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He’s not being harassed by the swatters. He’s being terrorized by the police. It’s important to call out the blame shifting stance authorities like to take. You

He’s not being harassed by the swatters. He’s being terrorized by the police. It’s important to call out the blame shifting stance authorities like to take. You don’t kick someone’s door 47 times and say someone tricked us into it. Their communication problems and general amnesia are intentional at this point.

dorkwood 3y ago
I feel like he should be able to sue the cops for negligent infliction of emotional distress. Although from the article it looks like he already went to court once before and lost.
bagels 3y ago
Definitely deserves a deprivation of rights lawsuit against the police/city.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hecatia 3y ago
Them officers should have noticed how many times they were called to raid a same home earlier but no they continued... On slightly unrelated note, i found court documents related to the swatter "Torswats" (though pages are plastered with "unofficial") and shit is crazy to say the least, especially on materials found by detectives and cops. Such material are messages from Torswats and cops handpicked his diatribes against jews, government officials, homosexuals, black people and ukrainians.
- beebeepka 3y ago
  "and ethnic people like black people and ukrainians" I agree with the gist of your post but this quote sounds crazy to me. Are there humans that are not "ethnic"? What, exactly, are you trying to say here?
  - hecatia 3y ago
    I think i messed up that one. I wanted to specify which ethnic groups he was hating in his messages that showed up in court documents so certain details are not missed out.
    - thruway516 3y ago
      You know there's an "edit" link right next to your comments right?
  - thruway516 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    It's a linguistic phenomenon where when two words happen so often in combination then the one that least frequently stands alone ends up acquiring the meaning of the whole combination. "ethnic minority problems" -> "ethnic problema"
  - graphe 3y ago
    Ethnics are people that aren't similar to you. Drop in for foreign.
b112 3y ago
At one point the article quotes the force, saying that they must take all calls as credible, and investigate. I can just imagine.. guy gets swatted, then the cops stop coming, then he gets attacked for real .. And at the same time, the officers responding have a right to protect themselves, which means treating it as credible. Of course the middle ground is they respond as if real, except they just talk to the guy. The problem 100% is the swatters. They should get decades in jail for repeated calls like this. And yes the swatters are harassing the guy, regardless of the police issue, any other stance is absurd. And yes, the police should be working with the victim.
- throwaway14356 3y ago
  or they swat themselves before making the peperoni
- Geisterde 3y ago
  Sorry I blew your dogs head off, I was defending myself after kicking your door in.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > saying that they must take all calls as credible, and investigate If "investigate" is limited to "send in team", then criminals can exploit this by calling in a dozen or so fake cases on the far side of the police jurisdiction to where they're actually going.
- jeltz 3y ago
  What if I call in 100 different houses? Do they still need to take those as credible? Of course not. The police here just lazy assholes.
- tharkun__ 3y ago
  Not 100% at all. Look at Brian Krebs from krebsonsecurity.com. The perps he's exposing have repeatedly tried to SWAT him. He says it's no use because he is on good terms with his local PD and they check with him now before they send someone. I doubt it took 47 times to arrive at that arrangement.
dave4420 3y ago
He’s absolutely being harassed by the swatters. I agree that he’s being terrorised by the police. The police should face consequences for allowing themselves to be used like this. I don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail.
- pooper 3y ago
  No, the people kicking his door should be going to prison. What is wrong with you?
  - atoav 3y ago
    As much as I dislike police and as weird as I find the idea that police in the US kicks down doors without checking whether the danger even exists — the officer on the ground might not be the one to make that judgement. Sure, if it happens 47 times I would expect them to add a big red flag aka "first check if danger is present" to the dispatch adress after the second false alarm — and one can blame dispatch for that. But if you are a different officer each time and you are told there is a sociopathic murder taking place in that house that you have never seen, how is it your fault to assume dispatch did their job here. This is a systemic issue: - anonymous contacts of emergency services is possible, so swatters abuse this without having to fear immidiate punishment - dispatch aparantly has no mechanism of linking knowledge between different calls. E.g. if this is the 3rd time we are dispatching swat to that address they should tell the officers that it might be a fake, or don't even dispatch officers at all. However attackers could use this to then go there for real and punch/kill our victim without having to fear police being called there - police officers don't do a good job at the assessment of the situation before they kick doors in. This isn't always an easy call to make
    - pooper 3y ago
      > This is a systemic issue: Ok yeah people have tried several times to unsuccessfully SWAT sitting members of Congress. Like clearly there is a list of addresses like "this address belongs to a Congress person, proceed with caution." Dispatch should add OP to this list. However, it is the job of the officer to investigate. I doubt it is the officer's first day in life in the United States. They know how things work here. Yeah, cities hate paying out for police officers who get hurt and disabled on the job and have decided it is cheaper to pay for "bad apples" than to have a police force that shows humanity. This we have this situation where police officers shoot to preserve their own life just in case the suspect is armed (a valid assumption when getting hold of a gun is easy). > police officers don't do a good job at the assessment of the situation before they kick doors in. This isn't always an easy call to make
baby 3y ago
It’s obvious that they are taking such calls as an opportunity to train. The nice thing is that they get more and more familiar with the place and so can be more and more efficient in case that man really gets in trouble one day
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  So let's build a schedule for training at each house of the neighborhood in order?
_notreallyme_ 3y ago
While I get your point, I kept wondering why the police would continue harassing him while reading the article. I came up with two reasons: - Inflated incidence response, probably help for asking more budget - "real-life situation" field training In any case, I wouldn't say the terrorism comes directly from the police, but from the stalkers. The police might benefit from the situation, however.
- kiallmacinnes 3y ago
  It's far more likely to be "not allowed to ignore a serious* call out" than a budget or training conspiracy... *Serious as in, supposed shootings / murders / kidnappings etc - not serious as in "a legitimate call out"
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    It adds to the count of incidents responded to. Given that they don't actually encounter anything I doubt it'll justify purchasing of a departmental M1 Abrams but I could see it being spun for negotiation of additional SWAT officer hours or a new training facility or something. There are plenty of YouTubers swatted whose response is significantly downgraded after 2 or 3 false calls. I think DarkSydePhil just gets a welfare check (no pun intended) at this point.
- joelegner 3y ago
  Each incident also likely boosts their numbers, justifying why they need budget for their SWAT program. Or as Upton Sinclair put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
mmmuhd 3y ago
I quite agree, I believe the police must have heard of the swatters long ago and kept terrorising the person, I just checked the Torswats channel on Telegram and saw the Torswats return channel alive and the owner claiming swats to the said person is free. It is ridiculous this should be going on and on in a civilised society.
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
You don't have to place the blame on one party. He's absolutely being harassed by swatters. They call the police to get him swatted. Not to mention that on top of swatting, there is impersonation going on AND they are targeting others as well - like his parents. He's ALSO being terrorized by the police, who are more inclined to cosplay with guns and make people fear than to actually do anything about their broken system or be held accountable at all. They absolutely cannot play ignorance - the are basically in an alliance with the swatters. Swatter calls it in, they wink and nod and follow through.
- tomohawk 3y ago
  The police are being hacked by the swatters, and not exercising due diligence. The swatters are taking advantage of the police because it is somehow acceptable for police to show up a a residence in full battle gear, when the resident has no criminal record and there is no known probable cause to use such deadly force. Swat should be rarely, if ever used. Instead they're used in more than 90% of these cases. There is literally no downside to the judges who approve these actions, or to the police who conduct them.
  - Vegenoid 3y ago
    They may even be justifying their budget, or receiving larger budgets, due to how many times they “have” to respond with lots of manpower and expensive equipment.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Wait so if someone calls in and says “hey this guy across the street keeps rolling in barrels and barrels of explosives and what looks like rifles and ammunition,” you’re thinking they should be sending a patrol officer over to knock on the door? It’s obviously trivial to produce whatever kind of report is necessary to justify a SWAT response.
    - Auracle 3y ago
      I had some friends have the cops called on them during college because they were laying out their (real looking) airsoft guns and gear out on their beds. They sent police in SWAT gear, but they still politely knocked. They were let in, saw what was actually going on, talked to them about how neat the guns were, and that was that. There’s a middle ground that’s probably acceptable to most.
Thorrez 3y ago
He is also being harasser directly by the swatters. >He says they have stalked and impersonated him, defaced his home, and continue to send a daily avalanche of abusive phone calls, voicemail messages and emails.
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
sh4rks 3y ago
> swat your own house > your house now has swat immunity > swat every house in the country > no house can be swatted again anymore > swat officers lose their job
kjqgqkejbfefn 3y ago
>He was once swatted four times in one day.
RickJWagner 3y ago
Police follow procedures that have been honed by thousands of encounters with deadly adversaries. They follow these procedures for very good reasons. The teenager needs to made an example of, and his customers should be tracked down and charged as well. This is highly anti-social behavior.

dorkwood 3y ago

I feel like he should be able to sue the cops for negligent infliction of emotional distress. Although from the article it looks like he already went to court once before and lost.

bagels 3y ago

Definitely deserves a deprivation of rights lawsuit against the police/city.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hecatia 3y ago

Them officers should have noticed how many times they were called to raid a same home earlier but no they continued... On slightly unrelated note, i found court documents related to the swatter "Torswats" (though pages are plastered with "unofficial") and shit is crazy to say the least, especially on materials found by detectives and cops. Such material are messages from Torswats and cops handpicked his diatribes against jews, government officials, homosexuals, black people and ukrainians.

beebeepka 3y ago
"and ethnic people like black people and ukrainians" I agree with the gist of your post but this quote sounds crazy to me. Are there humans that are not "ethnic"? What, exactly, are you trying to say here?
- hecatia 3y ago
  I think i messed up that one. I wanted to specify which ethnic groups he was hating in his messages that showed up in court documents so certain details are not missed out.
  - thruway516 3y ago
    You know there's an "edit" link right next to your comments right?
- thruway516 3y ago
  [flagged]
- ithkuil 3y ago
  It's a linguistic phenomenon where when two words happen so often in combination then the one that least frequently stands alone ends up acquiring the meaning of the whole combination. "ethnic minority problems" -> "ethnic problema"
- graphe 3y ago
  Ethnics are people that aren't similar to you. Drop in for foreign.

b112 3y ago

At one point the article quotes the force, saying that they must take all calls as credible, and investigate. I can just imagine.. guy gets swatted, then the cops stop coming, then he gets attacked for real .. And at the same time, the officers responding have a right to protect themselves, which means treating it as credible. Of course the middle ground is they respond as if real, except they just talk to the guy. The problem 100% is the swatters. They should get decades in jail for repeated calls like this. And yes the swatters are harassing the guy, regardless of the police issue, any other stance is absurd. And yes, the police should be working with the victim.

throwaway14356 3y ago
or they swat themselves before making the peperoni
Geisterde 3y ago
Sorry I blew your dogs head off, I was defending myself after kicking your door in.
ben_w 3y ago
> saying that they must take all calls as credible, and investigate If "investigate" is limited to "send in team", then criminals can exploit this by calling in a dozen or so fake cases on the far side of the police jurisdiction to where they're actually going.
jeltz 3y ago
What if I call in 100 different houses? Do they still need to take those as credible? Of course not. The police here just lazy assholes.
tharkun__ 3y ago
Not 100% at all. Look at Brian Krebs from krebsonsecurity.com. The perps he's exposing have repeatedly tried to SWAT him. He says it's no use because he is on good terms with his local PD and they check with him now before they send someone. I doubt it took 47 times to arrive at that arrangement.

dave4420 3y ago

He’s absolutely being harassed by the swatters. I agree that he’s being terrorised by the police. The police should face consequences for allowing themselves to be used like this. I don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail.

pooper 3y ago
No, the people kicking his door should be going to prison. What is wrong with you?
- atoav 3y ago
  As much as I dislike police and as weird as I find the idea that police in the US kicks down doors without checking whether the danger even exists — the officer on the ground might not be the one to make that judgement. Sure, if it happens 47 times I would expect them to add a big red flag aka "first check if danger is present" to the dispatch adress after the second false alarm — and one can blame dispatch for that. But if you are a different officer each time and you are told there is a sociopathic murder taking place in that house that you have never seen, how is it your fault to assume dispatch did their job here. This is a systemic issue: - anonymous contacts of emergency services is possible, so swatters abuse this without having to fear immidiate punishment - dispatch aparantly has no mechanism of linking knowledge between different calls. E.g. if this is the 3rd time we are dispatching swat to that address they should tell the officers that it might be a fake, or don't even dispatch officers at all. However attackers could use this to then go there for real and punch/kill our victim without having to fear police being called there - police officers don't do a good job at the assessment of the situation before they kick doors in. This isn't always an easy call to make
  - pooper 3y ago
    > This is a systemic issue: Ok yeah people have tried several times to unsuccessfully SWAT sitting members of Congress. Like clearly there is a list of addresses like "this address belongs to a Congress person, proceed with caution." Dispatch should add OP to this list. However, it is the job of the officer to investigate. I doubt it is the officer's first day in life in the United States. They know how things work here. Yeah, cities hate paying out for police officers who get hurt and disabled on the job and have decided it is cheaper to pay for "bad apples" than to have a police force that shows humanity. This we have this situation where police officers shoot to preserve their own life just in case the suspect is armed (a valid assumption when getting hold of a gun is easy). > police officers don't do a good job at the assessment of the situation before they kick doors in. This isn't always an easy call to make

baby 3y ago

It’s obvious that they are taking such calls as an opportunity to train. The nice thing is that they get more and more familiar with the place and so can be more and more efficient in case that man really gets in trouble one day

johannes1234321 3y ago
So let's build a schedule for training at each house of the neighborhood in order?

_notreallyme_ 3y ago

While I get your point, I kept wondering why the police would continue harassing him while reading the article. I came up with two reasons: - Inflated incidence response, probably help for asking more budget - "real-life situation" field training In any case, I wouldn't say the terrorism comes directly from the police, but from the stalkers. The police might benefit from the situation, however.

kiallmacinnes 3y ago
It's far more likely to be "not allowed to ignore a serious* call out" than a budget or training conspiracy... *Serious as in, supposed shootings / murders / kidnappings etc - not serious as in "a legitimate call out"
- jstarfish 3y ago
  It adds to the count of incidents responded to. Given that they don't actually encounter anything I doubt it'll justify purchasing of a departmental M1 Abrams but I could see it being spun for negotiation of additional SWAT officer hours or a new training facility or something. There are plenty of YouTubers swatted whose response is significantly downgraded after 2 or 3 false calls. I think DarkSydePhil just gets a welfare check (no pun intended) at this point.
joelegner 3y ago
Each incident also likely boosts their numbers, justifying why they need budget for their SWAT program. Or as Upton Sinclair put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

mmmuhd 3y ago

I quite agree, I believe the police must have heard of the swatters long ago and kept terrorising the person, I just checked the Torswats channel on Telegram and saw the Torswats return channel alive and the owner claiming swats to the said person is free. It is ridiculous this should be going on and on in a civilised society.

Broken_Hippo 3y ago

You don't have to place the blame on one party. He's absolutely being harassed by swatters. They call the police to get him swatted. Not to mention that on top of swatting, there is impersonation going on AND they are targeting others as well - like his parents. He's ALSO being terrorized by the police, who are more inclined to cosplay with guns and make people fear than to actually do anything about their broken system or be held accountable at all. They absolutely cannot play ignorance - the are basically in an alliance with the swatters. Swatter calls it in, they wink and nod and follow through.

tomohawk 3y ago
The police are being hacked by the swatters, and not exercising due diligence. The swatters are taking advantage of the police because it is somehow acceptable for police to show up a a residence in full battle gear, when the resident has no criminal record and there is no known probable cause to use such deadly force. Swat should be rarely, if ever used. Instead they're used in more than 90% of these cases. There is literally no downside to the judges who approve these actions, or to the police who conduct them.
- Vegenoid 3y ago
  They may even be justifying their budget, or receiving larger budgets, due to how many times they “have” to respond with lots of manpower and expensive equipment.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Wait so if someone calls in and says “hey this guy across the street keeps rolling in barrels and barrels of explosives and what looks like rifles and ammunition,” you’re thinking they should be sending a patrol officer over to knock on the door? It’s obviously trivial to produce whatever kind of report is necessary to justify a SWAT response.
  - Auracle 3y ago
    I had some friends have the cops called on them during college because they were laying out their (real looking) airsoft guns and gear out on their beds. They sent police in SWAT gear, but they still politely knocked. They were let in, saw what was actually going on, talked to them about how neat the guns were, and that was that. There’s a middle ground that’s probably acceptable to most.

Thorrez 3y ago

He is also being harasser directly by the swatters. >He says they have stalked and impersonated him, defaced his home, and continue to send a daily avalanche of abusive phone calls, voicemail messages and emails.

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

sh4rks 3y ago

> swat your own house > your house now has swat immunity > swat every house in the country > no house can be swatted again anymore > swat officers lose their job

kjqgqkejbfefn 3y ago

>He was once swatted four times in one day.

RickJWagner 3y ago

Police follow procedures that have been honed by thousands of encounters with deadly adversaries. They follow these procedures for very good reasons. The teenager needs to made an example of, and his customers should be tracked down and charged as well. This is highly anti-social behavior.