8 ms·

It wasn’t a dumb accident, and law enforcement isn’t to blame in this case. The police response was deliberately incited by a group of malicious individuals. Ho

It wasn’t a dumb accident, and law enforcement isn’t to blame in this case. The police response was deliberately incited by a group of malicious individuals. How can minors, who typically are given lighter sentences, be discouraged from “swatting”?

avs733 5y ago
Swatting only seems to exist in the us (afaik?) with a heavily militarized police force full of agro authoritarians trained to prioritize violence and force. All countries have idiot teenagers… Maybe we can take the model of other countries that have idiot teenagers but no swatting problem?
- zepto 5y ago
  > Swatting only seems to exist in the us I don’t think this is true. I personally know of a case in the UK where due to a false report of a gun, an armed squad was sent to someone’s house. It may not be discussed as casually as it is in the US, but every country has armed police and they deploy them when they expect guns to be involved.
  - trasz 5y ago
    There’s a fundamental difference between an UK “armed squad”, and SWAT in the US.
    - ghufran_syed 5y ago
      perhaps you could describe that “fundamental difference”???
      - avs733 5y ago
        The culture of policing in both places.
        merpnderp 5y ago
        So if someone calls in to the UK police that there's been a shooting and a murder and the person has a gun, the cops don't show up with weapons and ready to shoot? How does that work?
        zepto 5y ago
        Sure, police culture is very different, but this is irrelevant. It’s just false to claim that swatting is a US only phenomenon or a function of police culture.
        trasz 5y ago
        It is a US-only phenomenon. So far nobody was able to show an example of this happening in other countries.
        zepto 5y ago
        Why are you making a false statement when you could easily have checked for yourself? https://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2015/08/swatting-uk-trolls-newest-intimidation-and-harassment-tool-and-police-need-take-it https://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2015/08/swatting-uk-tr...
        trasz 5y ago
        The article clearly says it was the first such occurrence. Also, it’s not clear this really was swatting, in that nobody was endangered: the police didn’t storm the house.
        coldtea 5y ago
        The word phenomenon implies repeated occurence, not some one-off or rare situation.
  - fckthisguy 5y ago
    Yeah, there's definitely swatting in the UK. The use of armed police there is a big deal though. My friend is a police officer in the UK and has a firearm and riot gear for armed responses, and they very rarely use it. When it is used, there's loads of reporting to ensure its use was justified.
    - SpelingBeeChamp 5y ago
      I think you would be surprised at the amount of reporting that happens after similar events in the US. I am an investigative reporter covering US law enforcement and crime. Let me know if you'd like to see some examples of the documentation I am referring to.
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  Unfortunately the prevalence of guns in America is a seriously mitigating factor on behalf of police blame for swatting here. With ~15,000 gun homicides every year, >20,000 gun suicides, and several tens of thousands of additional shootings, you can’t fault the police for expecting a call about gun violence to actually involve gun violence.
  - watwut 5y ago
    I really really don't think suicides explain or excuse strong aggressive action. The cops themselves are most likely to die or get injured in car accident - due to them being on streets a lot. America does not have significantly more homicides then other western countries. Most gun homicides are people who know each other shooting each other in dispute. And they are clustered in high violence places making the rest of America safer then average.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Herring approached the police with a gun drawn. That's how things happen in America. In any case, showing a dominant amount of force is imperative for safety in this country where guns are common. That's just the facts. If we want the police to disarm, we need to first disarm the population. We shouldn't be sending police into armed situations with inferior weapons.
      - AstralStorm 5y ago
        Do you mean superior weapons such as gas grenades? Guns are the worst, they need line of sight, overpenetrate, protective measures are ineffective, and they might not take the actual target either. (Only tasers are worse.)
        fckthisguy 5y ago
        > Only tasers are worse. Only tasers are worse at killing people. They're perfectly adequate for their intended use; allowing an officer to halt a person who presents a real danger to the officer, when alternatives are not available.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
  > Swatting only seems to exist in the us (afaik?) [citation needed]
  - avs733 5y ago
    as someone who typically is very proactive about citing my comments (see my post history) I'm going to claim 'afaik' - as far as I know - as a citation in this case because I'm clearly indicating a nonauthorative claim here. This would be a case where you're asking me to prove the negative...can you find instances of Swatting occurring with similar resulting violence in, lets say, Japan or Western Europe?
coldtea 5y ago
>How can minors, who typically are given lighter sentences, be discouraged from “swatting”? People will call the cops with BS accusations and fake threats (e.g. bomb threats, etc) all over the world, including calling them on people. SWATing however only (or 99%) happens in the US, where the police charges like bulls, is trigger happy, puts their own "safety" over anything else in comical degree, gets military surplus equipment in bulk, and has the impression they are in an action movie...
- buran77 5y ago
  The news popularized SWATting as a something that in the US leads to the target's death, because those cases are more "newsworthy". There are probably many more cases that end up with no deaths or injuries but still a lot of psychological trauma. But this still means that SWATting in the US can be used to good effect with the intention of getting the target killed or at the very least seriously harmed. You can view it as a combination between contract killing (the caller) and manslaughter (the shooter). But the Police needs to pay for overreacting, not for showing up like in this case. The Police showed up and "admirably" defused the situation, probably only because the target was white. But if you incriminate showing up in force the initial response will be to stop showing up, and much later to do it in a more peaceful fashion, like with 1-2 people at the door and the rest of the platoon in military gear being hidden.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 5y ago
    Why is newsworthy in scare quotes?
    - buran77 5y ago
      Quotation marks [0]. Because I wasn't trying to express my own opinion about the newsworthiness of reporting on SWATting incidents that result in deaths compared to those which don't. So I quoted the term used most often with regard to this kind of news. Why assume the scare? And how did the rest of my comment imply it? Absent any reason to infer that particular meaning how do you support your decision to take the least charitable interpretation? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark
oarsinsync 5y ago
> law enforcement isn’t to blame in this case. The police response was deliberately incited by a group of malicious individuals. If a system can be easily manipulated from the outside to produce negative results, the outsider is easily to blame the first time it happens. Swatting has been a problem for over a decade[0]. If the system remains vulnerable to the same attack for that long, the system administrator is at fault for failing to resolve the issue. [0] I was lazy so just looked up what UD thinks, the second definition is dated 2007, so that seems like a reasonable date to consider "over a decade" https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swatting https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swatting
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Impossible to reach all minors with so many absent parents. Sometimes these events are like getting struck by lightning, and all we can do is install lightning rods to lessen the statistics. In this case that might look like further anonymity or public service announcements explaining to people that if you share your address some crazy person may end up killing you (somehow).

avs733 5y ago

Swatting only seems to exist in the us (afaik?) with a heavily militarized police force full of agro authoritarians trained to prioritize violence and force. All countries have idiot teenagers… Maybe we can take the model of other countries that have idiot teenagers but no swatting problem?

zepto 5y ago
> Swatting only seems to exist in the us I don’t think this is true. I personally know of a case in the UK where due to a false report of a gun, an armed squad was sent to someone’s house. It may not be discussed as casually as it is in the US, but every country has armed police and they deploy them when they expect guns to be involved.
- trasz 5y ago
  There’s a fundamental difference between an UK “armed squad”, and SWAT in the US.
  - ghufran_syed 5y ago
    perhaps you could describe that “fundamental difference”???
    - avs733 5y ago
      The culture of policing in both places.
      - merpnderp 5y ago
        So if someone calls in to the UK police that there's been a shooting and a murder and the person has a gun, the cops don't show up with weapons and ready to shoot? How does that work?
      - zepto 5y ago
        Sure, police culture is very different, but this is irrelevant. It’s just false to claim that swatting is a US only phenomenon or a function of police culture.
        trasz 5y ago
        It is a US-only phenomenon. So far nobody was able to show an example of this happening in other countries.
        zepto 5y ago
        Why are you making a false statement when you could easily have checked for yourself? https://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2015/08/swatting-uk-trolls-newest-intimidation-and-harassment-tool-and-police-need-take-it https://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2015/08/swatting-uk-tr...
        trasz 5y ago
        The article clearly says it was the first such occurrence. Also, it’s not clear this really was swatting, in that nobody was endangered: the police didn’t storm the house.
        coldtea 5y ago
        The word phenomenon implies repeated occurence, not some one-off or rare situation.
- fckthisguy 5y ago
  Yeah, there's definitely swatting in the UK. The use of armed police there is a big deal though. My friend is a police officer in the UK and has a firearm and riot gear for armed responses, and they very rarely use it. When it is used, there's loads of reporting to ensure its use was justified.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 5y ago
    I think you would be surprised at the amount of reporting that happens after similar events in the US. I am an investigative reporter covering US law enforcement and crime. Let me know if you'd like to see some examples of the documentation I am referring to.
mikeyouse 5y ago
Unfortunately the prevalence of guns in America is a seriously mitigating factor on behalf of police blame for swatting here. With ~15,000 gun homicides every year, >20,000 gun suicides, and several tens of thousands of additional shootings, you can’t fault the police for expecting a call about gun violence to actually involve gun violence.
- watwut 5y ago
  I really really don't think suicides explain or excuse strong aggressive action. The cops themselves are most likely to die or get injured in car accident - due to them being on streets a lot. America does not have significantly more homicides then other western countries. Most gun homicides are people who know each other shooting each other in dispute. And they are clustered in high violence places making the rest of America safer then average.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Herring approached the police with a gun drawn. That's how things happen in America. In any case, showing a dominant amount of force is imperative for safety in this country where guns are common. That's just the facts. If we want the police to disarm, we need to first disarm the population. We shouldn't be sending police into armed situations with inferior weapons.
    - AstralStorm 5y ago
      Do you mean superior weapons such as gas grenades? Guns are the worst, they need line of sight, overpenetrate, protective measures are ineffective, and they might not take the actual target either. (Only tasers are worse.)
      - fckthisguy 5y ago
        > Only tasers are worse. Only tasers are worse at killing people. They're perfectly adequate for their intended use; allowing an officer to halt a person who presents a real danger to the officer, when alternatives are not available.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
> Swatting only seems to exist in the us (afaik?) [citation needed]
- avs733 5y ago
  as someone who typically is very proactive about citing my comments (see my post history) I'm going to claim 'afaik' - as far as I know - as a citation in this case because I'm clearly indicating a nonauthorative claim here. This would be a case where you're asking me to prove the negative...can you find instances of Swatting occurring with similar resulting violence in, lets say, Japan or Western Europe?

coldtea 5y ago

>How can minors, who typically are given lighter sentences, be discouraged from “swatting”? People will call the cops with BS accusations and fake threats (e.g. bomb threats, etc) all over the world, including calling them on people. SWATing however only (or 99%) happens in the US, where the police charges like bulls, is trigger happy, puts their own "safety" over anything else in comical degree, gets military surplus equipment in bulk, and has the impression they are in an action movie...

buran77 5y ago
The news popularized SWATting as a something that in the US leads to the target's death, because those cases are more "newsworthy". There are probably many more cases that end up with no deaths or injuries but still a lot of psychological trauma. But this still means that SWATting in the US can be used to good effect with the intention of getting the target killed or at the very least seriously harmed. You can view it as a combination between contract killing (the caller) and manslaughter (the shooter). But the Police needs to pay for overreacting, not for showing up like in this case. The Police showed up and "admirably" defused the situation, probably only because the target was white. But if you incriminate showing up in force the initial response will be to stop showing up, and much later to do it in a more peaceful fashion, like with 1-2 people at the door and the rest of the platoon in military gear being hidden.
- SpelingBeeChamp 5y ago
  Why is newsworthy in scare quotes?
  - buran77 5y ago
    Quotation marks [0]. Because I wasn't trying to express my own opinion about the newsworthiness of reporting on SWATting incidents that result in deaths compared to those which don't. So I quoted the term used most often with regard to this kind of news. Why assume the scare? And how did the rest of my comment imply it? Absent any reason to infer that particular meaning how do you support your decision to take the least charitable interpretation? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark

oarsinsync 5y ago

> law enforcement isn’t to blame in this case. The police response was deliberately incited by a group of malicious individuals. If a system can be easily manipulated from the outside to produce negative results, the outsider is easily to blame the first time it happens. Swatting has been a problem for over a decade[0]. If the system remains vulnerable to the same attack for that long, the system administrator is at fault for failing to resolve the issue. [0] I was lazy so just looked up what UD thinks, the second definition is dated 2007, so that seems like a reasonable date to consider "over a decade" https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swatting https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=swatting

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Impossible to reach all minors with so many absent parents. Sometimes these events are like getting struck by lightning, and all we can do is install lightning rods to lessen the statistics. In this case that might look like further anonymity or public service announcements explaining to people that if you share your address some crazy person may end up killing you (somehow).