[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...

[qaq]

None is questioning that idiots have to be punished. But the problem is Idiots can be a) mentally ill b) From countries outside of US reach e.g. Russia, Iran etc. So having tough laws will have 0 deterrence in those cases. Considering we are on HN the current system is basically similar to having a website with no authentication that has a kill button that will result in death of any US person when pressed. Would you consider that an acceptable system?