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What bothers me about these situations is just the entire idea of "SWAT" as practiced. You are a cop with 5+ other cops. You all pull your guns. Someone come

What bothers me about these situations is just the entire idea of "SWAT" as practiced. You are a cop with 5+ other cops. You all pull your guns. Someone comes to the door, groggy in the middle of the night. They may or may not understand you are police. They may or may not believe you are the police. They are definitely confused/frightened/angry by your presence. We now begin the dice rolling process. Since every police officer with a gun drawn is now a DECIDER they get a dice roll. Every single millisecond, all these dice are rolled simultaneously for the entire arrest process as the "suspect" is ordered around like they haven't been since grade school gym class. This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged.

meri_dian 9y ago
SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. So of course they are going to be ready with weapons drawn. Do you want them to just waltz into (probably) dangerous situations with their hands in their pockets whistling a tune? Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the bad guys, and refuse to take a balanced view by empathizing with them and the danger they encounter on a daily basis.
- cjbprime 9y ago
  This claim is obviously untrue. (I suppose you're hedging with "usually", but even that seems unlikely.)
- y7 9y ago
  > when it's clear there is [...] danger Shouldn't they at least verify for themselves whether there is actual danger?
  - wldcordeiro 9y ago
    Yeah considering that the 911 call mentioned a 1 floor house and the house in the video is 2 floor they should have had some idea it wasn't quite right.
  - tomschlick 9y ago
    How? Are you going to send an officer to the door to ask someone if there is a murder going on? This was a bad shoot, but the tactics were sound. Don’t correctly they would have called him out of the house from a distance with lethal cover from multiple angles and then cleared the house.
    - rbetts 9y ago
      If sound tactics get innocent people killed when nobody was under actual threat --- those are shitty tactics.
      - tomschlick 9y ago
        Tactically, what would you do different? You cant send people up to the door, as you have to assume the person is telling the truth and has the means to shoot through the door at them. When someone has a gun, distance and cover are your friend. You then get everyone you can out of the house so you can clear it and assist the victims. That is what any police force in the civilized world would do if they had what they thought was credible information about a murder / hostage situation. Obviously pulling the trigger in this case was a mistake, but what do you do differently? Everyone is criticizing training in this thread but no one seems to have any real solutions.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
        How about asking the guy on the porch some questions? Like 'what's your name? Do you have any weapons? Did you call 911?' It seems not to have occurred to you (and a lot of other people) that yelling commands at people is not an effective way to handle many common situations.
- rbcgerard 9y ago
  Simple question - what % of SWAT encounters should an INNOCENT person be able to survive?
  - trophycase 9y ago
    I dunno? Maybe 99.9% or even 99.99%
- hungerstrike 9y ago
  Why not make sure that there is some danger first instead of just going off of an anonymous phone call? Seems pretty simple, just stand outside the house with the megaphone and say “hey what’s going on in there”?
  - solipsism 9y ago
    The militarization of the police force precludes this. Whatever's in the house is Al Quaeda, and our hero boys in blue are here to frag some shit. /s
  - falcolas 9y ago
    At which point, if you're up against armed individuals, you've lost the element of surprise, and have created a hostage situation at best, and a shootout in a suburban neighborhood at worst. Or, someone walks out and defuses the police, then their compatriots wipe all the police out unopposed.
    - debaserab2 9y ago
      This mindset is exactly what's wrong with policing in America. Every single part of training seems to be designed for worst case scenarios. There's no room for common sense or judgment.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - blt 9y ago
        Because if you consider average case scenarios, logic will inevitably force you to make a choice: what percentage of cops should die during their career? The police chiefs decided the answer is zero. That leads to extreme aggressive tactics. Too bad the owners of mines, oil rigs, logging operations, etc. don't share a similar concern for their employees' lives.
        valuearb 9y ago
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  If any rando can call in a 'dangerous situation', then yes, they should be more circumspect. There is just no excuse for killing an innocent civilian. It's outrageous. Response to the parent's edit: These are supposedly trained officers who acted with absolute incompetence leading to a completely needless death. How is one supposed to empathise with this? It's a complete and utter fuck-up.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    Someone here is trying to increase the consequences for killing suspects and they had a rep from the police union arguing against it because it could have unintended consequences like “people dying”. I ended up yelling at my radio, “PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DYING!” What the rep meant was cops dying. But the statement, as worded, makes it sound like cops don’t consider the rest of us to be people. Which is exactly the thing a lot of Americans are terrified is actually true. In the end I expect he made the case for the people arguing for bigger penalties.
    - chickenfries 9y ago
      Too many cops see the people they interact with as criminals. They know that they interact with innocent people sometimes, but they are heavily biased towards thinking that by the time they are interacting with you, it is very likely that you're a criminal. And it's their job to protect "society" from "the criminals." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line
- otterley 9y ago
  Sure, but you’re assuming that the clarity has been established. That threshold needs to be met, and it certainly didn’t happen in this case.
- grey-area 9y ago
  SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. That is demonstrably false. For reference, start with this case.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    Police were responding, in this case, to a call made by someone claiming to be armed and holding his family hostage. You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst. What happened to the civilian is a tragedy. He should not have been killed. But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.
    - Silhouette 9y ago
      You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst. We're talking about literally a life or death situation here. Why on earth would you assume anything, rather than being cautious and trying to confirm for sure what the situation actually is?
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - 7952 9y ago
      The worse outcome is that the innocent bystander is killed. That could be a hostage, or some random person caught up in a hoax. The whole point of the police presence is to protect that person. In this situation they failed in that objective.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      > But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place. It completely mystifies me how people can think that people with guns were justified in fatally shooting someone with no guns. That kind of thing should just never happen, either subdue them or let them get away, why are you shooting them? What could they possibly have done, short of ran to the kitchen to get a knife and then ran back and tried to stab someone? How can you mistake anything someone unarmed does for a deadly threat?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  If nothing else, they fuck up addresses all the time.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  There is just one way this isn’t a massive police screwup, and that’s if the person SWATed reacted in a way that was (very) threatening, such as grabbing a gun, or something that is reasonable the police could believe was a gun. My hunch here is that, just like you are suggesting, Swat teams are used incorrectly as first response in unconfirmed situations. No investigation by anyone has confirmed the threat. At the end of the day, police officers just can’t shoot unarmed people, no matter how stressful the situation.
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    What kind of investigation would you suggest take place before hand about a situation where there is supposedly a person with hostages who has already killed one?
    - rbetts 9y ago
      A situation that doesn't include the "supposedly" qualification you make. A single anonymous source on a non-911 number without corroborating reports of gunfire is not sufficient cause to shoot a man on his porch. Here's an idea -- fly a drone around the house and look in some windows. Knock on a neighbors door and ask if they heard a gunshot. Establish the identity of the reporter - how does the reporter know what is happening? Is the reporter physically proximate to the area?
      - oh_sigh 9y ago
        > A single anonymous source on a non-911 number without corroborating reports of gunfire is not sufficient cause to shoot a man on his porch. No one is arguing that. > Here's an idea -- fly a drone around the house and look in some windows. Knock on a neighbors door and ask if they heard a gunshot. That sounds great. Until there is an actual hostage situation, and police waste their time doing this and a hostage is killed, at which point people will be asking why they didn't kick the doors down if they knew someone was being held in there. > Establish the identity of the reporter - how does the reporter know what is happening? Is the reporter physically proximate to the area? The reporter claimed to be the person who killed his father and was holding other people hostage. How would you confirm if the reporter was physically in the area? E911 includes location reporting, but this can be spoofed(I don't know if it was in the situation)
- CalChris 9y ago
  In this case there was no immediate and present danger yet SWAT was called in. There was a report which turned out to be false. The SWAT team also was under no danger when they shot this guy. I should add that being a police officer is not a particularly dangerous job. A telephone lineman has a dangerous job. A garbage man has a dangerous job. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    The fact that there are jobs with higher injury rates out there doesn't make policing not dangerous.
  - briandear 9y ago
    I am going to strongly disagree. Being a cop is extremely dangerous — just because more cops don’t get hurt doesn’t mean it’s less dangerous. We can probably agree that being a race car driver is dangerous despite there not being a large number of injuries. Training and equipment mitigate some of the effects of the danger — but that doesn’t make it less dangerous. Spend a night doing a police ride along in a major city, then report back on just how “not dangerous” the job is. To be clear, I am not defending the cops in this situation, merely disputing the ridiculous claim that being a cop isn’t particularly dangerous. How many garbage men have been killed on the job by their customers or targeted specifically because of their job? Any snipers taking out garbage men? Any garbage men getting routinely assaulted on the job?
    - ncallaway 9y ago
      "I am going to strongly disagree with well established statistical evidence" usually isn't a strong starting point for an argument. > How many garbage men have been killed on the job by their customers or targeted specifically because of their job? Why does this matter? Dead is dead. If you're more likely to be killed or injured doing that job, why does it matter how it comes about?
- Silhouette 9y ago
  It's sad to see how many people here view police as the bad guys Apparently they just killed a totally innocent man, entirely avoidably. In this case, they are the bad guys.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    This will not be the first case of questionable use of force people have encountered. If you think the venom around this case is about this case then you’re going to be confused.
- qaq 9y ago
  Let's cut the BS US Military is facing unimaginably more dangerous situations on daily basis yet expected to obey engagements where rule often is do not fire unless fired upon. Police is not even in the top 10 list of dangerous professions in US. Situations that in most countries are handled by few police officers in US are handled by paranoid SWAT teams on armored vehicles with assault rifles in full tactical gear.
  - tomjakubowski 9y ago
    Police gunfights are typically at much closer range than the military’s. Soldiers have more armor and are often already in fortified positions when fired upon. The situations aren’t exactly comparable. Granted, combat troops probably have superior training to police.
    - qaq 9y ago
      I am not advocating for police to have a rule that disallows them to fire first. But police officers should be capable of acting cool under pressure and to use lethal force as a last resort not as a first tool to be used in any situation. I'd favor the rule that police should be filled with Army vets that have actually being on deployments and can keep their cool in an adversarial situations. There are plenty of footage of real firefights both involving police and Military in 80% of situation police looks like they are scared out of their mind and are acting purely out of being in uncontrollable fear which is a horrible situation.
    - hyperpape 9y ago
      These are SWAT teams. They often have military gear (http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/04/small-town-cops-get-armored-vehicle-its http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/04/small-town-cops-get-armore...). If the problem is that they don’t have enough armor, let’s get them it.
    - dsego 9y ago
      This was across the street. Is that close? You can barely make out the victim in the body cam footage.
- yosamino 9y ago
  > when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. And that makes sense. There are certainly situations where it's neccessary to subdue everyone in the room and ask questions later. The problem is here > when it's clear The whole subgenre of "SWATing" works, because SWAT teams are being deployed based on dramatic, but unsubstantiated information, on the suspicion of a dangerous situation. This does not help protect officers saftey. It endangers them, and it makes police officers into the tools of criminals. That can't be a good system.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  > The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. Speaking as someone in Fire/EMS who has friends who are on SWAT teams, and as someone who has personally trained with SWAT teams for active shooter situations, going into unsecured scenes to remove patients while under the cover of law enforcement... I'm still going to disagree with you, and with the assertion of wilful ignorance. Speaking of which, > when it is clear there is immediate danger It evidently wasn't that clear. Even when I go to a structure fire, one of the confirming criteria is "multiple callers". To be clear, "one of", not deciding, or otherwise.
- rabboRubble 9y ago
  I have moderate sympathy with police for the difficulties of their job. If they find it uncomfortable or find themselves unable to handle the rigors, like the rest of us in society, they can get a new job that is better suited. When it comes to police shooting people, I have little sympathy. They are the only class of people in society who can kill and under most circumstances, face no real consequence for their actions unlike the rest of their citizen compatriots. With that privilege comes a greater responsibility in my assessment. I have absolutely zero sympathy for post-shooting employment difficulties police face who have, unlike nearly the rest of society, union protections and can not be terminated at will. When my employment circumstances are equal to a police officer, either by at-will provisions being extended to that class of citizen, or by me having access to a union of equal effectiveness, will I have one iota of sympathy for cops who find scrutiny too hard to bear. Police officers are free to do like the rest of us and find a new job.
- Balero 9y ago
  This was not a dangerous situation. They should not have had their weapons drawn.
- empath75 9y ago
  It’s almost as if the USA isn’t the only country on earth and other developed countries manage to have police forces that don’t murder their own citizens regularly.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  it's clear there is an immediate and present danger (probably) dangerous Pick one, because, those two situations are actually quite different. willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering Or maybe some of us are fully aware of that and simply don't agree with your point of view.
solipsism 9y ago
Like many problems, I think the root issue is money in politics. The police have a dangerous job and doing it right involves a balance between risk for the officer and risk for the citizenship. When police unions have the ability to exert large amounts of pressure ($$$) on politicians, the whole system folds to their inevitable inclination to shift that balance toward their personal safety.
username223 9y ago
> This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged. Unfortunately, as a US civilian you need to be smart about de-escalating encounters with underpaid rage-monster cops with something close to legal immunity. Your goal should be to avoid injury or death until you can get to a lawyer.
- r00fus 9y ago
  This was a mistaken address SWAT ing. How was the person supposed to know? Police officers that shoot ppl should be held liable as well as the SWAT caller.
  - bonzini 9y ago
    Or is it whoever (edit: in the Wichita police) dispatched them without checking the details of the call, or adequately briefing them that the details were not clear? Because the guy who shot made a huge and deadly mistake, but the fact that you can call 911 and have someone SWATted is a big problem on its own.
    - matt-attack 9y ago
      SWATing should just lead to a bit of wasted time, and a “sorry to bother you sir”. With proper response procedure it should be a complete non-issue. Placing blame on anyone but the cops is completely discounting the problem.
      - bonzini 9y ago
        I am saying it should be placed on the cops' boss. I agree with you that those should have been the consequences---i.e., none. Though, in a country where SWATting is a thing, whoever placed the call is very much responsible too, because he must have known the possible effect of his prank. All in all, the cops (while responsible) don't have the largest slice of responsibility.
- CalChris 9y ago
  I agree with the rest but underpaid, no. For the Oakland Police Department, where I live, the starting salary is $69,912 to $98,088. Retirement starts at 50. This job requires a GED.
dingbat 9y ago
and being woken in the middle of the night, wearing boxers or pajamas with hands in the air, better pray that they don't happen to slip down causing you to instinctively "reach for your waistband" in order to hitch them up
- millzlane 9y ago
  Funny, this happens often in my neighborhood where people wear pants too big for their waists with no belts.
  - dingbat 9y ago
    do you personally sleep while wearing form-fitting pants with a belt?
  - Pica_soO 9y ago
    Oh, yeah, thats definitely not racism right there, blaming hip hop fashion for a shooting percentage. Carry on.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - millzlane 9y ago
      I was merely pointing out that people in my neighborhood like myself often have to reach down to pull up our pants. What race do you think I am?
  - hateduser2 9y ago
    Are you suggesting my fashion should be influenced by the chance that the police my murder me over it?
    - millzlane 9y ago
      Not at all. I live in the same neighborhood and often where pants with no belt.
ivanhoe 9y ago
They have to approach the situation prepared for the worst case scenario. Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. There's also a huge problem with the whole that macho, gun loving, power-tripping culture, it just makes things worse, wrong profile of people gets that kind of job.
- freedomben 9y ago
  > Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. What you are asking them to be is super human, indeed even better than a computer could in the same situation. No amount of "proper training" or "discipline" can prepare you to make perfect decisions based on imperfect data (your sensory perception, plus all the data that isn't present such as must be read from the mind of the suspect). Oh and add to this the stress that if you screw up, one of the following is likely: 1. You get killed 2. You wrongly kill and end up in prison A different approach is needed. I'm not sure what that is, but asking/requiring certain humans to be super human is a sure way to fail.
  - seunosewa 9y ago
    >> 2. You wrongly kill and end up in prison Actually, part of the problem is that you never end up in prison for wrongly killing.
    - Xorlev 9y ago
      Even when it's not pretty clear it's not an accident. See http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/nationworld/ct-daniel-shaver-police-video-20171208-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/nationworld/ct-daniel... (Daniel Shaver killing).
  - varjag 9y ago
    Somehow police in the rest of developed world are able to resist shooting a great deal of suspects on the spot. Find what's different in America and fix it.
jeffdavis 9y ago
What is the appropriate response in this kind of situation?
- pfortuny 9y ago
  None. That situation should not occur, at all. Unless you can handle it, in which case you should be a drug lord or similar. It is a travesty of the Rule of Law.
  - lowbloodsugar 9y ago
    "Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law." Unless you are murdered by the police for pulling up your pants. Unless you are murdered by the police "restraining" you. Unless you are murdered by the police in your cell. Unless you are mentally incompetent and are tricked into signing a confession. Unless you are mentally competent and are persuaded by the evidence (not of the crime, but the evidence that the system is corrupt) that you should plead to a lesser crime. You have to make it to the court before that little sound-bite of freedom kicks in.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  Pray. Even if you aren’t religious. I’m not religious and I would definitely pray.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    I'm laughing at the downvotes. The OP asked what to do if getting swatted and I offered a genuine opinion, apparently this isn't allowed on HN. ;)
    - r3bl 9y ago
      > Pray. Even if you aren’t religious. For what? For the SWAT team to do a better job at the scene? For their training to be better in such situations? For 350 million to not prank call the police? Any of these three solutions are better than praying to god to someone who is not religious, and yet, none of them will produce any result what so ever.
hackerbob 9y ago
The way things are going if a SWAT team rolled up to my house ( I know this is going to sound silly). I'd call 911 and have them on speaker phone coaching me through it. Most people are not trained to handled these situations properly and they will be nervous and start slipping up which a not well trained or inexperienced officer may wrongly interpret as suspicious/dangerous. If I am truly innocent then perhaps I am the one that needs the hostage negotiator from the threat on the other side of the door.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >The way things are going if a SWAT team rolled up to my house ( I know this is going to sound silly). I'd call 911 and have them on speaker phone coaching me through it. Who said you're going to get any chance to call anybody? They could just as easily break into your house shouting and pointing guns...
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    Right, most of these calls are designed to provoke no-knock forcible entry... "hostages actively being threatened", "domestic violence in progress", etc.
    - Xylakant 9y ago
      Neither of these situations should trigger no-knock forced entry. The response to most situations should be careful assessment of the situation at hand, the involved actors and the dynamic of the situation, especially since swatting has come up. Police truly need to expect that an anonymous tipster is trying to goad them into action. There’s few situations that should probably trigger an immediate forceful response, active shooter for example and that should be relatively easy to confirm on site.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        Any cop who shoots an innocent person during a no-knock forced entry should be automatically charged with murder.
coldtea 9y ago
What's more, are those SWAT teams trained policemen or scared little children? Because if they are the latter, why do they go with guns and ammo and equipment enough to equip a small army just to arrest some kid who's selling weed or some guy who threatened their neighbors and such? SWAT teams should be for breaking into Escobar's hideout or stopping angry mobs, not for responding to random phone calls and simple cases. Aren't they men enough to just send 1-3 people with their fucking guns in their holsters?
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  The overuse of SWAT is ridiculous, but sending them into a shots fired / hostage / bodies on the ground situation is entirely appropriate. And no different from most other developed countries. If you go into a house in Germany, shoot someone, and then threaten to shoot everyone else, do you really think you’re going to get an officer or two casually knocking on the door without weapons at the ready?
  - thomasz 9y ago
    German cops have fired a total of 52 bullets in 2016, which killed 11 people. I think it’s very likely that situation would have had a different outcome.
    - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
      That’s correct, and irrelevant to the point I was making.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    It's important to not equate sending SWAT "into a shots fired / hostage / bodies on the ground situation" and a situation where it's been claimed by an anonymous phone call that something like that might be the case. It's not the same. It's reasonable to respond with lethal force after shots have been fired by the opponent, it's totally not reasonable to do so when you suspect that it might be the case that they might get fired with no good evidence that it actually is so.
rdiddly 9y ago
Not to be too blunt, but that's why they call it law enforcement. What's causing all the cognitive dissonance is the fact that law enforcement was summoned inappropriately -- i.e. on a an innocent person in a situation where no laws were broken and no enforcement was needed. If the drug-lord whose assassins raped and killed your sister is confused and groggy in the middle of the night and gets shot accidentally or even "accidentally," there won't be any conflict in your mind. That's the kind of situation the process is designed for. Unfortunately it's also designed for a world where you can mostly trust what a 911 caller is saying. They'll have to tighten that up, especially after this incident. I just hope it doesn't get so bad that real victims have to beg and plead for 15 minutes and show two forms of ID and receive an auth code on their 2FA before a cop can show up to save them.
- Hasz 9y ago
  I have a huge conflict in my mind. I am a firm believer is due process and equal protection under the law for all. What you are suggesting is far from it, and a far cry from the ideal. SWAT teams, as heavily armored as they are, are still police, serving under the motto of protect and serve. If armor and automatic weapons are necessary to fulfill that goal, so be it. But SWAT teams are fundamentally not an extrajudicial force to kill people in the middle of the night.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    Actually I agree, and I think most cops would agree with that too. One thing hindering that ideal is how police officers are trained to have a chickenshit mentality where no risk to an officer's safety is tolerated ever. In that philosophy the balance is tilted too far in favor of officer safety and away from public safety. Scour the news for any "hero" story. A hero never displays concern for his own safety, he acts out of concern for someone else's safety. (Remember heroes/heroism? So quaint!) Nonetheless, and maybe I'm just jaded here, if the police show up anywhere, be it an Occupy protest or a carjacking, there is likely to be mayhem and bloodshed. They're a blunt tool with a single purpose. It's only after the smoke clears and the cuffs are on, that someone gets a formal legal proceeding. Cops always stand between you and a courtroom, in other words. Not sure I like it that way, but that's how it is.
sodosopa 9y ago
It seems like a distraction to focus on the SWAT team instead of the gamer at this point. Gamer pulled the trigger as soon as the call was made.
- tir 9y ago
  I think OPs point is you shouldn't be able to kill people by proxy with a simple phone call.
- jahnu 9y ago
  Are you suggesting that SWAT don't kill people, people kill people?
- Karunamon 9y ago
  As far as I’m concerned, they’re both equally liable. If this was a case of mistaken identity rather than a malicious call, we’d all be calling for the cop’s head even though it would have been the same error.
  - r3bl 9y ago
    A caller just wasted the time of the SWAT unit. A SWAT unit shot an innocent man. It is very difficult for me to place both parties as "equally liable". Sure, there should be a punishment for the caller, but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. In no way, shape or form does that equal to "actually put a bullet in someone innocent", which is exactly what that officer did.
    - krapp 9y ago
      >but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. How do you know his intent, or what he thought?
      - r3bl 9y ago
        Because it's a gaming community, so they're not really trying to shield their identities, which led to this article, in which I read the news first (note: different than the source of this thread): http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html And there's also this in the WaPo, claiming the same social media content: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/30/why-a-twitter-user-claims-to-have-made-the-swatting-call-that-led-police-to-kill-a-man/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/3... Idiot that should face consequences, definitely. Had the intention of killing someone, highly doubt it.
nodesocket 9y ago
I get where you are coming from, but blaming the police officers is not the correct conclusion. You should be solely outraged at the caller Tyler Barriss.
- tyingq 9y ago
  That seems extreme. Why shouldn't police be held accountable for killing an unarmed person?
- macspoofing 9y ago
  Tyler Barriss is going to go to prison. He's a sociopath. Nobody is on his side. But the cops killed an unarmed, innocent man. Clearly whatever process they are following is deeply flawed. 'Swatting' is also a UNIQUELY American phenomenon - why?
throwaway171230 9y ago
The person making the prank is in the wrong, but so are the officers. How I see it is that the officers of their own freewill took on the role of law enforcement and public service. Fully aware that they would be put in life threatening situations. Their first instinct shouldn't be to fire first to save their own skin, but be trained to take time to assess the situation and risk erring on restraint of force. Most of the talk coming from police departments usually state their actions in terms of the officer's personal safety. Though that is important, due to their choice and the role in society that they play, their safety should be a secondary concern to the safety and lives of those they are to protect.
- roenxi 9y ago
  There is actually a slightly more damning view of the situation here than the moral issues around police safety. The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened? When we look at the outcome here, they just killed some dude for no reason. If this is acceptable to the police force; why not have them call out to the room with a megaphone? What is the worst case scenario then? Hostage gets shot by a criminal instead of a policeperson? In this day and age, they could just fly in a drone in with a microphone and and a speaker while they sit 200 meters behind a bullet proof screen. Instead they proactivly put themselves in a situation where they felt at personal risk from ... turned out to be some dude sitting in his house. How could they have come up with a worse plan?
  - vidarh 9y ago
    This to me seems to be the big difference between US policing and what we're used to in e.g. most European countries: A focus on quick resolution at all cost rather than peaceful resolution. UK police for example tends to respond with overwhelming force, clear the area if possible, and contain their potential adversary, and if possible often wait the situation out. They will use violence if they have to, but it ends up being rare. Stupid accidents still happens (e.g. an unarmed man was shot because police worried he might be a terrorist a few years back), but serious ones are predictably few when police defaults to avoid violence, and defaults to not even carry guns. But even firearms teams who are specifically called out when a suspect is armed have few serious accidents because they're not there to shoot their way to a resolution except as a last resort.
y_u_no_rust 9y ago
That assume the police are normal balanced actors who care.. here's a video of a officer that was acquitted for torturing and murdering someone earlier this month https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8 anyway that's the united states for you the government is run by a probable rapist and the police go around murdering people and get away with it great society my ass we might as well be in saudi arabia
sean_anandale 9y ago
You might have noticed if you observe them that nobody is in command of a group of cops. The notion of an officer in charge who is responsible for the actions of his subordinates is completely contrary to the attitudes of US police.
aswanson 9y ago
Precisely why the "feared for my life" defense of police execution has to be ended. I fear for my life on the freeway when an idiot driver cuts me off. And I didnt make a conscious decision to risk my life by being on the same road with said driver. And yet, cops are given that power to end a life for a situation they consciously chose to put themselves into by career. US law is bullshit.
- brucephillips 9y ago
  > I fear for my life on the freeway when an idiot driver cuts me off. Bad analogy. You have no option to kill them to save your life.
  - aswanson 9y ago
    Exactly my point. Why should a so called trained officer of the law have more fear and less ability to preserve life in at a level of risk the average commuter or health care professional has? Nurse aides are confronted with more violent situations statistically and don't kill anywhere near the rates of cops.
    - brucephillips 9y ago
      > Nurse aides are confronted with more violent situations statistically source?
      - aswanson 9y ago
        https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263709.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263709.php
        brucephillips 9y ago
        My point is that if you did have a way of killing a commuter to save your own live, you would be justified in doing so, just as a cop is. The fact that you don't is a consequence of how driving works, not of power that society is stripping you of. You do have this right on the street, for instance. Just as a cop does.
eksemplar 9y ago
Well, swatting wouldn't be a thing if American police wasn't extremely unprofessional and ultra violent.
pizza234 9y ago
The most interesting opinion about this subject I've read comes from a comment, in the popehat blog, by an experienced military: There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not to abolish them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual hostage situation or an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way out. They should never be used for routine search or arrest warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent target of the raid, but it undermines the team's training – they become used to tearing up houses where no one is resisting. There's a dashboard video of the Jose Guerena raid. My drill instructor would have said they looked "like a monkey fucking a football" – and I was in the Air Force, ground tactics weren't even on the curriculum. I've seen considerably more forceful comments from Army and Marine Corps infantrymen who actually have had to break into a house against armed defenders. They milled around, exposed themselves to possible fire through the open door, and got into each others line of fire. They did NOT identify themselves as police that I can hear on the audio track, so Guerena was justified in hunkering down in a defensive position with a rifle. If Guerena (a former Marine) hadn't been far more professional than any of the cops and not fired without identifying his targets, several cops would have been down. Then there are the SWAT members that "accidentally" (that is, negligently) fired a round and killed an unresisting, unarmed suspect because they tripped or bumped their elbow – an accident that can only happen if you are in violation of the two most important rules of gun safety: don't put your finger on the trigger until you have decided to shoot, and don't point the muzzle near anything that you do not intend to shoot. We know they were running around with their finger on the trigger – in a situation where there was clearly no need for shooting – because modern firearms in good working order just don't fire unless the trigger is pulled. The military just doesn't tolerate that. If a non-police civilian in my state had done this, he could have been sentenced to life for manslaughter. But if you are a cop, you can recklessly kill someone and the prosecutor will throw the case…
- kiallmacinnes 9y ago
  This comment makes a lot of sense to me. SWAT / Armed police aren't inherently a bad thing. There are cases where they are needed, we're just overusing and undertraining officers. I'm Irish, so while we do have some branches of the police who are armed, most are not. I wonder how the armed Irish Gardi would stack up training wise against armed American cops (ignoring the fact that every state / city would be different..). Would our limiting of arms to a smaller group result in better training and responses? Or are they just as likely to mis-fire and fail to identify themselves?
eurticket 9y ago
A pizza place has enough foresight to call the house that 'ordered 50 pizzas' before actually delivering 50 pizzas.
dickbasedregex 9y ago
The PD will just pass the buck to the caller and nothing will change. It's what they always do.

meri_dian 9y ago

SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. So of course they are going to be ready with weapons drawn. Do you want them to just waltz into (probably) dangerous situations with their hands in their pockets whistling a tune? Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the bad guys, and refuse to take a balanced view by empathizing with them and the danger they encounter on a daily basis.

cjbprime 9y ago
This claim is obviously untrue. (I suppose you're hedging with "usually", but even that seems unlikely.)
y7 9y ago
> when it's clear there is [...] danger Shouldn't they at least verify for themselves whether there is actual danger?
- wldcordeiro 9y ago
  Yeah considering that the 911 call mentioned a 1 floor house and the house in the video is 2 floor they should have had some idea it wasn't quite right.
- tomschlick 9y ago
  How? Are you going to send an officer to the door to ask someone if there is a murder going on? This was a bad shoot, but the tactics were sound. Don’t correctly they would have called him out of the house from a distance with lethal cover from multiple angles and then cleared the house.
  - rbetts 9y ago
    If sound tactics get innocent people killed when nobody was under actual threat --- those are shitty tactics.
    - tomschlick 9y ago
      Tactically, what would you do different? You cant send people up to the door, as you have to assume the person is telling the truth and has the means to shoot through the door at them. When someone has a gun, distance and cover are your friend. You then get everyone you can out of the house so you can clear it and assist the victims. That is what any police force in the civilized world would do if they had what they thought was credible information about a murder / hostage situation. Obviously pulling the trigger in this case was a mistake, but what do you do differently? Everyone is criticizing training in this thread but no one seems to have any real solutions.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        How about asking the guy on the porch some questions? Like 'what's your name? Do you have any weapons? Did you call 911?' It seems not to have occurred to you (and a lot of other people) that yelling commands at people is not an effective way to handle many common situations.
rbcgerard 9y ago
Simple question - what % of SWAT encounters should an INNOCENT person be able to survive?
- trophycase 9y ago
  I dunno? Maybe 99.9% or even 99.99%
hungerstrike 9y ago
Why not make sure that there is some danger first instead of just going off of an anonymous phone call? Seems pretty simple, just stand outside the house with the megaphone and say “hey what’s going on in there”?
- solipsism 9y ago
  The militarization of the police force precludes this. Whatever's in the house is Al Quaeda, and our hero boys in blue are here to frag some shit. /s
- falcolas 9y ago
  At which point, if you're up against armed individuals, you've lost the element of surprise, and have created a hostage situation at best, and a shootout in a suburban neighborhood at worst. Or, someone walks out and defuses the police, then their compatriots wipe all the police out unopposed.
  - debaserab2 9y ago
    This mindset is exactly what's wrong with policing in America. Every single part of training seems to be designed for worst case scenarios. There's no room for common sense or judgment.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - blt 9y ago
      Because if you consider average case scenarios, logic will inevitably force you to make a choice: what percentage of cops should die during their career? The police chiefs decided the answer is zero. That leads to extreme aggressive tactics. Too bad the owners of mines, oil rigs, logging operations, etc. don't share a similar concern for their employees' lives.
      - valuearb 9y ago
tacomonstrous 9y ago
If any rando can call in a 'dangerous situation', then yes, they should be more circumspect. There is just no excuse for killing an innocent civilian. It's outrageous. Response to the parent's edit: These are supposedly trained officers who acted with absolute incompetence leading to a completely needless death. How is one supposed to empathise with this? It's a complete and utter fuck-up.
- hinkley 9y ago
  Someone here is trying to increase the consequences for killing suspects and they had a rep from the police union arguing against it because it could have unintended consequences like “people dying”. I ended up yelling at my radio, “PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DYING!” What the rep meant was cops dying. But the statement, as worded, makes it sound like cops don’t consider the rest of us to be people. Which is exactly the thing a lot of Americans are terrified is actually true. In the end I expect he made the case for the people arguing for bigger penalties.
  - chickenfries 9y ago
    Too many cops see the people they interact with as criminals. They know that they interact with innocent people sometimes, but they are heavily biased towards thinking that by the time they are interacting with you, it is very likely that you're a criminal. And it's their job to protect "society" from "the criminals." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line
otterley 9y ago
Sure, but you’re assuming that the clarity has been established. That threshold needs to be met, and it certainly didn’t happen in this case.
grey-area 9y ago
SWAT is usually only involved when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. That is demonstrably false. For reference, start with this case.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  Police were responding, in this case, to a call made by someone claiming to be armed and holding his family hostage. You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst. What happened to the civilian is a tragedy. He should not have been killed. But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    You do not assume a call is fraudulent in a situation like that. You assume the worst. We're talking about literally a life or death situation here. Why on earth would you assume anything, rather than being cautious and trying to confirm for sure what the situation actually is?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - 7952 9y ago
    The worse outcome is that the innocent bystander is killed. That could be a hostage, or some random person caught up in a hoax. The whole point of the police presence is to protect that person. In this situation they failed in that objective.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    > But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place. It completely mystifies me how people can think that people with guns were justified in fatally shooting someone with no guns. That kind of thing should just never happen, either subdue them or let them get away, why are you shooting them? What could they possibly have done, short of ran to the kitchen to get a knife and then ran back and tried to stab someone? How can you mistake anything someone unarmed does for a deadly threat?
adamnemecek 9y ago
If nothing else, they fuck up addresses all the time.
alkonaut 9y ago
There is just one way this isn’t a massive police screwup, and that’s if the person SWATed reacted in a way that was (very) threatening, such as grabbing a gun, or something that is reasonable the police could believe was a gun. My hunch here is that, just like you are suggesting, Swat teams are used incorrectly as first response in unconfirmed situations. No investigation by anyone has confirmed the threat. At the end of the day, police officers just can’t shoot unarmed people, no matter how stressful the situation.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  What kind of investigation would you suggest take place before hand about a situation where there is supposedly a person with hostages who has already killed one?
  - rbetts 9y ago
    A situation that doesn't include the "supposedly" qualification you make. A single anonymous source on a non-911 number without corroborating reports of gunfire is not sufficient cause to shoot a man on his porch. Here's an idea -- fly a drone around the house and look in some windows. Knock on a neighbors door and ask if they heard a gunshot. Establish the identity of the reporter - how does the reporter know what is happening? Is the reporter physically proximate to the area?
    - oh_sigh 9y ago
      > A single anonymous source on a non-911 number without corroborating reports of gunfire is not sufficient cause to shoot a man on his porch. No one is arguing that. > Here's an idea -- fly a drone around the house and look in some windows. Knock on a neighbors door and ask if they heard a gunshot. That sounds great. Until there is an actual hostage situation, and police waste their time doing this and a hostage is killed, at which point people will be asking why they didn't kick the doors down if they knew someone was being held in there. > Establish the identity of the reporter - how does the reporter know what is happening? Is the reporter physically proximate to the area? The reporter claimed to be the person who killed his father and was holding other people hostage. How would you confirm if the reporter was physically in the area? E911 includes location reporting, but this can be spoofed(I don't know if it was in the situation)
CalChris 9y ago
In this case there was no immediate and present danger yet SWAT was called in. There was a report which turned out to be false. The SWAT team also was under no danger when they shot this guy. I should add that being a police officer is not a particularly dangerous job. A telephone lineman has a dangerous job. A garbage man has a dangerous job. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  The fact that there are jobs with higher injury rates out there doesn't make policing not dangerous.
- briandear 9y ago
  I am going to strongly disagree. Being a cop is extremely dangerous — just because more cops don’t get hurt doesn’t mean it’s less dangerous. We can probably agree that being a race car driver is dangerous despite there not being a large number of injuries. Training and equipment mitigate some of the effects of the danger — but that doesn’t make it less dangerous. Spend a night doing a police ride along in a major city, then report back on just how “not dangerous” the job is. To be clear, I am not defending the cops in this situation, merely disputing the ridiculous claim that being a cop isn’t particularly dangerous. How many garbage men have been killed on the job by their customers or targeted specifically because of their job? Any snipers taking out garbage men? Any garbage men getting routinely assaulted on the job?
  - ncallaway 9y ago
    "I am going to strongly disagree with well established statistical evidence" usually isn't a strong starting point for an argument. > How many garbage men have been killed on the job by their customers or targeted specifically because of their job? Why does this matter? Dead is dead. If you're more likely to be killed or injured doing that job, why does it matter how it comes about?
Silhouette 9y ago
It's sad to see how many people here view police as the bad guys Apparently they just killed a totally innocent man, entirely avoidably. In this case, they are the bad guys.
- hinkley 9y ago
  This will not be the first case of questionable use of force people have encountered. If you think the venom around this case is about this case then you’re going to be confused.
qaq 9y ago
Let's cut the BS US Military is facing unimaginably more dangerous situations on daily basis yet expected to obey engagements where rule often is do not fire unless fired upon. Police is not even in the top 10 list of dangerous professions in US. Situations that in most countries are handled by few police officers in US are handled by paranoid SWAT teams on armored vehicles with assault rifles in full tactical gear.
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  Police gunfights are typically at much closer range than the military’s. Soldiers have more armor and are often already in fortified positions when fired upon. The situations aren’t exactly comparable. Granted, combat troops probably have superior training to police.
  - qaq 9y ago
    I am not advocating for police to have a rule that disallows them to fire first. But police officers should be capable of acting cool under pressure and to use lethal force as a last resort not as a first tool to be used in any situation. I'd favor the rule that police should be filled with Army vets that have actually being on deployments and can keep their cool in an adversarial situations. There are plenty of footage of real firefights both involving police and Military in 80% of situation police looks like they are scared out of their mind and are acting purely out of being in uncontrollable fear which is a horrible situation.
  - hyperpape 9y ago
    These are SWAT teams. They often have military gear (http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/04/small-town-cops-get-armored-vehicle-its http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/04/small-town-cops-get-armore...). If the problem is that they don’t have enough armor, let’s get them it.
  - dsego 9y ago
    This was across the street. Is that close? You can barely make out the victim in the body cam footage.
yosamino 9y ago
> when it's clear there is an immediate and present danger. And that makes sense. There are certainly situations where it's neccessary to subdue everyone in the room and ask questions later. The problem is here > when it's clear The whole subgenre of "SWATing" works, because SWAT teams are being deployed based on dramatic, but unsubstantiated information, on the suspicion of a dangerous situation. This does not help protect officers saftey. It endangers them, and it makes police officers into the tools of criminals. That can't be a good system.
FireBeyond 9y ago
> The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. Speaking as someone in Fire/EMS who has friends who are on SWAT teams, and as someone who has personally trained with SWAT teams for active shooter situations, going into unsecured scenes to remove patients while under the cover of law enforcement... I'm still going to disagree with you, and with the assertion of wilful ignorance. Speaking of which, > when it is clear there is immediate danger It evidently wasn't that clear. Even when I go to a structure fire, one of the confirming criteria is "multiple callers". To be clear, "one of", not deciding, or otherwise.
rabboRubble 9y ago
I have moderate sympathy with police for the difficulties of their job. If they find it uncomfortable or find themselves unable to handle the rigors, like the rest of us in society, they can get a new job that is better suited. When it comes to police shooting people, I have little sympathy. They are the only class of people in society who can kill and under most circumstances, face no real consequence for their actions unlike the rest of their citizen compatriots. With that privilege comes a greater responsibility in my assessment. I have absolutely zero sympathy for post-shooting employment difficulties police face who have, unlike nearly the rest of society, union protections and can not be terminated at will. When my employment circumstances are equal to a police officer, either by at-will provisions being extended to that class of citizen, or by me having access to a union of equal effectiveness, will I have one iota of sympathy for cops who find scrutiny too hard to bear. Police officers are free to do like the rest of us and find a new job.
Balero 9y ago
This was not a dangerous situation. They should not have had their weapons drawn.
empath75 9y ago
It’s almost as if the USA isn’t the only country on earth and other developed countries manage to have police forces that don’t murder their own citizens regularly.
anigbrowl 9y ago
it's clear there is an immediate and present danger (probably) dangerous Pick one, because, those two situations are actually quite different. willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering Or maybe some of us are fully aware of that and simply don't agree with your point of view.

solipsism 9y ago

Like many problems, I think the root issue is money in politics. The police have a dangerous job and doing it right involves a balance between risk for the officer and risk for the citizenship. When police unions have the ability to exert large amounts of pressure ($$$) on politicians, the whole system folds to their inevitable inclination to shift that balance toward their personal safety.

username223 9y ago

> This process is designed to have a weapon be discharged. Unfortunately, as a US civilian you need to be smart about de-escalating encounters with underpaid rage-monster cops with something close to legal immunity. Your goal should be to avoid injury or death until you can get to a lawyer.

r00fus 9y ago
This was a mistaken address SWAT ing. How was the person supposed to know? Police officers that shoot ppl should be held liable as well as the SWAT caller.
- bonzini 9y ago
  Or is it whoever (edit: in the Wichita police) dispatched them without checking the details of the call, or adequately briefing them that the details were not clear? Because the guy who shot made a huge and deadly mistake, but the fact that you can call 911 and have someone SWATted is a big problem on its own.
  - matt-attack 9y ago
    SWATing should just lead to a bit of wasted time, and a “sorry to bother you sir”. With proper response procedure it should be a complete non-issue. Placing blame on anyone but the cops is completely discounting the problem.
    - bonzini 9y ago
      I am saying it should be placed on the cops' boss. I agree with you that those should have been the consequences---i.e., none. Though, in a country where SWATting is a thing, whoever placed the call is very much responsible too, because he must have known the possible effect of his prank. All in all, the cops (while responsible) don't have the largest slice of responsibility.
CalChris 9y ago
I agree with the rest but underpaid, no. For the Oakland Police Department, where I live, the starting salary is $69,912 to $98,088. Retirement starts at 50. This job requires a GED.

dingbat 9y ago

and being woken in the middle of the night, wearing boxers or pajamas with hands in the air, better pray that they don't happen to slip down causing you to instinctively "reach for your waistband" in order to hitch them up

millzlane 9y ago
Funny, this happens often in my neighborhood where people wear pants too big for their waists with no belts.
- dingbat 9y ago
  do you personally sleep while wearing form-fitting pants with a belt?
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Oh, yeah, thats definitely not racism right there, blaming hip hop fashion for a shooting percentage. Carry on.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - millzlane 9y ago
    I was merely pointing out that people in my neighborhood like myself often have to reach down to pull up our pants. What race do you think I am?
- hateduser2 9y ago
  Are you suggesting my fashion should be influenced by the chance that the police my murder me over it?
  - millzlane 9y ago
    Not at all. I live in the same neighborhood and often where pants with no belt.

ivanhoe 9y ago

They have to approach the situation prepared for the worst case scenario. Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. There's also a huge problem with the whole that macho, gun loving, power-tripping culture, it just makes things worse, wrong profile of people gets that kind of job.

freedomben 9y ago
> Problem is that they typically lack the proper training and the discipline required, and act too hastily. What you are asking them to be is super human, indeed even better than a computer could in the same situation. No amount of "proper training" or "discipline" can prepare you to make perfect decisions based on imperfect data (your sensory perception, plus all the data that isn't present such as must be read from the mind of the suspect). Oh and add to this the stress that if you screw up, one of the following is likely: 1. You get killed 2. You wrongly kill and end up in prison A different approach is needed. I'm not sure what that is, but asking/requiring certain humans to be super human is a sure way to fail.
- seunosewa 9y ago
  >> 2. You wrongly kill and end up in prison Actually, part of the problem is that you never end up in prison for wrongly killing.
  - Xorlev 9y ago
    Even when it's not pretty clear it's not an accident. See http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/nationworld/ct-daniel-shaver-police-video-20171208-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/nationworld/ct-daniel... (Daniel Shaver killing).
- varjag 9y ago
  Somehow police in the rest of developed world are able to resist shooting a great deal of suspects on the spot. Find what's different in America and fix it.

jeffdavis 9y ago

What is the appropriate response in this kind of situation?

pfortuny 9y ago
None. That situation should not occur, at all. Unless you can handle it, in which case you should be a drug lord or similar. It is a travesty of the Rule of Law.
- lowbloodsugar 9y ago
  "Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law." Unless you are murdered by the police for pulling up your pants. Unless you are murdered by the police "restraining" you. Unless you are murdered by the police in your cell. Unless you are mentally incompetent and are tricked into signing a confession. Unless you are mentally competent and are persuaded by the evidence (not of the crime, but the evidence that the system is corrupt) that you should plead to a lesser crime. You have to make it to the court before that little sound-bite of freedom kicks in.
enraged_camel 9y ago
Pray. Even if you aren’t religious. I’m not religious and I would definitely pray.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  I'm laughing at the downvotes. The OP asked what to do if getting swatted and I offered a genuine opinion, apparently this isn't allowed on HN. ;)
  - r3bl 9y ago
    > Pray. Even if you aren’t religious. For what? For the SWAT team to do a better job at the scene? For their training to be better in such situations? For 350 million to not prank call the police? Any of these three solutions are better than praying to god to someone who is not religious, and yet, none of them will produce any result what so ever.

hackerbob 9y ago

The way things are going if a SWAT team rolled up to my house ( I know this is going to sound silly). I'd call 911 and have them on speaker phone coaching me through it. Most people are not trained to handled these situations properly and they will be nervous and start slipping up which a not well trained or inexperienced officer may wrongly interpret as suspicious/dangerous. If I am truly innocent then perhaps I am the one that needs the hostage negotiator from the threat on the other side of the door.

coldtea 9y ago
>The way things are going if a SWAT team rolled up to my house ( I know this is going to sound silly). I'd call 911 and have them on speaker phone coaching me through it. Who said you're going to get any chance to call anybody? They could just as easily break into your house shouting and pointing guns...
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Right, most of these calls are designed to provoke no-knock forcible entry... "hostages actively being threatened", "domestic violence in progress", etc.
  - Xylakant 9y ago
    Neither of these situations should trigger no-knock forced entry. The response to most situations should be careful assessment of the situation at hand, the involved actors and the dynamic of the situation, especially since swatting has come up. Police truly need to expect that an anonymous tipster is trying to goad them into action. There’s few situations that should probably trigger an immediate forceful response, active shooter for example and that should be relatively easy to confirm on site.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      Any cop who shoots an innocent person during a no-knock forced entry should be automatically charged with murder.

coldtea 9y ago

What's more, are those SWAT teams trained policemen or scared little children? Because if they are the latter, why do they go with guns and ammo and equipment enough to equip a small army just to arrest some kid who's selling weed or some guy who threatened their neighbors and such? SWAT teams should be for breaking into Escobar's hideout or stopping angry mobs, not for responding to random phone calls and simple cases. Aren't they men enough to just send 1-3 people with their fucking guns in their holsters?

ryanwaggoner 9y ago
The overuse of SWAT is ridiculous, but sending them into a shots fired / hostage / bodies on the ground situation is entirely appropriate. And no different from most other developed countries. If you go into a house in Germany, shoot someone, and then threaten to shoot everyone else, do you really think you’re going to get an officer or two casually knocking on the door without weapons at the ready?
- thomasz 9y ago
  German cops have fired a total of 52 bullets in 2016, which killed 11 people. I think it’s very likely that situation would have had a different outcome.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    That’s correct, and irrelevant to the point I was making.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  It's important to not equate sending SWAT "into a shots fired / hostage / bodies on the ground situation" and a situation where it's been claimed by an anonymous phone call that something like that might be the case. It's not the same. It's reasonable to respond with lethal force after shots have been fired by the opponent, it's totally not reasonable to do so when you suspect that it might be the case that they might get fired with no good evidence that it actually is so.

rdiddly 9y ago

Not to be too blunt, but that's why they call it law enforcement. What's causing all the cognitive dissonance is the fact that law enforcement was summoned inappropriately -- i.e. on a an innocent person in a situation where no laws were broken and no enforcement was needed. If the drug-lord whose assassins raped and killed your sister is confused and groggy in the middle of the night and gets shot accidentally or even "accidentally," there won't be any conflict in your mind. That's the kind of situation the process is designed for. Unfortunately it's also designed for a world where you can mostly trust what a 911 caller is saying. They'll have to tighten that up, especially after this incident. I just hope it doesn't get so bad that real victims have to beg and plead for 15 minutes and show two forms of ID and receive an auth code on their 2FA before a cop can show up to save them.

Hasz 9y ago
I have a huge conflict in my mind. I am a firm believer is due process and equal protection under the law for all. What you are suggesting is far from it, and a far cry from the ideal. SWAT teams, as heavily armored as they are, are still police, serving under the motto of protect and serve. If armor and automatic weapons are necessary to fulfill that goal, so be it. But SWAT teams are fundamentally not an extrajudicial force to kill people in the middle of the night.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Actually I agree, and I think most cops would agree with that too. One thing hindering that ideal is how police officers are trained to have a chickenshit mentality where no risk to an officer's safety is tolerated ever. In that philosophy the balance is tilted too far in favor of officer safety and away from public safety. Scour the news for any "hero" story. A hero never displays concern for his own safety, he acts out of concern for someone else's safety. (Remember heroes/heroism? So quaint!) Nonetheless, and maybe I'm just jaded here, if the police show up anywhere, be it an Occupy protest or a carjacking, there is likely to be mayhem and bloodshed. They're a blunt tool with a single purpose. It's only after the smoke clears and the cuffs are on, that someone gets a formal legal proceeding. Cops always stand between you and a courtroom, in other words. Not sure I like it that way, but that's how it is.

sodosopa 9y ago

It seems like a distraction to focus on the SWAT team instead of the gamer at this point. Gamer pulled the trigger as soon as the call was made.

tir 9y ago
I think OPs point is you shouldn't be able to kill people by proxy with a simple phone call.
jahnu 9y ago
Are you suggesting that SWAT don't kill people, people kill people?
Karunamon 9y ago
As far as I’m concerned, they’re both equally liable. If this was a case of mistaken identity rather than a malicious call, we’d all be calling for the cop’s head even though it would have been the same error.
- r3bl 9y ago
  A caller just wasted the time of the SWAT unit. A SWAT unit shot an innocent man. It is very difficult for me to place both parties as "equally liable". Sure, there should be a punishment for the caller, but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. In no way, shape or form does that equal to "actually put a bullet in someone innocent", which is exactly what that officer did.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >but he didn't kill an innocent man and it sure as hell wasn't his intention to. He just didn't think of the possible consequence. How do you know his intent, or what he thought?
    - r3bl 9y ago
      Because it's a gaming community, so they're not really trying to shield their identities, which led to this article, in which I read the news first (note: different than the source of this thread): http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html And there's also this in the WaPo, claiming the same social media content: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/30/why-a-twitter-user-claims-to-have-made-the-swatting-call-that-led-police-to-kill-a-man/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/12/3... Idiot that should face consequences, definitely. Had the intention of killing someone, highly doubt it.

nodesocket 9y ago

I get where you are coming from, but blaming the police officers is not the correct conclusion. You should be solely outraged at the caller Tyler Barriss.

tyingq 9y ago
That seems extreme. Why shouldn't police be held accountable for killing an unarmed person?
macspoofing 9y ago
Tyler Barriss is going to go to prison. He's a sociopath. Nobody is on his side. But the cops killed an unarmed, innocent man. Clearly whatever process they are following is deeply flawed. 'Swatting' is also a UNIQUELY American phenomenon - why?

throwaway171230 9y ago

The person making the prank is in the wrong, but so are the officers. How I see it is that the officers of their own freewill took on the role of law enforcement and public service. Fully aware that they would be put in life threatening situations. Their first instinct shouldn't be to fire first to save their own skin, but be trained to take time to assess the situation and risk erring on restraint of force. Most of the talk coming from police departments usually state their actions in terms of the officer's personal safety. Though that is important, due to their choice and the role in society that they play, their safety should be a secondary concern to the safety and lives of those they are to protect.

roenxi 9y ago
There is actually a slightly more damning view of the situation here than the moral issues around police safety. The police had complete control over how they approached this. Why then are they even in a position where they feel threatened? When we look at the outcome here, they just killed some dude for no reason. If this is acceptable to the police force; why not have them call out to the room with a megaphone? What is the worst case scenario then? Hostage gets shot by a criminal instead of a policeperson? In this day and age, they could just fly in a drone in with a microphone and and a speaker while they sit 200 meters behind a bullet proof screen. Instead they proactivly put themselves in a situation where they felt at personal risk from ... turned out to be some dude sitting in his house. How could they have come up with a worse plan?
- vidarh 9y ago
  This to me seems to be the big difference between US policing and what we're used to in e.g. most European countries: A focus on quick resolution at all cost rather than peaceful resolution. UK police for example tends to respond with overwhelming force, clear the area if possible, and contain their potential adversary, and if possible often wait the situation out. They will use violence if they have to, but it ends up being rare. Stupid accidents still happens (e.g. an unarmed man was shot because police worried he might be a terrorist a few years back), but serious ones are predictably few when police defaults to avoid violence, and defaults to not even carry guns. But even firearms teams who are specifically called out when a suspect is armed have few serious accidents because they're not there to shoot their way to a resolution except as a last resort.

y_u_no_rust 9y ago

That assume the police are normal balanced actors who care.. here's a video of a officer that was acquitted for torturing and murdering someone earlier this month https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflGwyWcft8 anyway that's the united states for you the government is run by a probable rapist and the police go around murdering people and get away with it great society my ass we might as well be in saudi arabia

sean_anandale 9y ago

You might have noticed if you observe them that nobody is in command of a group of cops. The notion of an officer in charge who is responsible for the actions of his subordinates is completely contrary to the attitudes of US police.

aswanson 9y ago

Precisely why the "feared for my life" defense of police execution has to be ended. I fear for my life on the freeway when an idiot driver cuts me off. And I didnt make a conscious decision to risk my life by being on the same road with said driver. And yet, cops are given that power to end a life for a situation they consciously chose to put themselves into by career. US law is bullshit.

brucephillips 9y ago
> I fear for my life on the freeway when an idiot driver cuts me off. Bad analogy. You have no option to kill them to save your life.
- aswanson 9y ago
  Exactly my point. Why should a so called trained officer of the law have more fear and less ability to preserve life in at a level of risk the average commuter or health care professional has? Nurse aides are confronted with more violent situations statistically and don't kill anywhere near the rates of cops.
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    > Nurse aides are confronted with more violent situations statistically source?
    - aswanson 9y ago
      https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263709.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263709.php
      - brucephillips 9y ago
        My point is that if you did have a way of killing a commuter to save your own live, you would be justified in doing so, just as a cop is. The fact that you don't is a consequence of how driving works, not of power that society is stripping you of. You do have this right on the street, for instance. Just as a cop does.

eksemplar 9y ago

Well, swatting wouldn't be a thing if American police wasn't extremely unprofessional and ultra violent.

pizza234 9y ago

The most interesting opinion about this subject I've read comes from a comment, in the popehat blog, by an experienced military: There is plenty of reason to restrict the use of SWAT teams, but not to abolish them. They are needed now and then, when there is an actual hostage situation or an armed gang that tries to shoot it's way out. They should never be used for routine search or arrest warrants. That not only endangers the possibly innocent target of the raid, but it undermines the team's training – they become used to tearing up houses where no one is resisting. There's a dashboard video of the Jose Guerena raid. My drill instructor would have said they looked "like a monkey fucking a football" – and I was in the Air Force, ground tactics weren't even on the curriculum. I've seen considerably more forceful comments from Army and Marine Corps infantrymen who actually have had to break into a house against armed defenders. They milled around, exposed themselves to possible fire through the open door, and got into each others line of fire. They did NOT identify themselves as police that I can hear on the audio track, so Guerena was justified in hunkering down in a defensive position with a rifle. If Guerena (a former Marine) hadn't been far more professional than any of the cops and not fired without identifying his targets, several cops would have been down. Then there are the SWAT members that "accidentally" (that is, negligently) fired a round and killed an unresisting, unarmed suspect because they tripped or bumped their elbow – an accident that can only happen if you are in violation of the two most important rules of gun safety: don't put your finger on the trigger until you have decided to shoot, and don't point the muzzle near anything that you do not intend to shoot. We know they were running around with their finger on the trigger – in a situation where there was clearly no need for shooting – because modern firearms in good working order just don't fire unless the trigger is pulled. The military just doesn't tolerate that. If a non-police civilian in my state had done this, he could have been sentenced to life for manslaughter. But if you are a cop, you can recklessly kill someone and the prosecutor will throw the case…

kiallmacinnes 9y ago
This comment makes a lot of sense to me. SWAT / Armed police aren't inherently a bad thing. There are cases where they are needed, we're just overusing and undertraining officers. I'm Irish, so while we do have some branches of the police who are armed, most are not. I wonder how the armed Irish Gardi would stack up training wise against armed American cops (ignoring the fact that every state / city would be different..). Would our limiting of arms to a smaller group result in better training and responses? Or are they just as likely to mis-fire and fail to identify themselves?

eurticket 9y ago

A pizza place has enough foresight to call the house that 'ordered 50 pizzas' before actually delivering 50 pizzas.

dickbasedregex 9y ago

The PD will just pass the buck to the caller and nothing will change. It's what they always do.