[guiambros]

> ...WTF is wrong with the Police...

WTF is wrong with a full-grown 25-year-old man, who thinks it's funny to waste scarce taxpayer funded resources for his own amusement, because he had a petty argument with a virtual stranger when playing an online game?

Of course I'm not defending excessive use of police force, and the officer who fired the shot should be investigated too, but we need harsher penalties for swatting. The fact we have 400 cases per year [1] is unacceptable, and I hope these criminals go to jail for a long time.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/23/4253014/swatting-911-pran...

[qaq]

He should got to jail but if any random idiot can get any random person killed by the police that is a Police problem as we can have different training and screening procedures for police officers but we sure as hell can not guarantee that there are no idiots with access to phones.

[guiambros]

My point is: idiots with access to phones that do idiotic things should pay for the consequences of their acts -- regardless of how good or bad the police force is. In this case, an idiot caused the murder of an innocent man, and should pay for it, full stop. There's no ifs or buts.

Of course this doesn't precludes police from making honest mistakes - or also doing idiotic things - but hopefully will remove the incentives from idiots-with-phones and their 400 potentially-deadly pranks per year.

One thing does not exclude the other. But we can sure as hell eliminate the root cause by making an example of cases like this.

[Malician]

That's not the root cause. The root cause is that if the police show up they might open fire and kill someone. There are always going to be reasons for the police (or SWAT) to show up, especially with the war on drugs. And with the current environment, that means people dying. Of course, since most of the time it wasn't a SWAT call, and the person in question probably did have drugs, it's easier to totally blame the victim.

[guiambros]

> The root cause is that if the police show up they might open fire and kill someone.

So how do you reduce the number of times the police shows up randomly at your doorstep? Four hundred times per year, more precisely?

That's the definition of "root cause".

I get it, this is HN after all, and most here feel outraged by police brutality, particularly in the US - myself included. But instead of putting the blame on police officers - who are trying to decide in a fraction of a second if their lives is at risk or it's just another stupid case of CoD gamers pranking each other - to me the blame should go squarely to the idiots causing it.

[anigbrowl]

Why do you think blame has to be singular? both the Swatter and the officer who fired can be criminally liable. You can't 'pay' for something like this because you can't buy someone's life back after they're dead. You can make the Swatter suffer as a disincentive to others, but that won't eliminate the behavior any more than harsh penalties for other crimes can be shown to substantially lower crime. Many countries have far less severe penal regimens than the US and also lower levels of crime.

Swatting is easier and more popular in the US because police in this country are much more willing to rush into things.

[guiambros]

As I said above: one thing does not exclude the other. They're BOTH liable for their acts.

Folks claiming "cops are murderers" without equally blaming the 400 idiots who did this intentionally to harm someone are letting their political bias cloud their judgement.

For context, here's the guy that (allegedly) caused it all [1]:

"Swautistic soon changed his Twitter handle to @GoredTutor36, but KrebsOnSecurity managed to obtain several weeks’ worth of tweets from Swautistic before his account was renamed. Those tweets indicate that Swautistic is a serial swatter — meaning he has claimed responsibility for a number of other recent false reports to the police."

"Among the recent hoaxes he’s taken credit for include a false report of a bomb threat at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that disrupted a high-profile public meeting on the net neutrality debate. Swautistic also has claimed responsibility for a hoax bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the Dallas Convention Center, and another bomb threat at a high school in Panama City, Fla, among others."

"Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that,” he wrote. “But I began making $ doing some swat requests.”

--

Lovely, isn't it?

Btw, Krebs' article [1] is excellent; wish it had being linked in the OP, instead of the local newspaper.

[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swa...

[conanbatt]

He caused government to waste resourecs, not a murder, jesus. Are you so biased that you cant blame the police?

Lets say for the sake of argument he is conviced for ordering a murder. Who was the murderer in this case? This person should not be able to be convicted of murder unless the shooting cop is convicted of murder.

[anigbrowl]

Literally nobody is saying the swatter is in any way justified so I don't know who you think you're arguing with. Harsher penalties for swatting aren't going to make the behavior go away because it's not that hard to do, or conceal, and the people who think it's fun aren't likely to be impressed by the rational incentives.