4 ms·
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
by 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 agoWhy is newsworthy in scare quotes?
- buran77 5y agoQuotation 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
- SpelingBeeChamp 5y agoWell, in part because the your comment is questioning news practices. The point of scare quotes is to signal irony, uncertainty, or skepticism. Your very next sentence implicitly questions the "news popularization" of swatting as something that leads to the target's death on the basis of its greater "newsworthiness" vs. incidents leading to psychological trauma. That, and because you were not actually quoting anyone or anything specific. When quotation marks are used in a questioning context and the text being quoted is not an actual quote, the assumption is scare quotes. The writer is trying to draw attention to the language rather than actually quote someone's words.