11 ms·

20 years for swatter who got a man killed

62 points by kaboro 8y ago

ameister14 8y ago
The officer who shot him has had no official consequences.
- sixothree 8y ago
  The officer who killed an innocent man....
  - maccio92 8y ago
    The officers were acting under the impression the man they saw was an unhinged person who just shot their own father. In this case if you saw them reaching for what could possibly be a firearm many people would likely react in a similar manner. Our survival instincts are incredibly strong.
    - sixothree 8y ago
      They were wrong and caused the death of an innocent person. And to answer your question, I do believe I have more regard for human life than these people. Reaching for something unknown is not a reason to kill anyone. They had multiple guns trained on him ready to shoot at the sight of a threat, which did not exist.
    - guessmyname 8y ago
      > The officers were acting under the impression the man they saw was an unhinged person who just shot their own father. In this case if you saw them reaching for what could possibly be a firearm many people would likely react in a similar manner. Our survival instincts are incredibly strong. Wow! That’s scary, I thought SWAT was trained to assess the situation to be able to react accordingly. Now I’m afraid to visit the US in fear that the police will kill me just because I look suspicious. I didn’t know they were so afraid to the point of firing their guns in fear of being hurt.
      - maccio92 8y ago
        Did you not read the context of the article? The "swatter" called the police and told them he had killed "his" father and was armed and dangerous. They were showing up to the scene with that context... It's not remotely the same as you being a random visitor in the country. Don't be ridiculous.
        smileysteve 8y ago
        > It's not remotely the same as you being a random visitor Only if op stays in a residence (AirBnb, vrbo, friend's house) that could be confused with somebody playing a video game. > Don't be ridiculous. Unless some other person who may or may not even be in the country (U.S. caller id authentication and e911 systems are lacking) can provide a fiction that would wind up with the poster in the middle. That the police trust a system with such flaws to an extent that they are willing to kill for it is troublesome. Importantly, the man killed was not the intended target; The swatter effectively pressed pandora's button. In a non swatting situation, this happened to a family staying in Georgia. An informant fingered a house for a drug dealer, and the police shot a flash-bang through the AirBnb's window right into a baby's crib, causing severe burns and other health concerns. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/attorney-child-hurt-swat-raid-looks-us-attorney-in/137264875 https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/attorney-child-hurt-swat-ra...
      - dang 8y ago
        Please don't troll here or take threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        guessmyname 8y ago
        Thank you Dang, I’ve read the Hacker News Guidelines multiple times in all these years I’ve been visiting this website. As a non-native English speaker, I’m not sure what exactly in my comment above is considered “trolling” or “flamewar”. I’m legitimately scared that if I visit the US I will be a target and SWAT will not be careful enough to assess the situation, and instead will decide to kill me based on false information. You have commented —many times— that repetitive comments like this in the website will get a user’s account banned, so from now on I will be extra careful with my comments as to not offend someone that may end up affecting my presence in the community. Thank you for the advice.
    - ameister14 8y ago
      The problem is that violations of the Rules of Engagement in combat are treated more strictly than police killing innocent people. That's a pretty low bar in civilian life, and so shouldn't be the case.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      Cops are suppose to be better trained. He signed up to put his life in danger. The innocent civilian didn’t.
      - BenjiWiebe 8y ago
        Aren't cops trained that their own safety is number one? Or am i making things up?
        drdeca 8y ago
        From what I've heard, I think that they are. I also don't think they should be.
        scarface74 8y ago
        Yes the whole “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6”.
        soraminazuki 8y ago
        I was under the impression that the number one duty of the police is to protect its citizens. I may have been proven wrong, as you suggest.
        scarface74 8y ago
        It is their duty, but as a minority, I’m really hesitant about trusting police. It’s to a point where if I had to call police to my house if it was broken into, I would let them know in advance that my I’m Black since I live in a mostly White neighborhood and I wouldn’t want them coming in guns blazing thinking that I’m breaking into my own house. EDIT: This was just posted on HN https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie-mccoy-police-shooting-video-vallejo https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie-mccoy...
        thelasthuman 8y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columb...
    - nickfromseattle 8y ago
      The officer was 20m away behind a squad car, shining blindingly bright lights while having a rifle pointed at the suspect. The risk of officer being shot is relatively low. Could have waited until he confirmed he saw a weapon.
- guessmyname 8y ago
  > The officer who shot him has had no official consequences. As someone who’s foreign to the US judicial system, why? (genuinely asking)
  - nutjob2 8y ago
    Because he was deemed to be acting reasonably. That reflects more on societal issues than the policeman himself.
  - 3JPLW 8y ago
    The people who would be responsible for prosecuting the officers are the same people who prosecute everyone else in that jurisdiction. Through all those other prosecutions, they tend to develop a strong working relationship with the police force and are typically on the "same side." It's also very rare for police to testify against their colleagues — as you might imagine. That's not the only reason, nor is it always the case, but it's one of the big ones.
  - Lazare 8y ago
    The US police system has, and expects, a high degree of police militarisation. It's simple expected that, in the case of a report of violence, weapons, or drugs, that the police department will dispatch a large group of very heavily armed people many (or all) of whom will not be wearing obvious police uniforms, who will proceed to storm the building, often at night, using battering rams, sometimes flash bangs, and at least the threat of overwhelming force. There will usually be some yelling about them being police, but since then happens as the doors are being knocked down, and often while the targets are asleep, this can be easily missed. These tactics were chosen to make it likely that the targets cannot flee, cannot dispose of or hide evidence, and that those who want to resist the police (standoffs, hostage situations, setting up ambushes, etc.) cannot do so effectively. These tactics are also intended, at least, to reduce the risk of police officers being injured or killed. They were chosen despite the knowledge that it will cause people who would not want to resist the police to do so anyhow out of confusion, and that it will lead to the death or injury of targets, bystanders, and pets. So in the above story, the SWAT did what the team is designed to do. Why would there be consequences? The point of these units is to respond to reports of violence swiftly and with overwhelming force, which they did. That causes deaths, usually of the targets (or their pets, of their families) but sometimes (as here) of people entirely unrelated to the target. This is accepted by the courts (and more importantly, society) as perfectly fine. There will be no penalties unless they go way over the bounds of what's accepted. If it comes out the police themselves faked the call, or planted evidence, then that will likely have penalties. But in most cases, mere violence will not. See, for example, this story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/13/indiana-court-overturns-drug-conviction-after-swat-team-detonates-stun-grenade-near-a-baby/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9c080d12ff20 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/13/india... Here a SWAT member tossed a flash bang into a room without even looking, it turned out it landed next to a 9 month old infant. That wasn't enough to get him disciplined or anything, but it did get the conviction of the targets quashed, and even that was really unusual and surprising. After all, there was a report of cocaine and a handgun, so obviously a military assault was needed, right?
bluntfang 8y ago
Are there any instances where SWAT has produced good consequences that can justify this wanton police procedure?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  What's wanton about it, is that as the response is currently formulated, there's no due process. Make an accusation, and people are quickly put in the sights of many, many guns. If you put that power in the hands of potential pranksters, this sort of outcome is what you get in our current world. What if we could send an android to calmly knock on the front door and ask questions?
  - jandrese 8y ago
    Bomb robots aren't unheard of. Sending a camera on wheels in to check out a situation you are unsure of doesn't sound terrible to me. Or hell, this is a great use for a camera drone. While I'm sure there's some handwringing about tipping off the perps it really shouldn't be any worse than a whole bunch of guys swarming the yard and surrounding the house. One of those little racing drones with the good camera would seem to be perfect for checking out the house before you send guys crashing through every window and chucking flashbangs into rooms blind.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Sending a camera on wheels in to check out a situation you are unsure of doesn't sound terrible to me...Or hell, this is a great use for a camera drone I don't think it should be too hardware-ish. The officer android from "Detroit Become Human" would be just about right. (Without the coin juggling.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1pbWCJcKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1pbWCJcKQ
      - jandrese 8y ago
        I'm not even talking about knocking on the door here. Just something that can fly up to some open windows and see if it looks like a murder scene with people huddling around terrified/blood everywhere/guns out or if the house is full of people just chilling doing normal stuff. SWAT tactics were seemingly designed around the assumption that the residence is a fortified gang base with lookouts and the like. This means the SWAT teams are going in blind because they don't want to alert the armed guards, but this leads to situations where flashbangs get tossed into cribs with infants because one of the cops transposed the street number of the house when calling in the report. It's exactly the opposite of what you would thing responsible policing should be.
cpt1138 8y ago
I keep hearing this dismay at the cop not getting consequences. If we assume comparative negligence and the cop that actually pulled the trigger is say 90% responsible. Then are you arguing that that the cop should get 20 years for responding to a shooter threat and killing someone that he thought was reaching for a firearm and the kid that perpetrated the prank gets 2 years? Or are you saying 100% cop that pulled the trigger and nothing for the kid that pulled the prank?
- danudey 8y ago
  How about 100% of one set of crimes for the person who put people's lives in danger and also 100% for another crime that caused that person to lose their life?
  - bazooka_penguin 8y ago
    And how would that look. Conspiracy to murder and murder?
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      The SWAT-ing should be considered attempted murder in 2019. The shooting should be considered a police officer put into a tense situation, making a split second life or death decision. He made the wrong call. He made a mistake, and someone lost their life needlessly. I don't think he should be culpable for murder, however. Murder is premeditated, by definition. We should be looking at different procedures around hostage situations, with the possibility of crank SWATing calls in mind. Putting people into these situations needlessly, on the basis of just one anonymous report, without checking and confirming the facts, isn't acting responsibly.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > The SWAT-ing should be considered attempted murder in 2019 If there is no specific intent to kill, that's as wrong in 2019 as any other year. OTOH, it does seem to be the kind of act with extreme disregard to the risk to human life that, where death does result, the “depraved indifference” subtype of murder exists to address. Even if not that, filing a false police report is a crime (depending on jurisdiction and circumstances it may either be a felony or misdemeanor) and the death is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of that, so either the felony murder or misdemeanor manslaughter rule should apply.
stcredzero 8y ago
When I see this headline, I think, "All well and good. SWAT-ing is essentially attempted murder. However, I find this part of the article biased: It should not go unnoted here that Finch was unarmed and on his own doorstep when police killed him — with an assault rifle — reportedly because “he was reaching for his waistband.” Apparently the officer also “believed he saw a gun come up in Mr Finch’s hands.” Well, which was it, up or down? Was he reaching for the gun or raising it? Is it common for Wichita police to shoot someone within seconds of them answering the door, without assessing the situation — for instance, where the children are? As is sadly often the case in such shootings, the police are entirely without credibility here, and the officer involved seems to have faced no consequences. 1 - It's factually incorrect that Finch was shot by an "assault rifle." An AR-15 isn't an assault rifle. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting ) 2 - Given what we know about the reliability of witnesses, especially in stressful situations, there isn't sufficient context in the article to come to such a conclusion. 3 - From the Wikipedia entry: Mrs. Finch reports that her 28-year old son "screamed and then they shot him". Moments after Finch stepped onto his front porch, police ordered him to put his hands up. According to officer testimony, he began to do so and then stopped. The officer may well have been reacting to the scream or to the way Finch was moving. That said, I have issues with police video simulation training, from what I've seen of it. I saw a video of a simulator session where the "right answer" was always to shoot. There were a sequence of scenarios, often looking innocuous, but then escalating very quickly to shooting. Again, there was no variation of whether the officer should shoot. It was only a matter of when. I've been watching the YouTube channel "Free Field Training" which is produced by an Illinois police officer. His take on using a gun in police work, is that a police officer might need to draw a weapon hundreds of times a year, but should expect to fire it approximately zero times, with an error bar of somewhere between 0 and 1. (Granted, the situation is different with SWAT.)
- jandrese 8y ago
  Is there no bodycam/guncam footage to review? Eyewitness testimony, even from cops, is unreliable at best.
  - 8y ago
brucemoose 8y ago
What is the infosec analogue to swatting? To me it seems part denial of service attack (distracting resources with false event), and part amplification attack (a small action triggers intense potentially violent response) The fact that it's possible for a child to trigger a "swat" where people can and have died highlights a significant vulnerability in the procedures currently used by police. Why isn't more effort being put into making these processes safer for civilians?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Why isn't more effort being put into making these processes safer for civilians? I think the initial presumption, was that no one would be such a douchebag as to make such crank calls. In today's world, this is obviously a bad assumption. In today's world, we should presume that people are going to make such false assertions, and if there's a way someone can exploit an unconfirmed assertion, someone, somewhere will. This is also why trials in the media are bad, and why due process is important. As I suggested elsewhere, what if a plainclothes android could walk up, knock on the door, and calmly ask questions? (While SWAT are out of sight and not yet aiming their guns.) I think this isn't too far outside of our current abilities. Uncanny valley would be reduced in this context. All you'd need is a stone faced, but calm and pleasant demeanor. We already have walking robots, but the walks would have to be humanized. (The Uncanny Valley would be in full force for the body language part.) EDIT: Actually, you could completely avoid the Uncanny Valley and even eliminate the need for AI. Just make the bottom part from a Segway. The top could be a literal teleoperated Muppet.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I think the initial presumption, was that no one would be such a douchebag as to make such crank calls. Unless you get “caught” Living While Black. https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/us/living-while-black-police-calls-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/us/living-while-black-police-...
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > I think the initial presumption, was that no one would be such a douchebag as to make such crank calls. In today's world, this is obviously a bad assumption. It's always been a bad assumption; deliberate harm up to and including murder by deliberate false report to legal authorities is probably as old as legal authorities, and if your jurisdiction has a crime of false reporting (and it's pretty much guaranteed that it does) it's because the government is very much aware that this is a thing. If police response procedures don't account for that, it's not because they've assumed it doesn't happen, it's because they've assumed that that when it happens they will have someone else ready at hand to blame for ant adverse effects, so that they have no need to mitigate them.
averros 8y ago
No punishment for the trigger-happy cop who actually killed the man. Or to the idiots who made the police procedures deadly to the public.
scarface74 8y ago
No the swatter didn’t get the man kill. The trigger happy policemen did. They should both be punished.
CryptoPunk 8y ago
>>The chance that police will escalate is highly unpredictable, though of course being a person of color adds considerably to that risk, as a fraudulent gun in the call will cause the police to hallucinate weapons with even greater frequency than usual. Is there any actual evidence for this? People shouldn't throw around accusations of widespread racism so lightly.
mnm1 8y ago
And the police officer got life in jail. I'm just kidding he totally got off with nothing but a paid vacation. This is the US, after all. Our cops are so stupid, they'll kill anything they imagine might hurt them and the laws so cruel and unjust, that we consider that perfectly fine. I'm sure that piece of shit is having a great time right now and plenty of people will come to defend him saying, how difficult his job is. Please. How difficult is it to not shoot an unarmed man? Just how fucking difficult is that? Let's hear it.
- RickJWagner 8y ago
  Watch a few of the 'what would you do?' videos that put you in the cops' shoes. It should be an eye opener.
  - mnm1 8y ago
    Do you have a specific link? The first one I pulled up was filled with training where the cops were already ready to kill innocent people who had their hands up. It was an eye opener indeed. The cops in that video were obviously fearful assholes who would get innocent people killed at a regular traffic stop for no reason. Anyone of them could be the asshole from this story who shot an innocent man. Eye opener indeed.
  - lifeformed 8y ago
    Which direction should our society's attitude lean for false positives: - a few dead innocent cops and some bad guys get away - a few dead innocent civilians and less bad guys get away To me it seems clear that the risk should lean towards officers, who chose to be in a dangerous profession, instead of random civilians who have no idea what is going on. Some bad guys getting away seems inconsequential compared to accidental death of innocents.
RickJWagner 8y ago
Repeat swatter? 20 years is absolutely justified.
hu3 8y ago
Since HN guidelines don't seem to discourage, here's the video of the shot: https://youtu.be/8-sWzC56df4 https://youtu.be/8-sWzC56df4 It's mostly SFW as it shows a police officer firing one riffle shot from quite afar (20m I'd guess). But knowing that man died, it's sensitive. From wikipedia: A Wichita police officer standing on the other side of the street fired a single round from a Colt AR-15 at Finch, piercing his heart and right lung.

62 points by kaboro 8y ago

ameister14 8y ago

The officer who shot him has had no official consequences.

sixothree 8y ago
The officer who killed an innocent man....
- maccio92 8y ago
  The officers were acting under the impression the man they saw was an unhinged person who just shot their own father. In this case if you saw them reaching for what could possibly be a firearm many people would likely react in a similar manner. Our survival instincts are incredibly strong.
  - sixothree 8y ago
    They were wrong and caused the death of an innocent person. And to answer your question, I do believe I have more regard for human life than these people. Reaching for something unknown is not a reason to kill anyone. They had multiple guns trained on him ready to shoot at the sight of a threat, which did not exist.
  - guessmyname 8y ago
    > The officers were acting under the impression the man they saw was an unhinged person who just shot their own father. In this case if you saw them reaching for what could possibly be a firearm many people would likely react in a similar manner. Our survival instincts are incredibly strong. Wow! That’s scary, I thought SWAT was trained to assess the situation to be able to react accordingly. Now I’m afraid to visit the US in fear that the police will kill me just because I look suspicious. I didn’t know they were so afraid to the point of firing their guns in fear of being hurt.
    - maccio92 8y ago
      Did you not read the context of the article? The "swatter" called the police and told them he had killed "his" father and was armed and dangerous. They were showing up to the scene with that context... It's not remotely the same as you being a random visitor in the country. Don't be ridiculous.
      - smileysteve 8y ago
        > It's not remotely the same as you being a random visitor Only if op stays in a residence (AirBnb, vrbo, friend's house) that could be confused with somebody playing a video game. > Don't be ridiculous. Unless some other person who may or may not even be in the country (U.S. caller id authentication and e911 systems are lacking) can provide a fiction that would wind up with the poster in the middle. That the police trust a system with such flaws to an extent that they are willing to kill for it is troublesome. Importantly, the man killed was not the intended target; The swatter effectively pressed pandora's button. In a non swatting situation, this happened to a family staying in Georgia. An informant fingered a house for a drug dealer, and the police shot a flash-bang through the AirBnb's window right into a baby's crib, causing severe burns and other health concerns. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/attorney-child-hurt-swat-raid-looks-us-attorney-in/137264875 https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/attorney-child-hurt-swat-ra...
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't troll here or take threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - guessmyname 8y ago
        Thank you Dang, I’ve read the Hacker News Guidelines multiple times in all these years I’ve been visiting this website. As a non-native English speaker, I’m not sure what exactly in my comment above is considered “trolling” or “flamewar”. I’m legitimately scared that if I visit the US I will be a target and SWAT will not be careful enough to assess the situation, and instead will decide to kill me based on false information. You have commented —many times— that repetitive comments like this in the website will get a user’s account banned, so from now on I will be extra careful with my comments as to not offend someone that may end up affecting my presence in the community. Thank you for the advice.
  - ameister14 8y ago
    The problem is that violations of the Rules of Engagement in combat are treated more strictly than police killing innocent people. That's a pretty low bar in civilian life, and so shouldn't be the case.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Cops are suppose to be better trained. He signed up to put his life in danger. The innocent civilian didn’t.
    - BenjiWiebe 8y ago
      Aren't cops trained that their own safety is number one? Or am i making things up?
      - drdeca 8y ago
        From what I've heard, I think that they are. I also don't think they should be.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        Yes the whole “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6”.
      - soraminazuki 8y ago
        I was under the impression that the number one duty of the police is to protect its citizens. I may have been proven wrong, as you suggest.
        scarface74 8y ago
        It is their duty, but as a minority, I’m really hesitant about trusting police. It’s to a point where if I had to call police to my house if it was broken into, I would let them know in advance that my I’m Black since I live in a mostly White neighborhood and I wouldn’t want them coming in guns blazing thinking that I’m breaking into my own house. EDIT: This was just posted on HN https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie-mccoy-police-shooting-video-vallejo https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/29/willie-mccoy...
        thelasthuman 8y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columb...
  - nickfromseattle 8y ago
    The officer was 20m away behind a squad car, shining blindingly bright lights while having a rifle pointed at the suspect. The risk of officer being shot is relatively low. Could have waited until he confirmed he saw a weapon.
guessmyname 8y ago
> The officer who shot him has had no official consequences. As someone who’s foreign to the US judicial system, why? (genuinely asking)
- nutjob2 8y ago
  Because he was deemed to be acting reasonably. That reflects more on societal issues than the policeman himself.
- 3JPLW 8y ago
  The people who would be responsible for prosecuting the officers are the same people who prosecute everyone else in that jurisdiction. Through all those other prosecutions, they tend to develop a strong working relationship with the police force and are typically on the "same side." It's also very rare for police to testify against their colleagues — as you might imagine. That's not the only reason, nor is it always the case, but it's one of the big ones.
- Lazare 8y ago
  The US police system has, and expects, a high degree of police militarisation. It's simple expected that, in the case of a report of violence, weapons, or drugs, that the police department will dispatch a large group of very heavily armed people many (or all) of whom will not be wearing obvious police uniforms, who will proceed to storm the building, often at night, using battering rams, sometimes flash bangs, and at least the threat of overwhelming force. There will usually be some yelling about them being police, but since then happens as the doors are being knocked down, and often while the targets are asleep, this can be easily missed. These tactics were chosen to make it likely that the targets cannot flee, cannot dispose of or hide evidence, and that those who want to resist the police (standoffs, hostage situations, setting up ambushes, etc.) cannot do so effectively. These tactics are also intended, at least, to reduce the risk of police officers being injured or killed. They were chosen despite the knowledge that it will cause people who would not want to resist the police to do so anyhow out of confusion, and that it will lead to the death or injury of targets, bystanders, and pets. So in the above story, the SWAT did what the team is designed to do. Why would there be consequences? The point of these units is to respond to reports of violence swiftly and with overwhelming force, which they did. That causes deaths, usually of the targets (or their pets, of their families) but sometimes (as here) of people entirely unrelated to the target. This is accepted by the courts (and more importantly, society) as perfectly fine. There will be no penalties unless they go way over the bounds of what's accepted. If it comes out the police themselves faked the call, or planted evidence, then that will likely have penalties. But in most cases, mere violence will not. See, for example, this story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/13/indiana-court-overturns-drug-conviction-after-swat-team-detonates-stun-grenade-near-a-baby/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9c080d12ff20 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/13/india... Here a SWAT member tossed a flash bang into a room without even looking, it turned out it landed next to a 9 month old infant. That wasn't enough to get him disciplined or anything, but it did get the conviction of the targets quashed, and even that was really unusual and surprising. After all, there was a report of cocaine and a handgun, so obviously a military assault was needed, right?

bluntfang 8y ago

Are there any instances where SWAT has produced good consequences that can justify this wanton police procedure?

stcredzero 8y ago
What's wanton about it, is that as the response is currently formulated, there's no due process. Make an accusation, and people are quickly put in the sights of many, many guns. If you put that power in the hands of potential pranksters, this sort of outcome is what you get in our current world. What if we could send an android to calmly knock on the front door and ask questions?
- jandrese 8y ago
  Bomb robots aren't unheard of. Sending a camera on wheels in to check out a situation you are unsure of doesn't sound terrible to me. Or hell, this is a great use for a camera drone. While I'm sure there's some handwringing about tipping off the perps it really shouldn't be any worse than a whole bunch of guys swarming the yard and surrounding the house. One of those little racing drones with the good camera would seem to be perfect for checking out the house before you send guys crashing through every window and chucking flashbangs into rooms blind.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Sending a camera on wheels in to check out a situation you are unsure of doesn't sound terrible to me...Or hell, this is a great use for a camera drone I don't think it should be too hardware-ish. The officer android from "Detroit Become Human" would be just about right. (Without the coin juggling.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1pbWCJcKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1pbWCJcKQ
    - jandrese 8y ago
      I'm not even talking about knocking on the door here. Just something that can fly up to some open windows and see if it looks like a murder scene with people huddling around terrified/blood everywhere/guns out or if the house is full of people just chilling doing normal stuff. SWAT tactics were seemingly designed around the assumption that the residence is a fortified gang base with lookouts and the like. This means the SWAT teams are going in blind because they don't want to alert the armed guards, but this leads to situations where flashbangs get tossed into cribs with infants because one of the cops transposed the street number of the house when calling in the report. It's exactly the opposite of what you would thing responsible policing should be.

cpt1138 8y ago

I keep hearing this dismay at the cop not getting consequences. If we assume comparative negligence and the cop that actually pulled the trigger is say 90% responsible. Then are you arguing that that the cop should get 20 years for responding to a shooter threat and killing someone that he thought was reaching for a firearm and the kid that perpetrated the prank gets 2 years? Or are you saying 100% cop that pulled the trigger and nothing for the kid that pulled the prank?

danudey 8y ago
How about 100% of one set of crimes for the person who put people's lives in danger and also 100% for another crime that caused that person to lose their life?
- bazooka_penguin 8y ago
  And how would that look. Conspiracy to murder and murder?
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    The SWAT-ing should be considered attempted murder in 2019. The shooting should be considered a police officer put into a tense situation, making a split second life or death decision. He made the wrong call. He made a mistake, and someone lost their life needlessly. I don't think he should be culpable for murder, however. Murder is premeditated, by definition. We should be looking at different procedures around hostage situations, with the possibility of crank SWATing calls in mind. Putting people into these situations needlessly, on the basis of just one anonymous report, without checking and confirming the facts, isn't acting responsibly.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > The SWAT-ing should be considered attempted murder in 2019 If there is no specific intent to kill, that's as wrong in 2019 as any other year. OTOH, it does seem to be the kind of act with extreme disregard to the risk to human life that, where death does result, the “depraved indifference” subtype of murder exists to address. Even if not that, filing a false police report is a crime (depending on jurisdiction and circumstances it may either be a felony or misdemeanor) and the death is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of that, so either the felony murder or misdemeanor manslaughter rule should apply.

stcredzero 8y ago

When I see this headline, I think, "All well and good. SWAT-ing is essentially attempted murder. However, I find this part of the article biased: It should not go unnoted here that Finch was unarmed and on his own doorstep when police killed him — with an assault rifle — reportedly because “he was reaching for his waistband.” Apparently the officer also “believed he saw a gun come up in Mr Finch’s hands.” Well, which was it, up or down? Was he reaching for the gun or raising it? Is it common for Wichita police to shoot someone within seconds of them answering the door, without assessing the situation — for instance, where the children are? As is sadly often the case in such shootings, the police are entirely without credibility here, and the officer involved seems to have faced no consequences. 1 - It's factually incorrect that Finch was shot by an "assault rifle." An AR-15 isn't an assault rifle. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting ) 2 - Given what we know about the reliability of witnesses, especially in stressful situations, there isn't sufficient context in the article to come to such a conclusion. 3 - From the Wikipedia entry: Mrs. Finch reports that her 28-year old son "screamed and then they shot him". Moments after Finch stepped onto his front porch, police ordered him to put his hands up. According to officer testimony, he began to do so and then stopped. The officer may well have been reacting to the scream or to the way Finch was moving. That said, I have issues with police video simulation training, from what I've seen of it. I saw a video of a simulator session where the "right answer" was always to shoot. There were a sequence of scenarios, often looking innocuous, but then escalating very quickly to shooting. Again, there was no variation of whether the officer should shoot. It was only a matter of when. I've been watching the YouTube channel "Free Field Training" which is produced by an Illinois police officer. His take on using a gun in police work, is that a police officer might need to draw a weapon hundreds of times a year, but should expect to fire it approximately zero times, with an error bar of somewhere between 0 and 1. (Granted, the situation is different with SWAT.)

jandrese 8y ago
Is there no bodycam/guncam footage to review? Eyewitness testimony, even from cops, is unreliable at best.
- 8y ago

brucemoose 8y ago

What is the infosec analogue to swatting? To me it seems part denial of service attack (distracting resources with false event), and part amplification attack (a small action triggers intense potentially violent response) The fact that it's possible for a child to trigger a "swat" where people can and have died highlights a significant vulnerability in the procedures currently used by police. Why isn't more effort being put into making these processes safer for civilians?

stcredzero 8y ago
Why isn't more effort being put into making these processes safer for civilians? I think the initial presumption, was that no one would be such a douchebag as to make such crank calls. In today's world, this is obviously a bad assumption. In today's world, we should presume that people are going to make such false assertions, and if there's a way someone can exploit an unconfirmed assertion, someone, somewhere will. This is also why trials in the media are bad, and why due process is important. As I suggested elsewhere, what if a plainclothes android could walk up, knock on the door, and calmly ask questions? (While SWAT are out of sight and not yet aiming their guns.) I think this isn't too far outside of our current abilities. Uncanny valley would be reduced in this context. All you'd need is a stone faced, but calm and pleasant demeanor. We already have walking robots, but the walks would have to be humanized. (The Uncanny Valley would be in full force for the body language part.) EDIT: Actually, you could completely avoid the Uncanny Valley and even eliminate the need for AI. Just make the bottom part from a Segway. The top could be a literal teleoperated Muppet.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I think the initial presumption, was that no one would be such a douchebag as to make such crank calls. Unless you get “caught” Living While Black. https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/us/living-while-black-police-calls-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/us/living-while-black-police-...
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I think the initial presumption, was that no one would be such a douchebag as to make such crank calls. In today's world, this is obviously a bad assumption. It's always been a bad assumption; deliberate harm up to and including murder by deliberate false report to legal authorities is probably as old as legal authorities, and if your jurisdiction has a crime of false reporting (and it's pretty much guaranteed that it does) it's because the government is very much aware that this is a thing. If police response procedures don't account for that, it's not because they've assumed it doesn't happen, it's because they've assumed that that when it happens they will have someone else ready at hand to blame for ant adverse effects, so that they have no need to mitigate them.

averros 8y ago

No punishment for the trigger-happy cop who actually killed the man. Or to the idiots who made the police procedures deadly to the public.

scarface74 8y ago

No the swatter didn’t get the man kill. The trigger happy policemen did. They should both be punished.

CryptoPunk 8y ago

>>The chance that police will escalate is highly unpredictable, though of course being a person of color adds considerably to that risk, as a fraudulent gun in the call will cause the police to hallucinate weapons with even greater frequency than usual. Is there any actual evidence for this? People shouldn't throw around accusations of widespread racism so lightly.

mnm1 8y ago

And the police officer got life in jail. I'm just kidding he totally got off with nothing but a paid vacation. This is the US, after all. Our cops are so stupid, they'll kill anything they imagine might hurt them and the laws so cruel and unjust, that we consider that perfectly fine. I'm sure that piece of shit is having a great time right now and plenty of people will come to defend him saying, how difficult his job is. Please. How difficult is it to not shoot an unarmed man? Just how fucking difficult is that? Let's hear it.

RickJWagner 8y ago
Watch a few of the 'what would you do?' videos that put you in the cops' shoes. It should be an eye opener.
- mnm1 8y ago
  Do you have a specific link? The first one I pulled up was filled with training where the cops were already ready to kill innocent people who had their hands up. It was an eye opener indeed. The cops in that video were obviously fearful assholes who would get innocent people killed at a regular traffic stop for no reason. Anyone of them could be the asshole from this story who shot an innocent man. Eye opener indeed.
- lifeformed 8y ago
  Which direction should our society's attitude lean for false positives: - a few dead innocent cops and some bad guys get away - a few dead innocent civilians and less bad guys get away To me it seems clear that the risk should lean towards officers, who chose to be in a dangerous profession, instead of random civilians who have no idea what is going on. Some bad guys getting away seems inconsequential compared to accidental death of innocents.

RickJWagner 8y ago

Repeat swatter? 20 years is absolutely justified.

hu3 8y ago

Since HN guidelines don't seem to discourage, here's the video of the shot: https://youtu.be/8-sWzC56df4 https://youtu.be/8-sWzC56df4 It's mostly SFW as it shows a police officer firing one riffle shot from quite afar (20m I'd guess). But knowing that man died, it's sensitive. From wikipedia: A Wichita police officer standing on the other side of the street fired a single round from a Colt AR-15 at Finch, piercing his heart and right lung.