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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 t

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
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    The officer on the ground is indeed the one making a determination to kick the door in over nothing but a phone call. I don't see why they shouldn't be held accountable. I'm tired of all the QI and associated bullshit. Violating someone's constitutional rights should come with consequences.
    - swells34 3y ago
      A funny thing to note, QI only applies to civil lawsuits. So, it only applies in circumstances where they've already decided there is no criminal activity. So a secondary issue here is the legal system has decided that pretty much anything a cop does is legal.
- pohl 3y ago
  Why not both?
serf 3y ago
>I don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail. the police aren't mindless drones -- when they act like they are it's a problem that is greater than the thing that initiated it. Yes, the swatters are bad -- but the consistency of this response and the absolute trust in the pseudo-anonymous report every single time is absolutely baffling ; like Clancy Wiggums or Frank Drebin baffling; it's just rolling the dice until an innocent is killed while pointing fingers at some boy who cried wolf while knowing that the boy is full of shit.
- dave4420 3y ago
  So we agree that neither the police nor the swatters should be let off the hook?
  - atoav 3y ago
    Care where the idea that we have to let anybody off the hook comes from? As I see it just because we shift the focus to the lower level (the layer executing the swats) we don't have to automatically let anybody off the hook on the higher levels. We can have both.
    - wepple 3y ago
      > He’s not being harassed by the swatters.
    - Zambyte 3y ago
      What should the people calling in the swat be on the hook for, if they aren't harassing him?
      - gus_massa 3y ago
        Fake police report, wire fraud and if they forgot a cent in their last tax declaration add tax evasion.
        3y ago
coldtea 3y ago
>I don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail. Because they're irrelevant to the situation. The swatters could be a compulsive person with mental illness. Or dozens of different people, because it become some internet fad or something to target this person, that's impossible to stop. Or untrackable "hackers". The police has no excuse to come in SWATing in the first place without verification of the actual situation, much less keep swatting additional times, and in no civilized environment would it do it even 10 times, much less 47.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  Irrelevant? I don't know about that. Shutting down communities (as in shutting down a subreddit in this case) is not a popular idea but I wonder if it's not the only viable response. I think communities can police themselves if there is an incentive to do so (or rather disincentive not to). I know of plenty of communities with strict rules of conduct because frankly they worry about being shut down. Any community around MAME for example will likely have rules against "asking for ROMs".
  - coldtea 3y ago
    The community here is just the chance source of this particular case. In another case it could be whatever else responsible. But the police response is a systemic issue, however. It's open to be exploited similary by any other actor.
- dave4420 3y ago
  They’re not irrelevant to the situation. In fact, they’re the people who have malicious intent. Can’t catch them all? Catch the ones you can, make an example out of them. That should in no way be used as an excuse not to get the police to behave themselves as well.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >They’re not irrelevant to the situation. In fact, they’re the people who have malicious intent. Let's put it this way, they're not irrelevant to the particular situation, but they're irrelevant to the real problem, which is the "open for abuse" system of SWATing, and the problematic management it gets from the police. Fixing that helps society at large (plus helps this guy). Whereas getting those guys just solves this particular guy's problem.
atoav 3y ago
> don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail. Care to explain why criticizing the police should amount to "letting the swatters off the hook"? This is nothing that automatically follows unless we can't walk and chew gum at the same time. If you jail one swatter there will be another one, and one after. If the police/dispatch gets their house in order you fix the problem on a systemic level and swatting becomes harder for all swatters. So yeah if this should be fixed: punish swatters and avoid situations where one guy gets 47 swats without the police realizing they are played for fools each single time.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  > Care to explain why criticizing the police should amount to "letting the swatters off the hook"? Not the commentor, just sticking my nose into a duel, but I think they were responding to: "He’s not being harassed by the swatters." That also read to me as pretty dismissive of the swatters.
ithkuil 3y ago
The inability or unwillingness of so many people to accept that multiple actors all be to blame for their part without that necessarily leaving one side off the hook is so frustrating and I think also very dangerous
- dave4420 3y ago
  Well said. I hope I never have to rely on a root cause analysis done by these people.

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
- plagiarist 3y ago
  The officer on the ground is indeed the one making a determination to kick the door in over nothing but a phone call. I don't see why they shouldn't be held accountable. I'm tired of all the QI and associated bullshit. Violating someone's constitutional rights should come with consequences.
  - swells34 3y ago
    A funny thing to note, QI only applies to civil lawsuits. So, it only applies in circumstances where they've already decided there is no criminal activity. So a secondary issue here is the legal system has decided that pretty much anything a cop does is legal.
pohl 3y ago
Why not both?

serf 3y ago

>I don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail. the police aren't mindless drones -- when they act like they are it's a problem that is greater than the thing that initiated it. Yes, the swatters are bad -- but the consistency of this response and the absolute trust in the pseudo-anonymous report every single time is absolutely baffling ; like Clancy Wiggums or Frank Drebin baffling; it's just rolling the dice until an innocent is killed while pointing fingers at some boy who cried wolf while knowing that the boy is full of shit.

dave4420 3y ago
So we agree that neither the police nor the swatters should be let off the hook?
- atoav 3y ago
  Care where the idea that we have to let anybody off the hook comes from? As I see it just because we shift the focus to the lower level (the layer executing the swats) we don't have to automatically let anybody off the hook on the higher levels. We can have both.
  - wepple 3y ago
    > He’s not being harassed by the swatters.
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    What should the people calling in the swat be on the hook for, if they aren't harassing him?
    - gus_massa 3y ago
      Fake police report, wire fraud and if they forgot a cent in their last tax declaration add tax evasion.
      - 3y ago

coldtea 3y ago

>I don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail. Because they're irrelevant to the situation. The swatters could be a compulsive person with mental illness. Or dozens of different people, because it become some internet fad or something to target this person, that's impossible to stop. Or untrackable "hackers". The police has no excuse to come in SWATing in the first place without verification of the actual situation, much less keep swatting additional times, and in no civilized environment would it do it even 10 times, much less 47.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
Irrelevant? I don't know about that. Shutting down communities (as in shutting down a subreddit in this case) is not a popular idea but I wonder if it's not the only viable response. I think communities can police themselves if there is an incentive to do so (or rather disincentive not to). I know of plenty of communities with strict rules of conduct because frankly they worry about being shut down. Any community around MAME for example will likely have rules against "asking for ROMs".
- coldtea 3y ago
  The community here is just the chance source of this particular case. In another case it could be whatever else responsible. But the police response is a systemic issue, however. It's open to be exploited similary by any other actor.
dave4420 3y ago
They’re not irrelevant to the situation. In fact, they’re the people who have malicious intent. Can’t catch them all? Catch the ones you can, make an example out of them. That should in no way be used as an excuse not to get the police to behave themselves as well.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >They’re not irrelevant to the situation. In fact, they’re the people who have malicious intent. Let's put it this way, they're not irrelevant to the particular situation, but they're irrelevant to the real problem, which is the "open for abuse" system of SWATing, and the problematic management it gets from the police. Fixing that helps society at large (plus helps this guy). Whereas getting those guys just solves this particular guy's problem.

atoav 3y ago

> don’t understand why you want to let the swatters off the hook. They should absolutely be going to jail. Care to explain why criticizing the police should amount to "letting the swatters off the hook"? This is nothing that automatically follows unless we can't walk and chew gum at the same time. If you jail one swatter there will be another one, and one after. If the police/dispatch gets their house in order you fix the problem on a systemic level and swatting becomes harder for all swatters. So yeah if this should be fixed: punish swatters and avoid situations where one guy gets 47 swats without the police realizing they are played for fools each single time.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
> Care to explain why criticizing the police should amount to "letting the swatters off the hook"? Not the commentor, just sticking my nose into a duel, but I think they were responding to: "He’s not being harassed by the swatters." That also read to me as pretty dismissive of the swatters.

ithkuil 3y ago

The inability or unwillingness of so many people to accept that multiple actors all be to blame for their part without that necessarily leaving one side off the hook is so frustrating and I think also very dangerous

dave4420 3y ago
Well said. I hope I never have to rely on a root cause analysis done by these people.