Kansas 'Swat' Perpetrator Had Already Been To Prison For Fake Bomb Threats (go.com) 315
More details are emerging about an online gamer whose fake call to Kansas police led to a fatal shooting:
- "After phoning in a false bomb threat to a Glendale, California TV station in 2015, Tyler Barriss threatened to kill his grandmother if she reported him, according to local reports and court documents." -- The Wichita Eagle
- "The Glendale Police Department confirmed to ABC News that Tyler Barriss made about 20 calls to universities and media outlets throughout the country around the time he was arrested for a bomb threat to Los Angeles ABC station KABC in 2015... He was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail, court records show." -- ABC News
- "Within months of his release in August, he had already become the target of a Los Angeles Police Department investigation into similar hoax calls... LAPD detectives were planning to meet with federal prosecutors to discuss their investigation..." -- The Los Angeles Times
- The Wichita Eagle reports that even after the police had fatally shot the person SWauTistic was pretending to be, he continued his phone call with the 911 operator for another 16 minutes -- on a call which lasted over half an hour.
- Brian Krebs reports that police may have been aided in their investigation by another reformed SWAT perpetrator -- adding that SWauTistic privately claimed to have already called in fake emergencies at approximately 100 schools and 10 homes.
Just last month SWauTistic's Twitter account showed him bragging about a bomb threat which caused the evacuation of a Dallas convention center, according to the Daily Beast -- after which SWauTistic encouraged his Twitter followers to also follow him on a second account, "just in case twitter suspends me for being a god." Later the 25-year-old tweeted that "if you can't pull off a swat without getting busted you're not a leet hacking God its that simple."
Barriss remains in jail in Los Angeles with no bond, though within three weeks he's expected to be extradited to Kansas for his next trial.
Police didn't care (Score:5, Insightful)
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The law enforcers went to the wrong address, the hoax call killed no one, incompetent law enforcers murdered an innocent person. The individual is of course guilty of a hoax call and should face consequences for those actions. Repeated offence, pattern of behaviour, all indicative of someone suffering from a mental condition and the sound consequences should be compulsory medical treatment, if necessary, for the rest of their lives. The law enforcers who went to the wrong address and murdered someone should
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https://www.justia.com/crimina... [justia.com]
And it is my understanding that in Kansas, phoning in a hostage hoax is considered a felony. The police officer(s) involved in the fatality will legally be able to pin the blame on th
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Since everything else that transpired in Topeka hinges on the prank call, the party making that call is the responsible party.
"SWauTistic" should be found guilty of murder by cop.
End of story.
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Since everything else that transpired in Topeka hinges on the prank call, the party making that call is the responsible party.
Absolutely not. The point of no return was the pulling of the trigger.
That doesn't absolve them of any responsibility. It seems equivalent to being an accessory to murder, to me. But the phone call is not the murder itself.
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"sentenced to two years and eight months in jail" (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2015. So why isn't he still behind bars?
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overcrowding so they cut your time down.
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I expect that Finch's family will be seeking some sort of settlement from California for letting the little twerp out early.
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but you just can't sue a state for not wanting to spend money
You can if your kid's school district doesn't get enough money. [waschoolexcellence.org] Even if you can't demonstrate any damages to your kid.
You can also sue if the state screws up and releases an inmate early [seattlepi.com], causing you subsequent harm.
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Depends on when in 2015. If he were put away in March of 2015, for example, he'd have finished his sentence in December of 2017, even if he didn't get early release....
OK but how about the dead people (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all fine and good but maybe lets discuss the innocent civilians literally killed by police for no reason? Over-response much? "To protect?" LOL, you mean "target pratice?" Just look at the facts, being a police officer is one of the SAFEST jobs in America but because they have been brainwashed and have triggers on guns they are the MOST dangerous people in the world.
These paranoid lunatics kill who knows how many regular innocent people and while some of it makes news, most of it is covered up.
It's time to discuss whether a military response is necessary for common household domestic matters.
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I truly hope taking hostages isn't and never becomes a "common household domestic matter".
Re: OK but how about the dead people (Score:2)
> LOL, you mean "target pratice?" Just look at the facts, being a police officer is one of the SAFEST jobs in America
No. It was N10 on the list in 2010
https://www.thebalance.com/how... [thebalance.com]
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No. It was N10 on the list in 2010
Saying it is among the safest professions in the country is dumb, but it's usually not even on the top ten list and that it made it there in 2010 wasn't because of a spike in killings of officers, either. It's behind traditionally tragically under-appreciated and underpaid (same thing in capitalism) jobs like maintenance man, for example. Cops get 1.5-2 times what those guys get paid, but they're at a far lower risk of death on the job. Besides the usual risks of things like falling or electrocution, mainte
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Easy peasy lemon squeeze [washingtonpost.com]. See how far down cops are? Take out car crashes (that kill everyday drivers every day) and they don't even make the top 20.
FTFY [nytimes.com]
Can we go back to the actual killer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so this punk will get the punishment he richly deserved long before an innocent man was killed.
Now, can we go back to punishing the actual killer — the cop, who pulled the trigger? Unlike certain Michael Brown [washingtonpost.com], this victim really was raising his hands. Why was he shot at? Why will not you and me be shot at in the same situation?
It sure seems like police are trying to throw all of the responsibility on the prankster, the better to protect one of their own... We should not allow that to happen.
Re:Can we go back to the actual killer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. It's hard not to think that the actual police office on the actual scene with the actual gun in his hand has to bear some responsibility for actually saying does any of what I actually see merit deadly force?
From what I've seen, than answer would have to be no. I fail to see how this is a clean shoot, but maybe some of the details are eluding me.
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Don't kid yourself, the actual killer was the member on the SWAT team that immediately fired on a person 150 feet away. The gamers and "swatter" are accomplices.
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Someone who *instigates* something like this is not an "accomplice".
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Someone who *instigates* something like this is not an "accomplice".
Upon reflection, I'd suggest that it is equivalent to engaging in conspiracy to commit murder, plus fraud. I assume that's why this sort of thing merits its own law[s].
However, while they are not a mere accomplice, they are also not the murderer.
Re:Can we go back to the actual killer? (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Still bullshit:
For all the cops knew, that was a hostage walking out the door.
Re:Can we go back to the actual killer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice hand waiving. I don't know about this municipality, but the remedial firearms safety course I took - when I was eight years old - stressed a few cardinal rules. One, never shoot at anything you don't want to kill. And two, always be sure of what it is that you are shooting at.
By definition, this cop didn't know what he was shooting at, as the man complied with demands and was unarmed, but was dead seconds after walking outside of his door. Which means the cop had no business using a firearm, much less being a police officer with a firearm.
This isn't a hard subject, no matter that some willfully obtuse people would like to pretend otherwise.
Just put him in jail for a LONG time... (Score:2)
This douchebag just needs to go to prison for a long time....or perhaps just forever. It's clear the first experience did not have the desired effect.
Re: Just put him in jail for a LONG time... (Score:2)
Feed the Gulag!! Stalin better watch out - America may still only have the #2 biggest prison state in all of history - but we're catching up!
Don't put the mentally ill in prison (Score:5, Insightful)
There, they will get released after a while, unless they manage to do something really large. People like this one need to go under permanent supervision. At the same time, it can rightfully be said that this person is insane and hence prison is again not the right place, as punishment will accomplish exactly nothing. (Yes, I do understand that prison in the US is about revenge and economic incentives, not punishment. But unless the US stops using the mind-set of a stone-age primitive here, problems like this will not get solves and will continue to cause significant damage to society.)
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So the alternative, I suppose, would be involuntary commitment to a mental health hospital?
The problem with this is, once a person begins treatment in such a facility, and no longer shows symptoms of insanity (once medicine starts to have an effect), the patient is released. Once released, such patients often stop taking their medicine, and relapse, and return to their insane and/or violent behavior.
So unless the laws are changed to require involuntary commitment for a term equivalent to what a prison sente
Re:Dumber (Score:5, Insightful)
Better yet, don't make bomb threats.
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Better yet, just don't be a hazard to society.
Re:Dumber (Score:5, Insightful)
Better yet, just don't be a hazard to society.
Who is the hazard? The SWAT team went to a random address, based on an anonymous phone call, and killed the innocent occupant for basically no reason at all.
Barriss should be held accountable. But he didn't "murder" anyone. The SWAT team did that.
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Nope... it's like he was just randomly chucking bricks off an overpass, and was unlucky enough to have gravity kill somebody with one.
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Nope... it's like he was just randomly chucking bricks off an overpass, and was unlucky enough to have gravity kill somebody with one.
More like he anonymously told the police that a bad guy would be driving under the bridge, and then the police randomly chucked bricks off the overpass.
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If, in arguably one of the richest nations that's ever existed, you cannot afford to hire enough police to enforce all the laws you've passed in a just and non-abusive manner while not violating civil rights, without having to lower the standards to such low levels and allow them to get away with abusing the public rather than lose a warm body in uniform, perhaps...just perhaps...you've PASSED TOO MANY DAMNED LAWS!!!!1!!
That's weird, I'd have thought some european country would be the champion of too many laws.
I guess they don't kill enough of their citizens to qualify.
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The SWAT team didn't murder anybody.
From a legal standpoint they almost certainly did not. From a moral standpoint it's definitely arguable that they did.
I've made bad decisions in my life and lived with the regret, but none of those decisions has ever resulted in anyone losing their life especially not an innocent person's life. I don't believe the cop who killed an innocent man wanted to take a life that day but I would have a hard time living with myself if I had been the one to kill that guy.
Even if no charges were ever brought agains
Re: Dumber (Score:4, Insightful)
I would relive that moment and ask myself why I felt I had to shoot a man who I would later learn was unarmed.
I would assume you could then immediately answer that with "because I believed he was armed and did not want him to murder me or anyone else".
Pretty short discussion, really.
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It's easy to moralize when your life isn't on the line.
At the distance and light conditions and view on the target we are talking about, the police officer's life wasn't on the line. Anybody thinking differently is severely unsuitable for doing police duty as they would be a danger to themselves and others.
Re:Dumber (Score:5, Interesting)
There are much older societies, with bigger government than the US that have even more laws, but don't end up with the police slaughtering people left and right. There's a seemingly unique quality to US policing that results in more officer-involved shootings. Maybe it's the number of weapons in private hands, which means US police have to go into every encounter with a civilian as if it were against an armed combatant. Maybe it's just that policing in the US is a more macho, militarized affair.
I honestly don't know the answer. Maybe there's something unique about the US that makes us more likely to be violent.
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1604 Americans were murdered by knife [fbi.gov]. With a population of 323.1 million in 2016, that works out to a knife-murder rate of 0.496 per 100,000.
175 Canadians were murdered by knife [statcan.gc.ca]. With a population of 36.3 million in 2016, that works out to a knife-murder rate of 0.482 per 100,000.
71 Australians were murdered by knife [abs.gov.au]. With a population of 24.1 million, that works out to a knife-murder rate of 0.295 per 100,000.
213 people were murdered by knife in the UK [ons.gov.uk]. With a population of 65.6 mi
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USA had the most cars on the road by a long shot during the age of leaded gasoline.
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The vast majority of people who get shot by police are black.
Bullcrap. In 2015, 1388 people were shot by police in America. 318, or 23% were black. That is not "the vast majority".
More blacks were shot as a percentage of their population, but it is roughly in line with their higher crime rate. A black man is more likely that a white man to have a encounter with the police, but either encounter is equally likely to result in a shooting.
Way too many people are killed by the police in America, but it is not "all about race" or even "mostly about race".
Re: Dumber (Score:2)
Black people being shot by police make up such a small number next to the amount of black people killed by other black people that it's laughable this is even a thing.
Police make mistakes and shoot more white people than they do black people. Compared to the crime statistics, white people are 2 times more likely to get shot for committing a crime than black people.
Re:Dumber (Score:4, Insightful)
How large a percentage of the US population is black? According to a quick Google search, around 13%.
These are the kind of numbers we need for statistics to make sense. With 13% of the population making up 25% of a statistic, that percentage has a marked increase in chance/risk of whatever the statistic is made to show. In this case, risk of getting shot and killed.
Re:Dumber (Score:5, Insightful)
These are the kind of numbers we need for statistics to make sense. With 13% of the population making up 25% of a statistic, that percentage has a marked increase in chance/risk of whatever the statistic is made to show. In this case, risk of getting shot and killed.
You are correct, if black people are 13% of the population and 25% of people killed by the police, that's not right. However, saying "the majority of people shot by police are black" is still untrue and gives a very wrong picture.
Blacks get killed disproportionately more because they disproportionately behave in ways that give police the excuse to shoot. They commit more crime, drive more erratically, attempt to escape more, run more, talk back more, more often carry weapons, fight more, resist more, disobey more, and are simply more discourteous. The cops aren't racist. They kill plenty of Caucasians too.
Re: Dumber (Score:2)
We DO have far, far too many laws. Many of which are badlaws.
But - the cops DID murder that man. That the murder occurred in compliance with badlaws makes it no less reprehensible.
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They showed up at a hose that didn't meet the caller's description, fired within seconds at distance, at someone for all they knew was one of the purported hostages. Of course the cop attached to the itchy trigger finger needs to spend a few years in prison for manslaughter. Cops get false or misleading calls all the time - if they can't assess the situation without killing a person in 5 seconds, they have no business being a cop.
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They showed up at a hose that didn't meet the caller's description, fired within seconds at distance, at someone for all they knew was one of the purported hostages. Of course the cop attached to the itchy trigger finger needs to spend a few years in prison for manslaughter. Cops get false or misleading calls all the time - if they can't assess the situation without killing a person in 5 seconds, they have no business being a cop.
I agree. I was simply stating what is more likely to happen in our broken system.
The low-hanging fruit pays more into State coffers and are usually nonviolent and so typically involve less officer risk. I understand that most laws are written with the expectation that only a fraction of those breaking that law will be
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I've not watched the body-cam video on the page linked above but wow. How far away were they? It looks as if they got the wrong address and once the mistake was discovered, couldn't be bothered to drive even vaguely near the correct address!
Unless the murdered householder had a sniper rifle, what possible danger could he pose?
Re:Dumber (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the police and swat should be forced to dogfood [wikipedia.org] their service.
Once per day, the home of the relative of a police/swat-team member should be swatted randomly. Pretty soon, procedures would change.
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No, they wouold not.
First of all to 'manage' that you need pranxters that call for SWATs on police families. Most likely that would imediatly ring bells. If not and a few officers shoot family members of other officers, they simply put out a new law: death penalty to pranxters that cause a death.
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Murder charges are not strict liability - you need to be able to show the accused intended the death. It's not enough for the accused to have merely caused the death through reckless stupidity. If it were, there would be a great many bad drivers on death row.
That's what manslaughter charges are for.
Re:Dumber (Score:4, Interesting)
Murder charges are not strict liability - you need to be able to show the accused intended the death. It's not enough for the accused to have merely caused the death through reckless stupidity
Quote: "Many states use the California definition of implied malice to describe an unintentional killing that is charged as murder because the defendant intended to do serious bodily injury, or acted with extreme recklessness." Calling a SWAT team to a home pretending that there is a hostage situation is extreme recklessness. If it ends with a person being dead, it is murder.
Re: Dumber (Score:2)
Why would our masters employ teams of paramilitary thugs if not to murder citizens?
SWAT teams have no place in a free country. A free country has no SWAT teams.
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Every country with a working government and society has SWAT teams.
But as the name originally suggested: Special Weapons And Tactics. Those are only needed in terrorist attacks, plane hijackings, or bank robberies with hostages.
In a phone call like that, in Germany probably the next best police car having officers with wests would stop by.
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No, why would I?
How many days/weeks would it take to assemble a SWAT team for a simple thing like a house hold hostage situation?
The local police can handle that just fine, without Special Forces.
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“Replicants are like any other machine - they're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem” - Deckard
I for one eagerly await the day when people like "Tyler Barris" can be replaced by replicants even if they do eventually develop their own emotional responses."hate, love, fear, anger, envy". Or is there a difference at all? More human than human. Sigh......
I can't relate to this guy at all.
If it's okay to "retire" replicants, should it not also be okay to "reti
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He should get a gold sticker for "not being in a nuclear war within a year". Wow, what an accomplishment.
This. Reminds me of those who praised George W. Bush in 2002 and later, for keeping the country safe because there hadn't been an attack ... since 9/11.
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...You do realize Obama wasn't President until January 2009, right? He had nothing to do with what happened in 2008 (aside from his role as 1 senator out of 100).
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No, we need to get rid of criminals, especially repeat offenders like this guy who has now caused the death of someone else for his own pathetic ego.
Re:More proof we need more laws... (Score:5, Informative)
Making a false report is already illegal, and there's a decent case that this guy could get some form of manslaughter charge as well. Laws aren't going to fix this.
I, for one, am betting on AI being the best hope. Let AI watch conversations on games (where it is a private affair, mind you, not a constitutional issue), and start cracking down on overly-aggressive players before they can turn into hazards.
The moment something crosses the line of legality, the game platform should have all the logs and records needed to make an easy case for prosecution, and that case law is what will change the public perception, and in turn reduce incidents. If the perpetrators know that they'll get caught and likely convicted, they'll find other (hopefully more legal and less lethal) means to vent their frustrations.
Re:More proof we need more laws... (Score:5, Insightful)
What we need to do is fix our stupidassed phone system so this type of thing is no longer possible. The fact that you can spoof CallerID is absurd.
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Yep.
Set up a redialler service a few months to forward calls to my US number to my Swedish mobile, so that my family in the States can ring me direct at their convenience and my expense.
My reward for trying to be a good son accommodating his ageing parents who'll never "get" Skype or WhatsApp or WhatEver? I now get calls at 2 and 3 AM my time from telemarketers with caller IDs indicating that they're neighbours of mine in the Orlando area and accents indicating that they've never been any closer to Florida
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Easier said that done. Any halfway competent prankster would simply fall back to low-tech means of concealing their identity:
- Stolen cellphone.
- Payphone.
- Climb up a pole and hook directly up to someone else's wires.
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If you start prosecuting every crime committed, you're doing to need bigger prisons. I doubt there's a single person over the age of twenty in the US who hasn't done something illegal. The system works only because police have limited resources so have to let almost everything go uninvestigated.
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If you start prosecuting every crime committed, you're doing to need bigger prisons.
Then let's build them. I don't think it's absurd to enforce the laws the citizenry enacted.
Re: More proof we need more laws... (Score:2)
In Soviet America everything is illegal. Therefore everyone is guilty. Therefore we are turning the whole country into one big goddamned prison. Tyranny FTW!
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The decision to prosecute would be in the hands of the local law enforcement, as always. I'm suggesting that an AI be able to recognize illegal activities (like threats of physical harm, for example), and concerning behaviors ("What street do you live on?"), and be able to intervene before anyone actually commits any crime. Such interventions might include a temporary ban, silence, or even just triggering a warning that the conversation appears to be hostile.
A gentle nudge is often enough, if applied early
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I, for one, am betting on AI being the best hope. Let AI watch conversations on games (where it is a private affair, mind you, not a constitutional issue), and start cracking down on overly-aggressive players before they can turn into hazards.
The moment something crosses the line of legality, the game platform should have all the logs and records needed to make an easy case for prosecution,
That's a scary idea. I'm not even a gamer but I could see how this could go wrong. I'm fighting some anonymous guy over the internet and am trash-talking and they're trash-talking right back. We keep pushing the rhetoric further and further. At what point do the authorities step in?
I imagine most trash-talk on the internet is simply talk. You could probably develop an AI which identified potential criminals based on their internet speech but it would just be potential criminals. Most of those peo
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At what point do the authorities step in?
The first "authority" to step in would be the site operators. The First Amendment does not protect private venues like Slashdot, Twitter, or Facebook, who are free to censor, ban, or even issue a warning as they see fit. I would expect that, at least for the foreseeable future, such actions would be under the review of a human team, and the AI would simply bring conversations to their attention.
I imagine most trash-talk on the internet is simply talk.
Certainly... though I'd be willing to argue on a tangent that talk is part of the problem as well. Conflicts start
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Of course racism is still protected under the First Amendment
No, it isn't. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from restricting speech, but it does not affect private companies or individuals from censoring how they see fit within their own domains.
I didn't mean to suggest otherwise and I fully support the right of anyone running a website or a hosting service to censor their own personal or corporate "domains".
What I meant was that even if you could identify racists the government really couldn't do much about it. I suppose they could put them on a list. That's kind of disturbing, but the government does maintain lots of databases about potential or suspected criminals already, just not always based on their internet posts alone.
So racism is not
Re:More proof we need more laws... (Score:4, Insightful)
I, for one, am betting on AI being the best hope. Let AI watch conversations on games (where it is a private affair, mind you, not a constitutional issue), and start cracking down on overly-aggressive players before they can turn into hazards.
Modded 5 insightful. Seriously? AI is already moderating Youtube comments. How well do you think that's going?
And in games only? How do you plan on training the AI anyway? I can just imagine an AI sending a SWAT team to my place just because I said "Fred, Shoot that guy! Finish him off!" during a Call of Duty game.
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the game platform should have all the logs and records needed to make an easy case for prosecution
Some thoughts:
Re:More proof we need more laws... (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy repeatedly, intentionally, with malice aforethought, put people's lives in danger. He may not have pulled the trigger, but IMO, he should still be found guilty of felony murder (in the first degree) and tried accordingly. Watching him get a lethal injection sentence *might* be enough to deter others who still think it's fun....
Re: More proof we need more laws... (Score:2)
What about the pigs who did the actual murdering - should they be treated as harshly as this dumb asshole kid?
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What about the pigs who did the actual murdering - should they be treated as harshly as this dumb asshole kid?
There were no pigs involved, but armed police officers. And they didn't murder anyone. They were called to a supposedly highly dangerous situation and made a mistake.
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I recall from the first Slashdot article about this that it actually IS a felony in some US states to file a bomb hoax etc. Pretty sure SWATting fell under that.
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He knew he could, but every other person out there considering it must know that they will get caught.
Re: More proof we need more laws... (Score:2)
No. You have to prove it was a foreseeable outcome.
Shooting a gun into the air isnâ(TM)t likely to kill someone but it is a foreseeable outcome and has happened. Thatâ(TM)s why rifle ranges have banks and restricted areas down range to stop people being killed by stray bullets.
Well, that's true (Score:5, Insightful)
We need laws which make it illegal for the cops to roll up on someone and execute them on the basis that someone claimed that there was a crime occurring at a specific address. In the best case, they are risking killing a hostage.
Wait, you meant anti-SWATting laws? It's already illegal to do what he did. That didn't stop him. You think making it more illegal would have stopped him?
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We need laws which make it illegal for the cops to roll up on someone and execute them on the basis that someone claimed that there was a crime occurring
Exactly! The core problem is the militarization of police.
https://www.npr.org/2014/08/19/341542537/police-militarization-becomes-a-hot-topic [npr.org]
Unfortunately, the Black Lives Matter movement co-opted the police militarization issue, and claim (incorrectly) that police militarization is driven by racism. For example, one of their key demands [m4bl.org] is the following:
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Police militarization is driven by the war on drugs, which absolutely has racist foundations and enforcement. You can't argue otherwise when blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate but blacks are FAR more likely to be arrested. [washingtonpost.com] That said, the wankers who say "oh this wouldn't have happened to a white person" are just as obnoxious, as half the p
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Unfortunately, the Black Lives Matter movement co-opted the police militarization issue, and claim (incorrectly) that police militarization is driven by racism. For example, one of their key demands is the following:
8. The demilitarization of law enforcement, including law enforcement in schools and on college campuses.
So the BLM movement claims the police use superfluous and excessive force against black people and you're surprised they want to curb the police use of force? The militarization happens because the police think they need to go into every situation prepared for maximum force and immediate retaliation, like they're in a war zone just waiting for an insurgent to open up on them. When you're wound up that tight mistakes happen and in some cases they're fatal, like in this swatting incident. Dialing that back wo
Re:Well, that's true (Score:5, Insightful)
We need laws which make it illegal for the cops to roll up on someone and execute them on the basis that someone claimed that there was a crime occurring at a specific address.
They had the caller WHO THEY BELIEVED THEY WERE SHOOTING on the phone AT THE TIME THEY WERE SHOOTING HIM, and didn't bother to interact with him using the established communications channel AT ALL.
There's a lot to find wrong about this scenario, but even if you grant all sorts of things like "hostage situations are scary", and "it was dark", the fact that they apparently did not use a tool that was in their hands the entire time makes the other things sound more like excuses than reasons.
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They had the caller WHO THEY BELIEVED THEY WERE SHOOTING on the phone AT THE TIME THEY WERE SHOOTING HIM, and didn't bother to interact with him using the established communications channel AT ALL.
Welcome to the real world where the 911 operator is not the same person as the police officer responding. The person on the phone was goading them to continue, in what reasonable conversation do you expect them to discover the discrepancy? I mean any reasonable 911 operator would concentrate on the essentials, where's the incident, who's involved, what's happening. If they were to say "He just told me he's going to do X" and the police officer responded "Uhm, he's standing right in front of me with his hand
Re:Well, that's true (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of the day, the police officer has a legal responsibility to say "do I see anything which says I need to discharge my weapon to protect the safety of myself or a citizen?".
And, I'm sorry, but if you roll up on a place and can't reconcile what you've been told with what you can plainly see, a little restraint is required from you.
What, exactly, was the kid who got shot doing when he got shot?
Everything I've seen suggests a cop with an itchy trigger finger and ZERO confirmation of a damned thing. Sorry, but being a police office doesn't mean you get to shoot first and ask questions later.
That's from the original news story here [kansas.com].
That smacks of a cop who was pissing his pants or was just so excited to shoot he didn't wait. And that is a fucking criminal act.
The actual shooting?? That's 100% on the cops.
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I find it amusing that your arguments segue from saying that we need laws, to saying that laws don't stop people. We need more procedures and training. And maybe we need to figure out anyone who can't take that pressure and get them off this sort of beat.
Yes, and the way we will accomplish that is with laws, not hopes and dreams. Right now the laws are set up to protect cops when they commit crimes. We need to fix them, so they are set up to punish cops when they commit crimes, like everyone else.
Re:More proof we need more laws... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:More proof we need more laws... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately research has shown that its not the severity of the punishment that deters individuals from perpetrating those crimes, its the certainty of being caught.
This, in spades.
The severity of the punishment should fit the crime, but beyond a certain level of severity, there is no additional deterrence. That is one of may reasons why the death penalty should be abolished.
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When people are being polite, they talk about deterrence and reformation.
There are the polite fiction of society.
Deep down, the real motivation is much more primal: The basic urge to see bad people made to suffer for betraying the tribe. If sufficient suffering is not inflicted, people will feel that justice has not been served.
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The police found Barriss fast, when they tried hard to find him. kansas.com [kansas.com] says,
He had been held at the 77th Street Precinct Jail in South Los Angeles following his arrest Friday afternoon – less than 24 hours after the call was made.
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Read TFS. They already did.
Re: This guy (Score:3)
Three cheers for state-sponsored rape! Hup hup hurrah!
Re: As expected a lifelong marijuana user (Score:2)
The time has come:
War on Drugs War Crimes Trial
The paramilitary thugs who have for decades terrorized our communities must be called to account. Nuremberg for the bosses. Truth & reconciliation for the foot soldiers.
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So many people here hating the cop that shot an innocent, unarmed man. There's some anti-police rhetoric, but mostly it's because a police officer went into a dubious situation and killed someone. This is not proper policing.