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Federal prosecutors have filed new charges against swatter Tyler Barriss
- jbb67 8y agoGood. Although I'd also very strongly question the extreme overreaction to unverified allegations that make this kind of thing possible.
- jstanley 8y agoSo, wait, the guy who made a phone call is going to prison, but the guy who murdered an innocent person has not faced any consequences? Swatting is obviously wrong and there should be consequences, but it's not as harmful as actually killing someone.
- fossuser 8y agoIntent matters - in this case I’d argue the guy who made the call is more responsible for the death than the guy who pulled the trigger.
- baybal2 8y agoNo, intent doesn't matter at all. The long held "legal tradition" of establishing intent in US legal process is completely absurd. You think that the SWAT pointed a gun on a man and presses the trigger completely unintentionally? No, even with an accidental manslaughter nobody simply walks away from the charge.
- masklinn 8y agoAll the legal traditions I know consider intent in the legal process and e.g. have multiple categories of homicide differentiated mostly by intent (and secondarily by planning & emotional context).
- mpa000 8y agoThis. IANAL but the eroding of taking mens rea (intent/knowledge) into account does not bode well for justice in the long-term.
- Sharlin 8y agoIntent to kill with no reasonable evidence that would justify any nontrivial use of force is morally bankrupt. If that’s the new normal in the US, I don’t know what to say. A prank call is a prank call, but the one given the power to project lethal force is fully morally responsible for their decision to pull the trigger. And if that was somehow within their standard rules of engagement, so are their superiors.
- darkerside 8y agoA prank call to summon emergency help is still a call to summon emergency help. The intent to prank, the fact that you were "just kidding", has no bearing on the outcome. Yes, the fault ultimately lies with the person who pulls the trigger, but there's a reason mob bosses are considered murderers when they may have never physically killed someone. It's totally foreseeable that you are throwing an innocent person into a hostile situation; in fact, that's the whole point.
- Sharlin 8y agoYeah, I didn’t mean to absolve the swatter. It’s clear that there should be heavy deterrence for such behavior. But I’m not sure he intended to have his targets killed either.
- masklinn 8y ago> But I’m not sure he intended to have his targets killed either. Even assuming they did not, they still knowingly involved their target in a potentially lethal situation. It might carry a lighter sentence than literally going to their target and killing them, but it should carry a significantly higher sentence than e.g. putting flaming shit under their target's doormat.
- Sharlin 8y agoYep, involuntary manslaughter, which was indeed among the charges.
- 8y ago
- jstanley 8y agoDo you think the policeman who shot him didn't intend to kill him?
- fossuser 8y agoIt's the context - the sniper thinks they're going to a dangerous hostage situation with somebody who has already killed some people, they're trying to stop someone who is killing people and threatening to kill people. The caller is intentionally putting an innocent person in a lethal situation basically because the caller is an ass and thinks they're not responsible for what happens afterwards. I'm not arguing about whether or not excessive force was used or if the police response was wrong in addition to being tragic (very well could have been) since that requires knowing a lot more about the case. I'm arguing that a lot less nuance is needed to say the caller is responsible. I'd argue they intended to cause harm for bad reasons - maybe not death, but that would have been a known possible outcome.
- jstanley 8y agoBut the shooter knew that death was a possible outcome as well. He isn't resolved of culpability just because he didn't bother to work out whether shooting was appropriate.
- fossuser 8y agoI'm not saying that he is (though he might be), but the situation is different and the intent given the context of what the person is trying to do is different. These things matter in law.
- jstanley 8y agoIf you're going to presume to take another person's life, you better be completely sure that you're doing the right thing.
- 8y ago
- mitchdoogle 8y agoThe officer who pulled the trigger was across the street and shot an unarmed man within seconds of him opening the door to see what was happening. That officer decided he was going to kill whoever opened that door before they even arrived. It's laughable to suggest the prank caller is more responsible for the victim's death. I am amazed that more people are not extremely disturbed by law enforcement being able to commit murder without consequences.
- howlgram 8y agoif you are going to judge by their intent then the intent of the prank caller was most likely to give someone a scare, the intent of someone that pulls the trigger is to kill another person
- jakelazaroff 8y agoThere is a casual relationship between swatting someone and them dying. What's the crime for ordering a hit on someone? This is exactly equivalent.
- _Schizotypy 8y agoThe hitman always gets off scot-free, right? Because someone else told them to do it
- jakelazaroff 8y agoThat is not what I'm at all. I'm only responding to the GGP's characterization of the swatter as "just making a phone call".
- threatofrain 8y agoWho is the hit man here in this metaphor...
- aalleavitch 8y agoIt is as harmful as paying someone else to assault and possibly kill someone.
- jstanley 8y agoI agree. Which you'll note is less harmful than actually assaulting or possibly killing someone. I'm not saying the guy who made the phone call is innocent! Just that he's less guilty than the guy who pulled the trigger.
- watty 8y agoI'm not sure your point. It's extremely harmful as it caused the death of an individual. The investigation concluded the officer was not in the wrong.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoI disagree with the GP's characterization of the swatter as "just making a phone call", but agree with the point that there should be consequences for the shooter. The investigation into the officer was clearly a farce, given that he shot a man dead without any sign of danger.
- jstanley 8y agoI disagree with your characterisation of my characterisation. He didn't just make a phone call. I was just trying to point out that the person who murdered someone has clearly done more harm than the person who did the Swatting.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoThat's not at all clear to me. If you put someone into a situation in which there's a reasonable expectation they'll die, and they do, you murdered them. That doesn't absolve another person who may have actually carried out the murder. Responsibility is not zero-sum.
- mitchdoogle 8y agoWhat the call caused was police to show up at the door. That is where the responsibility of the caller ends and it should be punished accordingly. The police caused this man's death. Citing the investigation as proof the officer was not in the wrong is being obtuse. Look at the body cam video - what you'll see is the victim being shot without any effort to confirm what they were told, and no effort to try to subdue with nonlethal means.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Nursie 8y ago> So, wait, the guy who made a phone call is going to prison As he should > but the guy who murdered an innocent person has not faced any consequences? The guy who sent the SWAT team at all, as a first response to a single phone call, should be facing consequences. And the police in general in the US seem to need to calm the fuck down. Whether the guy that pulled the trigger should be culpable is definitely something that should be examined in court. Seems like a whole series of bad actors.
- beatgammit 8y agoThere should be a lot of people going to jail over this. There doesn't have to be just one person to take the fall.
- bena 8y agoHe made that phone call with the intention of causing harm. He is responsible in some part for what happened. I can live with him going to jail.
- greencore 8y agoWhat about Swat officers that shot without any investigation?
- blattimwind 8y agoComponent works as designed. Status: -OPEN +NOTABUG +WONTFIX
- anoncoward111 8y agoSERVICE NOTES: DISPATCH TECH DECLINED FIX, PART WORKING
- watty 8y agoThere was an investigation. It was concluded that the victim reached for his waist (maybe to pull up pants) after being told not to. Very very difficult situation for sure.
- gameswithgo 8y agono it isn't.
- gaff33 8y agoI always wonder what proportion of uncorroborated calls that trigger SWAT raids are actually genuine. I'd have thought that live hostage taking is extremely rare - even in the US. To the point where SWAT calls ought to require corroboration or be presumed to be fake (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that...). Is there any data available?
- brightball 8y agoThe problem comes from a real situation potentially not getting acted upon. EDIT: To clarify, there are potential short timeline concerns involved when people are in immediate danger. How do you corroborate that people are definitely being held inside a house without going to the house? How do you verify that without notifying a potentially armed suspect that you are on the way? Just as an example, the recent tragedy in Florence, SC where 6 officers were shot and 2 died. That happened because the man at the house was notified that a search warrant was going to be served. He took the heads up and prepared an ambused for the officers he knew were coming. There are a lot of complicating factors involved in corroborating a story before sending out the team immediately.
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoThe choice isn't "send SWAT" or "don't respond". There are a range of actions that could be taken prior to SWAT being involved.
- gaff33 8y agoNeither am I suggesting that "don't respond" is the right thing to do here. However SWAT teams must know that uncorroborated calls are almost certainly fake, and they should act accordingly. Arguably regular police could check the situation out first?
- owenmarshall 8y agoIf a brain cancer test had a high false positive rate we wouldn’t irradiate people’s heads just in case it was a “real situation”. The same thinking should be applied here.
- awakeasleep 8y agoThis article really hits me as the sort of “propaganda” writers create through blindly accepting the story of their culture rather than thinking about things critically. By that I mean the real story here is that the police dispatched a sniper to execute someone without a trial. Blew them away as soon as he opened the door. That shit is still the news! The facts of what happened here do not make sense in our idea of America. Yet Wired doesnt even make a passing reference to it. Feels similar to the way the media reports on “identity theft” as if your identity was the thing that was stolen, not that the bank had a security breach and they're forcing you to pay for it- completely looking at the situation backwards
- watty 8y ago> Blew them away as soon as they opened the door. Source? My point was that "as soon as they opened the door" and "seconds later" are not the same thing. Go watch the body cam or do some research. There were 7-10 seconds with commands being issued to Andrew and he did not comply. Absolutely not his fault, I'm sure it was a very confusing situation. I'm simply pointing out that if we are going to talk about it, let's face the facts and not make bullshit up.
- jakelazaroff 8y agoFrom literally the second paragraph in the article: > When the cops showed up in force, 28-year-old Andrew Finch opened his front door to see what the commotion was about; seconds later he was dead, shot by a police sniper across the street
- drb91 8y ago...it’s in the linked article, fairly obviously.
- breakingcups 8y ago"When the cops showed up in force, 28-year-old Andrew Finch opened his front door to see what the commotion was about; seconds later he was dead, shot by a police sniper across the street." From the article.
- Steltek 8y agoThe news has a running meme along the lines of "absurd white person calls police on black person". Many of these phone calls allege the victim is acting violent, has a gun, etc. Is it possible to bring "swatting" charges against these people? It seems the only reason they don't end badly is because the caller is so obviously defective that the police show up irritated and bored instead of ready to do some hero stuff. I get that the usual response is "We don't want to discourage people from calling the police" but when you're trying to elicit a violent police response against your victim, it seems it's in society's best interest to bring charges.
- whatshisface 8y agoIt's the police's job to not shoot innocent people. The presence of a police officer should never be a bad thing.
- Nasrudith 8y agoI think it has to do with laws being based off of belief and intent. Doing it based on false intentions or recognized frivolity is required and eyewitnesses are unreliable enough to have vast degrees of plausible deniability. See someone in black trying the door heavily when they try to housesit the wrong house and you could reasonably believe them a possibility armed burglar. Similarly calling 911 on a "cougar" which is simply a big stray cat isn't a crime even if it turns out to be a total waste of time. I think they would basically have to get caught conspiring to make false calls for it to remotely stick - just being a racist asshole isn't enough. There was one case I heard about a senile old woman who was just functional enough to retain independence legally. She called the police many times over every little thing but couldn't be charged with abuse of 911 because she was sincere and thought there really was a threat from say the landscapper showing up at a neighbor's house. One case was someone trying to get her out of her house and institutionalized - the police showed up and asked the guy to leave and let him know the situation - yes she isn't the best but there is nothing we can do about it legally.
- tzs 8y agoThey don't end violently probably because they are inherently much less dangerous than swatting situations. In a swatting situation, the person calling it in: (1) often claims to be the criminal and includes threats, (2) reports that the crime is in progress, often with people already harmed, (3) places the crime somewhere that will make it hard for arriving officers to access the situation safely if it turns out the report is real, (4) if it is real there is a good chance lethal force will need to be used to save multiple innocent lives and there is a good chance that decision will have to be made quickly. In a "stranger with a gun is in the neighborhood situation", even one reported as acting aggressive, (1) the caller is not claiming to be the person, (2) they are not claiming anything criminal has happened yet, (3) they are usually reporting the person outside where arriving police will be able to get a good look at the situation quickly, (4) even if it is real and the person is there to commit some crime, it's probably just an economic crime (break into a car, at worst a mugging) and the person is not going to turn violent on the police--the person almost certainly knows that the police won't have enough to arrest him and so he will just have to answer a few questions and leave.
- danielvf 8y agoThe news here is just how prolific this guy was. He was calling in a bomb threat or swatting every two or three days for months!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jokoon 8y agoSwatters are just mean trolls who exploit the paranoia of how the police reacts to emergency calls. It's exactly like terrorism, you just scare people about a non existent threat and expect to have forces and security applied where it doesn't matter. Blaming swatters is one thing, but questioning how swat teams respond to calls should be put on the table. You cannot only blame swatters.
- alphabettsy 8y agoThere are quite a few stories about officers shooting someone when they were at the wrong house. In this case they were called to this house, but why are our police so quick to pull the trigger anyway? Can they never disengage and reassess?