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Three Charged in Fatal Kansas ‘Swatting’ Attack

192 points by robin_reala 8y ago

pavel_lishin 8y ago
The transcripts are just about killing me. A man is dead, and the two are arguing the finer points of who trolled whom like a pair of high-school freshman debaters.
jkahrs595 8y ago
The law can't come down hard enough on scum like this.
- georgemcbay 8y ago
  I 100% think these people and anyone else who "SWAT"s should be severely punished, but at the same time worry they may be used as scapegoats to draw attention away from the excessive use of force of police. I'm not worried in the sense that I think these idiots will be punished too severely (they SHOULD be punished severely), just in the sense that I don't want having them as scapegoats diminish asking questions about why police are so often killing innocent people (regardless of how the situation in which the killing was done happened to occur).
- sontek 8y ago
  I'd love the law to come down on the people who murdered an innocent man without verifying claims. Why do they approach assuming guilt? It shouldn't be this easy to get people murdered by making false claims.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  The solution to too much law enforcement is more law enforcement? Maybe we should take a step back and consider the situation more deeply.
  - neom 8y ago
    The solution is probably fixing the education system and this mess of a society we've built.
    - Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
      Why do you think the "education system" isn't working as intended?
      - neom 8y ago
        I do think it's working as intended, I think that's the problem, the intentions are not good.
- kyleblarson 8y ago
  If by 'scum like this' you mean the over militarized, over aggressive police who always escalate situations so that they can put on their battle jammies and act like they are in Fallujah then I completely agree with you.
- Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
  The killer was not charged.
simlevesque 8y ago
Why do police officers shoot someone who was never a threat ? Kids will be kids, there will always be kids who do things that are completely irresponsible, by design. The fact that the person who pulled the trigger is not responsible at all for all this is beyond me.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Because they've been falsely informed that there is such a threat. That doesn't make it right but it at least explains a part of what happened.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    Low burden of proof isn't it.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      That's not how that works. If you are a police officer in the United States and you've been told you are going into a situation where your opposition is armed and has already killed at least one person you will be very nervous. "Barriss allegedly then called the emergency 911 operators in Wichita and said he was at the address provided by Viner, that he’d just shot his father in the head, was holding his mom and sister at gunpoint, and was thinking about burning down the home with everyone inside." That's a situation where if it is true somebody is likely going to end up hurt and I suspect the police officers tried very hard to make sure that wasn't them. And so innocent people paid the price for a bunch of idiots duking it out over a $1.50 bet. The part that makes no sense to me is that swatting is even possible, there are enough indicators that the call is not originating from the location indicated by the caller. I still think this should not have happened but there is at least a little bit of leeway on seeing how this could have happened. Keep in mind that the swatters had a lot of experience in tuning their story for maximum effect on LE. This or something like it was their intention all along.
      - keepper 8y ago
ceejayoz 8y ago
I'm glad they caught these assholes, but I remain frustrated that the cop who shot an unarmed, innocent man on nothing but someone's phoned-in say-so will escape unscathed. http://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/swatting-fatal-charges-kansas-1202752232/ http://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/swatting-fatal-charges-k...
jld 8y ago
It is amazing to me that law enforcement's trigger for using deadly force so light that two teenagers arguing about a video game can get a third party killed across a state line.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
matte_black 8y ago
Don't even try to blame this on the law enforcement.
- no_one_ever 8y ago
  Why not?
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  Ok then. Politicians? Citizens who don't force political change to prevent it? Over-militarization of law e.... oh, right, I'm not allowed to blame them.
  - matte_black 8y ago
    You can start with the scumbags who placed the SWAT call. That's a good start don't you think.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      The problem is with stopping there. If these scumbags had tried this in, say, London, chances are the victim would still be alive today.
    - toopsss 8y ago
      What is with your agenda to not pin blame on the cops?
    - alkonaut 8y ago
      > You can start with the scumbags who placed the SWAT call. Let's just agree that someone having committed a crime doesn't mean the next person in the chain of events isn't responsible. People saying the cops should have done differently aren't in any way saying that the people placing the call aren't responsible. It's a false dichotomy.
      - macintux 8y ago
        > People saying the cops should have done differently aren't in any way saying that the people placing the call aren't responsible. Oh, yes, there are definitely those who believe the person making the call should get a fine for wasting police time at worst.
curiousgal 8y ago
>investigators say the other two men’s efforts to taunt and deceive one another ultimately helped point the gun Huh, so they're going after people who didn't make the call and ignoring the biggest culprit that is the police officers? What's the point of having "trained" professionals if they can't distinguish a real threat from a hoax? This reminds me of binary classification algorithms that classify everything as 0 and end up with an accuracy of 90% because of dataset imbalance.
- weberc2 8y ago
  How much training is required to effectively distinguish between a real threat and a hoax? Do police even get this training or is Swatting a relatively recent phenomenon that hasn’t made it into police training curriculum yet? “Evil police” is a nice pat answer, but rarely are such answers correct.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Swatting is just a new twist on the long-standing pattern of high-strung police officers getting jumpy and killing people who were never a threat. There's even a famous Richard Pryor bit about it.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      Earnest question: is this perception based on data or is it biased by media reporting? (not your perception specifically, but the general perception)
  - soared 8y ago
    If you assume it was not a hoax, the police response was still to shoot without being provoked. Hardly seems like whether its a hoax or not is op's point.
    - weberc2 8y ago
      I was responding to this: > What's the point of having "trained" professionals if they can't distinguish a real threat from a hoax? I don't know how you can read that and think "whether it's a hoax or not is not the OP's point"
jononor 8y ago
And none of the charged are cops, who shot an unarmed man just walking out of his house. Do not fire unless fired upon is common rule of engagement for military operating under much more adverse conditions. If police cannot respect the same, they should not be allowed to have guns. Right now they are not even trying.
- mjfl 8y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting that we disarm the police? "Stop it right there, or I'll... I'll get really mad!"
  - jachee 8y ago
    More like demilitarize them. Edit: To the point: Yes. Anyone who can't respect "Don't fire until fired upon" should 100.0000% be disarmed.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    Are you seriously suggesting that the police should have rules of engagement far less strict than those applied by many militaries around the world in literal war zones while fighting actual enemies of their state?
  - AlimJaffer 8y ago
    I think it has more to do with training and better use-of-force regulations. The police in the States appear to have a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality as evidenced by these events. Disarming them in a country like the US is impossible, but surely better training and stricter rules/penalties would help the situation.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    It's appropriate for them to have 'less lethal' weapons. It is also far more appropriate for them to be trained in the proper use of force and de-escalation of situations. Peace officers are supposed to be professionals.
Someone1234 8y ago
Swatting is a lot less effective in other parts of the world for the simple reason that in other parts of the world the results are super boring. Two officers will come to the door, ask if everything is ok, perhaps ask to look around, and then leave as calmly as they arrived. There's something unique about the style of US policing (perhaps training? perhaps military backgrounds? perhaps it being styled as militaristic?) that means these kind of incidents are always escalated by the police themselves. If you want example just look on YT for "Police Bootcamp" videos like this: https://youtu.be/0LC6FTXAxo0?t=2m12s https://youtu.be/0LC6FTXAxo0?t=2m12s To Americans this might not seem odd, because you've been so conditioned to view police like the military but to people from elsewhere that's uniquely military style training and conditioning and has no place in a civilian police force. Plus the length of training in the US is unusually low[0] [0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/us/jobs-training-police-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/us/jobs-training-police-trnd/...
- blattimwind 8y ago
  https://np.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2dgwkp/what_makes_american_police_use_deadly_force_much/cjpgcbe/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2dgwkp/what_makes_am...
  - paloaltokid 8y ago
    Wow, that was very informative and interesting. Definitely worth a read. Thanks!
  - colmvp 8y ago
    His response reminds me of Officer Ken Lam, the Toronto Police officer who opted not to shoot the van suspect despite the fact that he was within a few meters of the suspect. In America, it's highly likely the officer would've used his gun.
    - aarongough 8y ago
      Not to mention that the suspect really appeared to be attempting to provoke the officer into shooting him by brandishing something dark and acting like it was a firearm (was a cell phone I believe). The officer's response was very restrained which I think is a good thing.
dustingetz 8y ago
Charge the officers and the entire chain of command
dbg31415 8y ago
Isn't the real issue here that the cops are all trigger happy? To me, that feels like it should be the real issue.
- ianamartin 8y ago
  Can't both issues be the real issue?
kraftman 8y ago
Reminds me of the organ donor sketch from monty python, except real and tragic.
teeray 8y ago
What about the phone company's role in all this? Don't they share some culpability for delivering spoofed information to a 911 operator? I understand that their entire business is delivering calls, but for whatever reason that 911 operator thought the call was legit based off of the metadata they saw. I feel like if they had a "hey this looks like a shady voip call" message on their terminals, they could communicate that to the responding officers which could have diminished their response. I'm probably vastly simplifying the phone system, but if it doesn't hurt for telcos too when this kind of abuse happens, they're not likely to help improve the situation.
- romanovcode 8y ago
  I'm amazed by your mental-gymnastics of trying to shift blame to someone else. At worst it is 50/50 between the scumbag caller and the unprofessional SWAT officer. I still think that blame should go to the scumbag person because it wasn't his first SWAT "prank". IMO he should be charged for murder 25-life.
- jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago
  I read the answer to that in an article a while back: the swatter did't call 911 directly, but instead called the security desk at city hall.
  - teeray 8y ago
    Ah, TIL. Any kind of additional metadata likely wouldn't have helped anyway.
mozumder 8y ago
So, why weren't the police charged for opening fire on an unarmed civilian?
- cpncrunch 8y ago
  Perhaps do some google research before jumping to conclusions? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wichita-officer-who-killed-andrew-finch-swatting-mistake-won-t-n865626 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wichita-officer-who-kil...
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    And yet multiple (ten) other officers in exactly the same location did not open fire, because they saw no gun, no threat. This one cop supposedly did see him reaching for his (non-existent) gun and opened fire. "The reality was that Finch was unarmed and that nearly every officer on the scene never saw him raise his hand with a gun in it. Several reported that they didn’t fire because they didn’t see a gun." His poor lyin' eyes...
    - cpncrunch 8y ago
      >Several reported that they didn’t fire because they didn’t see a gun But they did see him put his hand down to his waist, and one thought "that’s not a good idea. . . don’t be lifting, tugging at your waistband.” >His poor lyin' eyes... Unfortunately that's the nature of the human brain. The officer did exactly what he was trained to do.
      - FireBeyond 8y ago
        So therein lies the rub. If one officer shot, they all should have shot, if that's what their training says. Yet only one felt the need to open fire, despite the same visual stimulus. So if he was doing what he was trained to do, respond to a threat, then the other nine officers failed to appropriately respond to a threat.
        8y ago
throw7 8y ago
It really irks me the way the article says Andrew Finch was "at the wrong place at the wrong time". He was at _his_ house, which he's allowed to be at _any_ time.
- insickness 8y ago
  It's a figure of speech that implies it was pure coincidence that it happened to him as opposed to someone else and that he could have done nothing to prevent it.
- drcode 8y ago
  Well, I think being "a place where you get shot" is always a wrong place to be, for most definitions of the word "wrong".
everyone 8y ago
This is good doc about the increasing militancy of the police in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcZ1HvdPEEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcZ1HvdPEEk
jumbalaya2346 8y ago
The cop that shot him was not part of the SWAT team, they arrived after the murder. http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Preliminary-hearing-starts-for-man-accused-of-making-deadly-swatting-call-483248831.html http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Preliminary-hearing-starts-... Here's a line from the article showing just how poorly trained cops are: "He [Officer Justin Rapp] said he can’t answer whether he would have pulled the trigger if he knew it was a swatting call."
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
Apart from the other issues, one of the big things is that it is so easy to spoof phone numbers. This has resulted in swatting, telemarketing, robo calls, people pretending to call from the IRS, among other badness. Email also used to have this problem, until the DKIM. Once email servers started using DKIM, it became a lot easier to filter out spam and to exclude the bad actors. Maybe we should require some type of cryptographic verification on who originated the call, and have that be visible. It would definitely make my life a whole lot easier if I saw that a number that called me originated with ATT Wireless vs "VOIP Warehouse". Having a DKIM equivalent for phone calls would do a lot to tackle these type of abuses.
watty 8y ago
What's with all the anti-law enforcement? They thought they were dealing with a highly dangerous situation and individual. It's pretty easy to say they should of handled it better as I sit here in the top floor of my corporate office sipping La Croix but let's not forget that the caller was intentionally putting others in dangerous situations.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  It is probably a combination of a man being killed as he walked out of his mother's house for adjusting his belt and a string of similar, high-profile cases of excessive police force killing people.
- lightbyte 8y ago
  >They thought they were dealing with a highly dangerous situation and individual. Are you saying hearsay from a random citizen is probable cause to go kill someone? If that's the case than the police may as well advertise themselves as the cheapest and easiest to use hitmen in the country.
  - zaphar 8y ago
    I am in no way excusing the kansas officers here. However this does bring up an interesting point. To properly answer the question about "hearsay" you would need to find out what percentage of 911 calls with details indicating a need for a SWAT team are hoaxes. If the percentage is sufficiently low then the officer may well have been primed by previous experience to expect specific things during the call. When someone is used to working with accurate information and is then fed inaccurate information from that same source then you can predict the results pretty accurately.
- jhayward 8y ago
  It is not anti-law-enforcement to point out the incredibly negligent independent assessment of the situation, required because the report was totally unsupported by any facts, the incredibly bad risk assessment training that US police use, and the incredibly bad escalation guidelines that virtually guarantee that many innocent people will be killed. In fact, I would say it's quite pro-law-enforcement to insist that all these things be improved.
jononor 8y ago
A thought experiment: An unknown person calls my house and says that someone is coming over now, and that the person has a gun. I get my own gun, and crouch over my porch railing, ready. A person walks down the street towards my house. Some 20 yards from my porch he reaches towards his pocket. I shoot him dead, thinking he might have a gun. In reality he was gonna check Facebook on his phone, and was in fact not even going to me at all. Would I be put on trial in this case? Or is this obvious self defense? Would the person who made call be put on trial for manslaughter?
- insickness 8y ago
  You would be charged with manslaughter because this person never displayed any type of threat. The severity of the punishment may be mitigated if you could prove that you got the phone call but you are still responsible for what you do, no matter what anyone tells you.
  - heyyyouu 8y ago
    That's not necessarily the case -- although it's one possibility. You could also be charged with involuntary manslaugher or nothing depending on state and local laws, what the prosecutor believes your state of mind is and, frankly, the whim of the prosecutor and the strength of your defense attorneys. Conversely, you could face a higher charge for exactly the same reasons. There's what should happen -- which will vary according to local law, at least in the US -- and then what will happen, which will vary significantly depending on the DA.
- Clanan 8y ago
  This is not a difficult experiment. If you keep a weapon, you should familiarize yourself with the relevant local laws. RTFM, as they say. If someone makes a threat against you that is not immediate, you should contact the police. Yes, you would be put on trial for deliberately going outside and shooting someone not on your property. Duh.
  - rhacker 8y ago
    Yeah I tend to agree with you on this thought experiment, a more appropriate response obviously - but if you take away the faulty variables like that and the call does in fact require you to defend yourself in the manner described, then yes, it it was a hoax then the caller should be responsible (if they figure out who obviously).
jumbalaya2346 8y ago
Here's a video of the real murderer, Officer Justin Rapp, when he got publicity on the TV show Cops: http://www.cops.com/c2723a1/ http://www.cops.com/c2723a1/
rhacker 8y ago
I'm sorry but the people in this thread that ONLY want to blame the cops are damn idiotic. IF you had someone SWAT you and your mother or father died, would you really ONLY be mad at the cops? Let me put it another way too - a swatting call is now rated at giving someone a 1/5000 chance they are GOING TO DIE when the police show up. I definitely think someone knowingly doing that to someone else deserves severe punishment.
- jumbalaya2346 8y ago
  No one here is ONLY blaming the cops. Nice strawman you're throwing up. The fact is the cop (Justin Rapp) was not punished at all, and has been on paid vacation.
ShabbosGoy 8y ago
Why isn’t the cop getting punished at all?
maxxxxx 8y ago
I think two steps should be taken: - Punish the swatters harshly - Take a long hard look at police tactics. There are way too many incidents where unarmed people don't behave 100% compliant and get shot. This is a really stressful situation for untrained people and professionals like cops should be trained to take that into account. Some years ago I got T-boned pretty hard by a car. Once the cops arrived, one of them gave me instructions and I was simply not able to process them and did all kinds of stuff instead. Thank god that cop was pretty nice and patient but I can totally understand how people may do things against cops' instructions when they get confronted by a SWAT team yelling at them.
daxorid 8y ago
I'm trying to understand how Gaskill is being charged, here. He gave a different address to avoid being swatted himself. It is now "conspiracy, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice" to exercise one's instinct of self-preservation? Can someone with a better handle of the law than myself explain how Gaskill's actions are unlawful?
- dresstotheleft 8y ago
  Sounds like he knew the address he gave was going to be swatted and intentionally gave a valid address of someone else. A rational person would have just not answered the question.
  - loeg 8y ago
    That's not what he was charged with, AFAICT. That would be manslaughter or something along those lines, right? I think he's getting charged entirely for the cover-up.
- mahart 8y ago
  He instructed other people to delete tweets/messages after learning someone died to cover up what happened. That seems like obstruction and conspiracy to me. I think it is a stretch to call tweeting a wrong address "wire fraud" though.
- loeg 8y ago
  I think his main crimes are conspiring(1) to delete evidence(2) (obstruction). I'm not sure what "wire fraud" is for — maybe just by virtue of (1) and (2) being done online instead of by phone, letter, or in person.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jMyles 8y ago
Somebody murdered somebody else in cold blood, at the home of the latter. The fact that the former had an anonymous, unauthenticated report is not rightly even a part of this. This is insane. Yes, it sucks for the officer, because he was improperly trained to give a great deal more credence to the 911 report, which in retrospect, was downright trivial to fill with false information. I don't think that the officer is 100% culpable, even though his person was enlisted to commit this murder. This is an obvious, huge vulnerability in society. Do we have a CVE for this?
- echotango 8y ago
  This is the only comment that gets at the heart of the matter. I would add that culpability is not zero sum. The shooter was 100% responsible, and the others were also partially responsible.
rhynie 8y ago
Most of these comments are insane. Probably not even people. Did any of you listen to the 911 call and watch the video? http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html
mnm1 8y ago
I blame the cop. Just because police are called doesn't mean someone needs to get murdered. It's the police who bring the idea to the table to murder someone. There's talk about gun control, yet I never hear anyone talking about controlling police guns. That's the first step. Without even an attempt at controlling police guns and power, there is no dialogue. The false report in this case is secondary and hardly interesting when considering the main issue, the police.

192 points by robin_reala 8y ago

The transcripts are just about killing me. A man is dead, and the two are arguing the finer points of who trolled whom like a pair of high-school freshman debaters.

jkahrs595 8y ago

The law can't come down hard enough on scum like this.

georgemcbay 8y ago
I 100% think these people and anyone else who "SWAT"s should be severely punished, but at the same time worry they may be used as scapegoats to draw attention away from the excessive use of force of police. I'm not worried in the sense that I think these idiots will be punished too severely (they SHOULD be punished severely), just in the sense that I don't want having them as scapegoats diminish asking questions about why police are so often killing innocent people (regardless of how the situation in which the killing was done happened to occur).
sontek 8y ago
I'd love the law to come down on the people who murdered an innocent man without verifying claims. Why do they approach assuming guilt? It shouldn't be this easy to get people murdered by making false claims.
jessaustin 8y ago
The solution to too much law enforcement is more law enforcement? Maybe we should take a step back and consider the situation more deeply.
- neom 8y ago
  The solution is probably fixing the education system and this mess of a society we've built.
  - Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
    Why do you think the "education system" isn't working as intended?
    - neom 8y ago
      I do think it's working as intended, I think that's the problem, the intentions are not good.
kyleblarson 8y ago
If by 'scum like this' you mean the over militarized, over aggressive police who always escalate situations so that they can put on their battle jammies and act like they are in Fallujah then I completely agree with you.
Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
The killer was not charged.

simlevesque 8y ago

Why do police officers shoot someone who was never a threat ? Kids will be kids, there will always be kids who do things that are completely irresponsible, by design. The fact that the person who pulled the trigger is not responsible at all for all this is beyond me.

jacquesm 8y ago
Because they've been falsely informed that there is such a threat. That doesn't make it right but it at least explains a part of what happened.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  Low burden of proof isn't it.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    That's not how that works. If you are a police officer in the United States and you've been told you are going into a situation where your opposition is armed and has already killed at least one person you will be very nervous. "Barriss allegedly then called the emergency 911 operators in Wichita and said he was at the address provided by Viner, that he’d just shot his father in the head, was holding his mom and sister at gunpoint, and was thinking about burning down the home with everyone inside." That's a situation where if it is true somebody is likely going to end up hurt and I suspect the police officers tried very hard to make sure that wasn't them. And so innocent people paid the price for a bunch of idiots duking it out over a $1.50 bet. The part that makes no sense to me is that swatting is even possible, there are enough indicators that the call is not originating from the location indicated by the caller. I still think this should not have happened but there is at least a little bit of leeway on seeing how this could have happened. Keep in mind that the swatters had a lot of experience in tuning their story for maximum effect on LE. This or something like it was their intention all along.
    - keepper 8y ago

ceejayoz 8y ago

I'm glad they caught these assholes, but I remain frustrated that the cop who shot an unarmed, innocent man on nothing but someone's phoned-in say-so will escape unscathed. http://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/swatting-fatal-charges-kansas-1202752232/ http://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/swatting-fatal-charges-k...

jld 8y ago

It is amazing to me that law enforcement's trigger for using deadly force so light that two teenagers arguing about a video game can get a third party killed across a state line.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

matte_black 8y ago

Don't even try to blame this on the law enforcement.

no_one_ever 8y ago
Why not?
peterwwillis 8y ago
Ok then. Politicians? Citizens who don't force political change to prevent it? Over-militarization of law e.... oh, right, I'm not allowed to blame them.
- matte_black 8y ago
  You can start with the scumbags who placed the SWAT call. That's a good start don't you think.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    The problem is with stopping there. If these scumbags had tried this in, say, London, chances are the victim would still be alive today.
  - toopsss 8y ago
    What is with your agenda to not pin blame on the cops?
  - alkonaut 8y ago
    > You can start with the scumbags who placed the SWAT call. Let's just agree that someone having committed a crime doesn't mean the next person in the chain of events isn't responsible. People saying the cops should have done differently aren't in any way saying that the people placing the call aren't responsible. It's a false dichotomy.
    - macintux 8y ago
      > People saying the cops should have done differently aren't in any way saying that the people placing the call aren't responsible. Oh, yes, there are definitely those who believe the person making the call should get a fine for wasting police time at worst.

curiousgal 8y ago

>investigators say the other two men’s efforts to taunt and deceive one another ultimately helped point the gun Huh, so they're going after people who didn't make the call and ignoring the biggest culprit that is the police officers? What's the point of having "trained" professionals if they can't distinguish a real threat from a hoax? This reminds me of binary classification algorithms that classify everything as 0 and end up with an accuracy of 90% because of dataset imbalance.

weberc2 8y ago
How much training is required to effectively distinguish between a real threat and a hoax? Do police even get this training or is Swatting a relatively recent phenomenon that hasn’t made it into police training curriculum yet? “Evil police” is a nice pat answer, but rarely are such answers correct.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Swatting is just a new twist on the long-standing pattern of high-strung police officers getting jumpy and killing people who were never a threat. There's even a famous Richard Pryor bit about it.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    Earnest question: is this perception based on data or is it biased by media reporting? (not your perception specifically, but the general perception)
- soared 8y ago
  If you assume it was not a hoax, the police response was still to shoot without being provoked. Hardly seems like whether its a hoax or not is op's point.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    I was responding to this: > What's the point of having "trained" professionals if they can't distinguish a real threat from a hoax? I don't know how you can read that and think "whether it's a hoax or not is not the OP's point"

jononor 8y ago

And none of the charged are cops, who shot an unarmed man just walking out of his house. Do not fire unless fired upon is common rule of engagement for military operating under much more adverse conditions. If police cannot respect the same, they should not be allowed to have guns. Right now they are not even trying.

mjfl 8y ago
Are you seriously suggesting that we disarm the police? "Stop it right there, or I'll... I'll get really mad!"
- jachee 8y ago
  More like demilitarize them. Edit: To the point: Yes. Anyone who can't respect "Don't fire until fired upon" should 100.0000% be disarmed.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting that the police should have rules of engagement far less strict than those applied by many militaries around the world in literal war zones while fighting actual enemies of their state?
- AlimJaffer 8y ago
  I think it has more to do with training and better use-of-force regulations. The police in the States appear to have a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality as evidenced by these events. Disarming them in a country like the US is impossible, but surely better training and stricter rules/penalties would help the situation.
- mjevans 8y ago
  It's appropriate for them to have 'less lethal' weapons. It is also far more appropriate for them to be trained in the proper use of force and de-escalation of situations. Peace officers are supposed to be professionals.

Someone1234 8y ago

Swatting is a lot less effective in other parts of the world for the simple reason that in other parts of the world the results are super boring. Two officers will come to the door, ask if everything is ok, perhaps ask to look around, and then leave as calmly as they arrived. There's something unique about the style of US policing (perhaps training? perhaps military backgrounds? perhaps it being styled as militaristic?) that means these kind of incidents are always escalated by the police themselves. If you want example just look on YT for "Police Bootcamp" videos like this: https://youtu.be/0LC6FTXAxo0?t=2m12s https://youtu.be/0LC6FTXAxo0?t=2m12s To Americans this might not seem odd, because you've been so conditioned to view police like the military but to people from elsewhere that's uniquely military style training and conditioning and has no place in a civilian police force. Plus the length of training in the US is unusually low[0] [0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/us/jobs-training-police-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/28/us/jobs-training-police-trnd/...

blattimwind 8y ago
https://np.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2dgwkp/what_makes_american_police_use_deadly_force_much/cjpgcbe/?context=3 https://np.reddit.com/r/AskLEO/comments/2dgwkp/what_makes_am...
- paloaltokid 8y ago
  Wow, that was very informative and interesting. Definitely worth a read. Thanks!
- colmvp 8y ago
  His response reminds me of Officer Ken Lam, the Toronto Police officer who opted not to shoot the van suspect despite the fact that he was within a few meters of the suspect. In America, it's highly likely the officer would've used his gun.
  - aarongough 8y ago
    Not to mention that the suspect really appeared to be attempting to provoke the officer into shooting him by brandishing something dark and acting like it was a firearm (was a cell phone I believe). The officer's response was very restrained which I think is a good thing.

dustingetz 8y ago

Charge the officers and the entire chain of command

dbg31415 8y ago

Isn't the real issue here that the cops are all trigger happy? To me, that feels like it should be the real issue.

ianamartin 8y ago
Can't both issues be the real issue?

kraftman 8y ago

Reminds me of the organ donor sketch from monty python, except real and tragic.

teeray 8y ago

What about the phone company's role in all this? Don't they share some culpability for delivering spoofed information to a 911 operator? I understand that their entire business is delivering calls, but for whatever reason that 911 operator thought the call was legit based off of the metadata they saw. I feel like if they had a "hey this looks like a shady voip call" message on their terminals, they could communicate that to the responding officers which could have diminished their response. I'm probably vastly simplifying the phone system, but if it doesn't hurt for telcos too when this kind of abuse happens, they're not likely to help improve the situation.

romanovcode 8y ago
I'm amazed by your mental-gymnastics of trying to shift blame to someone else. At worst it is 50/50 between the scumbag caller and the unprofessional SWAT officer. I still think that blame should go to the scumbag person because it wasn't his first SWAT "prank". IMO he should be charged for murder 25-life.
jasonwatkinspdx 8y ago
I read the answer to that in an article a while back: the swatter did't call 911 directly, but instead called the security desk at city hall.
- teeray 8y ago
  Ah, TIL. Any kind of additional metadata likely wouldn't have helped anyway.

mozumder 8y ago

So, why weren't the police charged for opening fire on an unarmed civilian?

cpncrunch 8y ago
Perhaps do some google research before jumping to conclusions? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wichita-officer-who-killed-andrew-finch-swatting-mistake-won-t-n865626 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wichita-officer-who-kil...
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  And yet multiple (ten) other officers in exactly the same location did not open fire, because they saw no gun, no threat. This one cop supposedly did see him reaching for his (non-existent) gun and opened fire. "The reality was that Finch was unarmed and that nearly every officer on the scene never saw him raise his hand with a gun in it. Several reported that they didn’t fire because they didn’t see a gun." His poor lyin' eyes...
  - cpncrunch 8y ago
    >Several reported that they didn’t fire because they didn’t see a gun But they did see him put his hand down to his waist, and one thought "that’s not a good idea. . . don’t be lifting, tugging at your waistband.” >His poor lyin' eyes... Unfortunately that's the nature of the human brain. The officer did exactly what he was trained to do.
    - FireBeyond 8y ago
      So therein lies the rub. If one officer shot, they all should have shot, if that's what their training says. Yet only one felt the need to open fire, despite the same visual stimulus. So if he was doing what he was trained to do, respond to a threat, then the other nine officers failed to appropriately respond to a threat.
      - 8y ago

throw7 8y ago

It really irks me the way the article says Andrew Finch was "at the wrong place at the wrong time". He was at _his_ house, which he's allowed to be at _any_ time.

insickness 8y ago
It's a figure of speech that implies it was pure coincidence that it happened to him as opposed to someone else and that he could have done nothing to prevent it.
drcode 8y ago
Well, I think being "a place where you get shot" is always a wrong place to be, for most definitions of the word "wrong".

everyone 8y ago

This is good doc about the increasing militancy of the police in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcZ1HvdPEEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcZ1HvdPEEk

jumbalaya2346 8y ago

The cop that shot him was not part of the SWAT team, they arrived after the murder. http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Preliminary-hearing-starts-for-man-accused-of-making-deadly-swatting-call-483248831.html http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Preliminary-hearing-starts-... Here's a line from the article showing just how poorly trained cops are: "He [Officer Justin Rapp] said he can’t answer whether he would have pulled the trigger if he knew it was a swatting call."

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

Apart from the other issues, one of the big things is that it is so easy to spoof phone numbers. This has resulted in swatting, telemarketing, robo calls, people pretending to call from the IRS, among other badness. Email also used to have this problem, until the DKIM. Once email servers started using DKIM, it became a lot easier to filter out spam and to exclude the bad actors. Maybe we should require some type of cryptographic verification on who originated the call, and have that be visible. It would definitely make my life a whole lot easier if I saw that a number that called me originated with ATT Wireless vs "VOIP Warehouse". Having a DKIM equivalent for phone calls would do a lot to tackle these type of abuses.

watty 8y ago

What's with all the anti-law enforcement? They thought they were dealing with a highly dangerous situation and individual. It's pretty easy to say they should of handled it better as I sit here in the top floor of my corporate office sipping La Croix but let's not forget that the caller was intentionally putting others in dangerous situations.

emodendroket 8y ago
It is probably a combination of a man being killed as he walked out of his mother's house for adjusting his belt and a string of similar, high-profile cases of excessive police force killing people.
lightbyte 8y ago
>They thought they were dealing with a highly dangerous situation and individual. Are you saying hearsay from a random citizen is probable cause to go kill someone? If that's the case than the police may as well advertise themselves as the cheapest and easiest to use hitmen in the country.
- zaphar 8y ago
  I am in no way excusing the kansas officers here. However this does bring up an interesting point. To properly answer the question about "hearsay" you would need to find out what percentage of 911 calls with details indicating a need for a SWAT team are hoaxes. If the percentage is sufficiently low then the officer may well have been primed by previous experience to expect specific things during the call. When someone is used to working with accurate information and is then fed inaccurate information from that same source then you can predict the results pretty accurately.
jhayward 8y ago
It is not anti-law-enforcement to point out the incredibly negligent independent assessment of the situation, required because the report was totally unsupported by any facts, the incredibly bad risk assessment training that US police use, and the incredibly bad escalation guidelines that virtually guarantee that many innocent people will be killed. In fact, I would say it's quite pro-law-enforcement to insist that all these things be improved.

jononor 8y ago

A thought experiment: An unknown person calls my house and says that someone is coming over now, and that the person has a gun. I get my own gun, and crouch over my porch railing, ready. A person walks down the street towards my house. Some 20 yards from my porch he reaches towards his pocket. I shoot him dead, thinking he might have a gun. In reality he was gonna check Facebook on his phone, and was in fact not even going to me at all. Would I be put on trial in this case? Or is this obvious self defense? Would the person who made call be put on trial for manslaughter?

insickness 8y ago
You would be charged with manslaughter because this person never displayed any type of threat. The severity of the punishment may be mitigated if you could prove that you got the phone call but you are still responsible for what you do, no matter what anyone tells you.
- heyyyouu 8y ago
  That's not necessarily the case -- although it's one possibility. You could also be charged with involuntary manslaugher or nothing depending on state and local laws, what the prosecutor believes your state of mind is and, frankly, the whim of the prosecutor and the strength of your defense attorneys. Conversely, you could face a higher charge for exactly the same reasons. There's what should happen -- which will vary according to local law, at least in the US -- and then what will happen, which will vary significantly depending on the DA.
Clanan 8y ago
This is not a difficult experiment. If you keep a weapon, you should familiarize yourself with the relevant local laws. RTFM, as they say. If someone makes a threat against you that is not immediate, you should contact the police. Yes, you would be put on trial for deliberately going outside and shooting someone not on your property. Duh.
- rhacker 8y ago
  Yeah I tend to agree with you on this thought experiment, a more appropriate response obviously - but if you take away the faulty variables like that and the call does in fact require you to defend yourself in the manner described, then yes, it it was a hoax then the caller should be responsible (if they figure out who obviously).

jumbalaya2346 8y ago

Here's a video of the real murderer, Officer Justin Rapp, when he got publicity on the TV show Cops: http://www.cops.com/c2723a1/ http://www.cops.com/c2723a1/

rhacker 8y ago

I'm sorry but the people in this thread that ONLY want to blame the cops are damn idiotic. IF you had someone SWAT you and your mother or father died, would you really ONLY be mad at the cops? Let me put it another way too - a swatting call is now rated at giving someone a 1/5000 chance they are GOING TO DIE when the police show up. I definitely think someone knowingly doing that to someone else deserves severe punishment.

jumbalaya2346 8y ago
No one here is ONLY blaming the cops. Nice strawman you're throwing up. The fact is the cop (Justin Rapp) was not punished at all, and has been on paid vacation.

ShabbosGoy 8y ago

Why isn’t the cop getting punished at all?

maxxxxx 8y ago

I think two steps should be taken: - Punish the swatters harshly - Take a long hard look at police tactics. There are way too many incidents where unarmed people don't behave 100% compliant and get shot. This is a really stressful situation for untrained people and professionals like cops should be trained to take that into account. Some years ago I got T-boned pretty hard by a car. Once the cops arrived, one of them gave me instructions and I was simply not able to process them and did all kinds of stuff instead. Thank god that cop was pretty nice and patient but I can totally understand how people may do things against cops' instructions when they get confronted by a SWAT team yelling at them.

daxorid 8y ago

I'm trying to understand how Gaskill is being charged, here. He gave a different address to avoid being swatted himself. It is now "conspiracy, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice" to exercise one's instinct of self-preservation? Can someone with a better handle of the law than myself explain how Gaskill's actions are unlawful?

dresstotheleft 8y ago
Sounds like he knew the address he gave was going to be swatted and intentionally gave a valid address of someone else. A rational person would have just not answered the question.
- loeg 8y ago
  That's not what he was charged with, AFAICT. That would be manslaughter or something along those lines, right? I think he's getting charged entirely for the cover-up.
mahart 8y ago
He instructed other people to delete tweets/messages after learning someone died to cover up what happened. That seems like obstruction and conspiracy to me. I think it is a stretch to call tweeting a wrong address "wire fraud" though.
loeg 8y ago
I think his main crimes are conspiring(1) to delete evidence(2) (obstruction). I'm not sure what "wire fraud" is for — maybe just by virtue of (1) and (2) being done online instead of by phone, letter, or in person.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jMyles 8y ago

Somebody murdered somebody else in cold blood, at the home of the latter. The fact that the former had an anonymous, unauthenticated report is not rightly even a part of this. This is insane. Yes, it sucks for the officer, because he was improperly trained to give a great deal more credence to the 911 report, which in retrospect, was downright trivial to fill with false information. I don't think that the officer is 100% culpable, even though his person was enlisted to commit this murder. This is an obvious, huge vulnerability in society. Do we have a CVE for this?

echotango 8y ago
This is the only comment that gets at the heart of the matter. I would add that culpability is not zero sum. The shooter was 100% responsible, and the others were also partially responsible.

rhynie 8y ago

Most of these comments are insane. Probably not even people. Did any of you listen to the 911 call and watch the video? http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192244734.html

mnm1 8y ago

I blame the cop. Just because police are called doesn't mean someone needs to get murdered. It's the police who bring the idea to the table to murder someone. There's talk about gun control, yet I never hear anyone talking about controlling police guns. That's the first step. Without even an attempt at controlling police guns and power, there is no dialogue. The false report in this case is secondary and hardly interesting when considering the main issue, the police.