shooters usually stop killing people as soon as they get any kind of resistance, so timing is very important. Of course "going in" does not mean shooting indiscriminately.
- deleted 9y ago
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- deleted 9y ago
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- cornyNetHandle 9y ago
  Agents, jet, Quantico? No. Collect some evidence? Absolutely.
weberc2 9y ago
It would be negligent to respond with anything less than armed force to a threat like this. The police can and should be better trained, but that's different than failing to send an armed response. I would be surprised if a similar threat would be brushed off in the U.K.
krapp 9y ago
It's ok, nationalism makes some people emotional, take a deep breath and calm down. I don't actually disagree with you. The use of lethal force was the mistake here, but the presence of force was justifiable. The problem is how easily one seems to lead to the other. What should have happened is the police realizing their force was unnecessary and then standing down. Also, if someone were to call in, say, a terrorist threat or a bomb threat in Britain, someone would show up with guns there as well. You know, because Britain also has their equivalent to SWAT teams. With guns. That they shoot people with.
- johndunne 9y ago
  The British 'firearms units' aren't trained to bring aggression to a situation. They're trained to properly identify targets before shooting, knowing that they will be required to justify their actions in court. Completely different to SWAT team training in the US. Here in the UK, an officer shooting someone dead as soon as they answer the door won't fly in court. The number of police killings in the UK vs US is relatively less controversial by a significant margin.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Just for the sake of accuracy, the victim here wasn't 'shot dead as soon as they answered the door[0].' Not that 'shot dead from across the street as soon as his hand twitched' is justifiable. [0]http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html
    - caf 9y ago
      The article you reference currently says just this: “A male came to the front door,” Livingston said. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.” Perhaps it previously had some other claim about the circumstances, but if so it has since been revised to remove it.
      - krapp 9y ago
arcticfox 9y ago
> someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages Should this not be responded to with lethal force available? You're going to get a lot more people killed that way. Obviously the error rate should be reduced as much as possible, but a naive approach of ignoring calls without a lot of validation would be a disaster. I imagine it would be really easy to fake some verification anyways, and coordinate a SWAT with two callers.
pdkl95 9y ago
> the threshold for the use of lethal force That isn't the problem (at least primarily). Claiming that there is a serious hostage situation with the possibility of serious violence (perhaps even a potential murder) seriously escalates the risk and hostility of the situation. I didn't say potential hostility; the claim itself directly increases the perceived threat level of the situation, even if it isn't credible. A team of people responding en masse with weapons[1] at the ready further escalates the tension of the situation and the hostility of the room, even if their weapons are never used. The end result is a very tense situation with everyone - on all sides - ready to jump at anything that might be a threat. Fortunately there is at least some evidence[2] that in "most" swattings, cooler heads eventually prevail and nobody gets shot. However, evaluating potential threats is always going to use the faster but less accurate "System 1"[3][4]. The higher the tension level, the greater chance that someone's mind will make a serious mistake, which can easily result in a cascade of everyone recursively responding in ways that probably compound the mistake, which is when people tend to get shot/stabbed/beaten/whatever. The solution is that there needs to respond to situations that are less likely to escalate the situation to greater levels of hostility. Once it turns into a "charlie foxtrot"[5], it's too late. However, if a streamer's prior notification to the police that, should any threat be called in regarding their address, if the police pound on the door, they can expect the stream to walk outside peacefully to talk, maybe the dangerous escalation where they breaking down the door and pointing guns at everyone can be avoided. They can always fall back to that strategy if nobody comes out to talk. edit: added [2]'s missing footnote and URL [1] of any type - a bunch of people storming a room armed only with batons is still an escalation of violence. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW-BVPCbZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW-BVPCbZk [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVV8pch1dM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVV8pch1dM [5] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Charlie_Foxtrot https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Charlie_Foxtrot
ajmurmann 9y ago
I think part of the problem is a indirect result of the US gun policy. In pretty much any other civilized country is very, very rare that the police will encounter someone who is armed. In the US guns are everywhere. So the police constantly feels threatened for good reason. So to me lots of these issues are even more cost from the US not being able to move its gun policy into the same century as every other civilized country. I get the point about guns being important to protect against a fascist government, but then I literally see a p protest march by Nazis armed with assault rifles...
- devmunchies 9y ago
  > So the police constantly feels threatened for good reason So should we take away rights so the government feels less threatened? That seems like the wrong reason.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    I want to have the right to feel safe knowing that random people around me won't be carrying weapons made for the sole purpose of killing people. "The government" - that's supposed to be the way we organize ourselves and stand up together to above things we believe in as a nation. While that's not always working well talking about it as if its given that it's a malevolent, suppressive regime is only going to make things worse. The US finally needs to do its wild West mentality and arrive on the 21st century with the rest of the civilized world.
    - madengr 9y ago
      That’s the great thing about the USA. You don’t have the “right to feel safe”. I’ll keep my guns, thank you.
      - ajmurmann 9y ago
        That's surprising since we are putting a whole lot of money on making people feel safe from much less dangerous things.

tptacek 9y ago

What do you think happens in a real scenario where someone has shot someone and is holding a group of other people hostage? You think they get some agents on a jet from Quantico to start collecting evidence? That's what makes this crime so evil: the people doing it are deliberately trying to put the police in the worst possible scenario. Police need more training and better procedures and they are certainly abusive, but it's this exact situation --- when it's really occurring, and isn't just some troll --- that drives most of those abuses.

grw_ 9y ago
> when it's really occurring, and isn't just some troll I don't know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA, but I read about instances of 'swatting' constantly. Given the false-positive rate of such reports, it's no surprise that sending military-style squads to 'shoot on sight' ends in tragedy again and again.
- jsmthrowaway 9y ago
  > I don't know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA Often. Mostly domestic violence barricading scenarios, which are usually handled by front-line officers with sidearms and negotiation. SWAT deployment is usually discretionary at such a scene, predicated on an active shooter, and anticipates forced entry. In an active shooter scenario, front-line officers will typically defer to SWAT to force entry, given the risk. But yes, it does happen. A lot of domestic violence ends badly.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    A lot of domestic violence ends badly because police actions ensured that it would. E.g. instead of leaving the bastard the woman develops a sort of codependent relation with local cops so that every busted lip she suffers means the bastard gets a tag-team beatdown from everyone on duty. Nightly entertainment for the whole neighborhood! I'm no fan of wife-beaters, but somehow every other nation on earth has figured out less violent ways of dealing with them. Yes, in many cases "the way" is to simply accept that wives will get beaten. Admitting this is no more an acceptance of police violence than admitting that not all nations are governed with perfect justice would be an acceptance of all of our damned wars. This is a "won't somebody please think of the children?!" level of argument.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      I think a big compounding problem is the overall prevalence of guns. In most places domestic abusers aren't untrained gun nuts living in a macho wave-your-gun-whenever-you-want culture. People can obviously do plenty of damage beating each-other with objects, slashing with kitchen knives, or whatever, but guns seem to lead especially often to escalation from shoving to instant death. When police show up, if someone has a gun everything is a lot more difficult/dangerous.
gregmac 9y ago
While SWAT should respond, shouldn't they cordon off the area and try to make contact? Actually going inside seems like it should be the last resort, after there is no response or there is observable probable cause or imminent threat. Especially if the call is anonymous with few concrete details -- the police should consider why does this caller know the info they know? Why is the call anonymous or otherwise untraceable? How many times have lives been saved by SWAT entering after a call like this vs an innocent person getting injured or killed? How many anonymous, untraceable calls to 911 have even turned out to be legitimate?
- DrScump 9y ago
  Actually going inside seems like it should be the last resort and they did not go inside to shoot the victim.
- danenania 9y ago
  It definitely seems like some simple heuristics could help a lot in giving police a sense of the probability that it's a false alarm. They will of course still need to assess the situation, but systemic police accountability issues aside, harming completely innocent people is still no picnic for the officers involved, so knowing when the fraud likelihood is particularly high should help them calm down and take a more measured approach. Apart from call tracing, I'd expect simple things like whether the caller stays on the line and cooperates with the dispatcher (vs hanging up immediately) to be quite predictive.
  - fleitz 9y ago
    Or like getting their name and address so they can verify in person?
- pps43 9y ago
  Not in the active shooter scenario. The standard approach now is to not even wait for SWAT, but to go in as soon as at least two officers are on the scene. The rationale is that active shooters usually stop killing people as soon as they get any kind of resistance, so timing is very important. Of course "going in" does not mean shooting indiscriminately.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
cornyNetHandle 9y ago
Agents, jet, Quantico? No. Collect some evidence? Absolutely.

weberc2 9y ago

It would be negligent to respond with anything less than armed force to a threat like this. The police can and should be better trained, but that's different than failing to send an armed response. I would be surprised if a similar threat would be brushed off in the U.K.

krapp 9y ago

It's ok, nationalism makes some people emotional, take a deep breath and calm down. I don't actually disagree with you. The use of lethal force was the mistake here, but the presence of force was justifiable. The problem is how easily one seems to lead to the other. What should have happened is the police realizing their force was unnecessary and then standing down. Also, if someone were to call in, say, a terrorist threat or a bomb threat in Britain, someone would show up with guns there as well. You know, because Britain also has their equivalent to SWAT teams. With guns. That they shoot people with.

johndunne 9y ago
The British 'firearms units' aren't trained to bring aggression to a situation. They're trained to properly identify targets before shooting, knowing that they will be required to justify their actions in court. Completely different to SWAT team training in the US. Here in the UK, an officer shooting someone dead as soon as they answer the door won't fly in court. The number of police killings in the UK vs US is relatively less controversial by a significant margin.
- krapp 9y ago
  Just for the sake of accuracy, the victim here wasn't 'shot dead as soon as they answered the door[0].' Not that 'shot dead from across the street as soon as his hand twitched' is justifiable. [0]http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html
  - caf 9y ago
    The article you reference currently says just this: “A male came to the front door,” Livingston said. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.” Perhaps it previously had some other claim about the circumstances, but if so it has since been revised to remove it.
    - krapp 9y ago

arcticfox 9y ago

> someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages Should this not be responded to with lethal force available? You're going to get a lot more people killed that way. Obviously the error rate should be reduced as much as possible, but a naive approach of ignoring calls without a lot of validation would be a disaster. I imagine it would be really easy to fake some verification anyways, and coordinate a SWAT with two callers.

pdkl95 9y ago

> the threshold for the use of lethal force That isn't the problem (at least primarily). Claiming that there is a serious hostage situation with the possibility of serious violence (perhaps even a potential murder) seriously escalates the risk and hostility of the situation. I didn't say potential hostility; the claim itself directly increases the perceived threat level of the situation, even if it isn't credible. A team of people responding en masse with weapons[1] at the ready further escalates the tension of the situation and the hostility of the room, even if their weapons are never used. The end result is a very tense situation with everyone - on all sides - ready to jump at anything that might be a threat. Fortunately there is at least some evidence[2] that in "most" swattings, cooler heads eventually prevail and nobody gets shot. However, evaluating potential threats is always going to use the faster but less accurate "System 1"[3][4]. The higher the tension level, the greater chance that someone's mind will make a serious mistake, which can easily result in a cascade of everyone recursively responding in ways that probably compound the mistake, which is when people tend to get shot/stabbed/beaten/whatever. The solution is that there needs to respond to situations that are less likely to escalate the situation to greater levels of hostility. Once it turns into a "charlie foxtrot"[5], it's too late. However, if a streamer's prior notification to the police that, should any threat be called in regarding their address, if the police pound on the door, they can expect the stream to walk outside peacefully to talk, maybe the dangerous escalation where they breaking down the door and pointing guns at everyone can be avoided. They can always fall back to that strategy if nobody comes out to talk. edit: added [2]'s missing footnote and URL [1] of any type - a bunch of people storming a room armed only with batons is still an escalation of violence. [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW-BVPCbZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW-BVPCbZk [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVV8pch1dM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVV8pch1dM [5] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Charlie_Foxtrot https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Charlie_Foxtrot

ajmurmann 9y ago

I think part of the problem is a indirect result of the US gun policy. In pretty much any other civilized country is very, very rare that the police will encounter someone who is armed. In the US guns are everywhere. So the police constantly feels threatened for good reason. So to me lots of these issues are even more cost from the US not being able to move its gun policy into the same century as every other civilized country. I get the point about guns being important to protect against a fascist government, but then I literally see a p protest march by Nazis armed with assault rifles...

devmunchies 9y ago
> So the police constantly feels threatened for good reason So should we take away rights so the government feels less threatened? That seems like the wrong reason.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  I want to have the right to feel safe knowing that random people around me won't be carrying weapons made for the sole purpose of killing people. "The government" - that's supposed to be the way we organize ourselves and stand up together to above things we believe in as a nation. While that's not always working well talking about it as if its given that it's a malevolent, suppressive regime is only going to make things worse. The US finally needs to do its wild West mentality and arrive on the 21st century with the rest of the civilized world.
  - madengr 9y ago
    That’s the great thing about the USA. You don’t have the “right to feel safe”. I’ll keep my guns, thank you.
    - ajmurmann 9y ago
      That's surprising since we are putting a whole lot of money on making people feel safe from much less dangerous things.