Kansas 'Swat' Perpetrator Charged; Faces 11 More Years in Prison (latimes.com) 428
Jail time looms for 25-year-old Tyler Barriss, whose fake call to Kansas police led to a fatal shooting:
- Barriss "was in a Wichita jail on Saturday," Reuters reported, and even his first court appearance Friday was a video appearance from jail.
- Barriss was charged with involuntary manslaughter, and if convicted "could face up to 11 years and three months in prison." He was also charged with making a false alarm, which is considered a felony. The District Attorney adds that others have also been identified as "potential suspects" in the case, but they're still deciding whether to charge them.
- Barriss' bond has been set at $500,000.
- Friday Barriss gave his first interview to a local news outlet -- from jail. "Of course, you know, I feel a little of remorse for what happened," he tells KWCH. "I never intended for anyone to get shot and killed. I don't think during any attempted swatting anyone's intentions are for someone to get shot and killed..."
Asked about the call, Barriss acknowledged that "It hasn't just affected my life, it's affected someone's family too. Someone lost their life. I understand the magnitude of what happened. It's not just affecting me because I'm sitting in jail. I know who it has affected. I understand all of that."
- Barriss has also been charged in Calgary with public mischief, fraud and mischief for another false phone call, police said, though it's unlikely he'll ever be arrested unless he enters the country. Just six days before the fatal shooting, Barriss had made a nearly identical call to police officers in Canada, this time supplying the address of a well-known video gamer who livestreams on Twitch, and according to one eyewitness more than 20 police cars surrounded her apartment building for at least half an hour.
What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
You called in a situation that led to the police sending in armed, trigger happy troops. These guys are under immense pressure, expecting to have to deal with hostages, armed kidnappers, and whatever else. What the hell did you think would happen - the police would knock on the door politely, walk in calmly, and sit down for some milk and cookies?
You didn't think. You just went and pulled the trigger, not caring about the potential consequences, acting like it was all a game.
Sure, the Kansas police bear a part of the burden - the training of their SWAT teams (and other SWAT teams around the country) is far too militaristic, and they call them out far too quickly (although in fairness, that's not always obvious until after the event.) But the bulk of the burden of this "incident" (for lack of a better term.. maybe "debacle"?) falls squarely upon the guy who made the false report, and the culture that considers SWATting to be a "harmless prank".
Maybe this will be a wake up call, and SWATting will cease to be a thing. But somehow, I doubt it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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because they suck at their jobs worse than a porn star on a Bang bros set!
In other words they suck worse than a professional expert on sucking? That wasn't a very successful insult... suck more perhaps.
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Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
The SWAT team was told not only that was there already a fatality and a hostage situation, but that the house had been doused in gasoline. So the fact that the victim answered the door in his shorts and apparently unarmed didn't eliminate the perceived danger.
They killed the hostage. In any reasonable police training exercise they would have been failed as shooting an unarmed person who answered the door. Do you know who is forced, at gunpoint, to answer the door unarmed in hostage situations? Hostages.
Rationalize and lie best you can. Those police have a murderer hiding behind the law and some of them know it.
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Swatting is just plain retarded, I don't understand how can someone find it a 'funny prank'. Everything has limits and you don't joke about life threatening situations or stuff that can cause harm to others. During my studies I managed to spend a couple summers in the U.S. and I had a great time with fellow students, but I never understood some of their pranks (albeit by far not as dangerous as swatting) - it just wasn't funny for me. To me as an outsider it seems more like a cultural thing - there are just
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Where is the fun? I mean, if you burn down a house you at least get to watch it burn, but when you SWAT someone, you rarely get the chance to be there to see them beat the guy down.
Even if you ignore legality and all, it's not even FUN.
Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
the police would knock on the door politely, walk in calmly, and sit down for some milk and cookies?
Well yes, that's how hostage situations are diffused in much of the rest of the world. The fact that swatting is a thing just shows how fucked up your police are in the first place.
Good reply. Other issues. (Score:3)
There are other issues. Putting someone in prison for years: 1) Damages that person mentally and increases the mental disturbance they have when they enter prison. 2) Costs taxpayers HUGE a
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There are other issues. Putting someone in prison for years: 1) Damages that person mentally and increases the mental disturbance they have when they enter prison. 2) Costs taxpayers HUGE amounts of money.
Fully agree. Can we send a swatting team to this home then to save on cost?
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Norway is rehabilitative, not destructive, to those who commit crimes. Michael Moore's film, Where to Invade Next [imdb.com] explored the system in Norway, and prompted articles like this one: Why Norway's prison system is so successful [businessinsider.com]. Quote from that article: "... when criminals in Norway leave prison, they stay out. It has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world at 20%. The US has one of the highest: 76.6% of prisoners are re-arrested within five years."
At one time, The US was not so bad at the rehab concept. Folsom Prison is an example.Back in the day, they had a low recidivism rate, then the "get tough on crime" crowd took over, and now it is an overcrowded shithole with a nice high recidivism rate.
It is obvious that the get tough on crime ideal has worked about as well as the War on Drugs.
So you end up wondering why so many people still believe in an obviously failed paradigm.
Here's why - a fair percentage of the American people have deathlust.
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Maximum penalty for that one - classify swatting as attempted homicide or homicide depending on the outcome.
That would cut down the numbers quite fast. And no repeat offenders.
Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
But the bulk of the burden of this "incident" (for lack of a better term.. maybe "debacle"?) falls squarely upon the guy who made the false report,
Bull. Fucking. Shit. The bulk of the burden falls directly upon the cop who pulled the trigger. A lesser share of it goes to the piece of shit who called the cops. An even lesser share of it goes to the piece of shit who gave someone else's address when asked for his own. The cops were locked and loaded, the guy who called the cops pulled the trigger, but the guy who gave someone else's address to someone who wanted to have him killed pointed the gun.
But you can never, ever take the ultimate responsibility out of the shooter's hands. He has the ultimate responsibility to prevent an unwarranted shooting, whether he is a cop or not. Anyone who cannot handle that responsibility should be disarmed immediately. That goes with the territory.
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What did I think would happen? Luckily the summary offers an answer:
more than 20 police cars surrounded her apartment building for at least half an hour
Oh look. Identical fucking situation but instead of murdering some poor sod on his own doorstep the police used some fucking intelligence instead.
Sorry, no, that's not what I think would happen. I think the US police would go in gung-ho and murder some poor cunt because that's how fucking stupid they are.
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What the hell did you think would happen - the police would knock on the door politely, walk in calmly, and sit down for some milk and cookies?
Umm... yes, that's how you deal with hostage situations in most other parts of this planet. You knock at the door, you tell them to surrender and that there's someone here willing and able to talk to them if they want to so they could find a way out of the mess.
Remember, you're standing behind a bulletproof shield while saying that. Unless the guy inside has a bazooka, you can still afterwards go in and gun everything down in sight should he actually be dumb enough to open fire. Because then you also have E
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I think there is plenty of fault to go around to all parties in this -- the police and the SWATter. The actions of the police, at least the officer who fired and perhaps others, rise to the level of manslaughter. Calling in the police under the pretext the SWATter used should be a felony, and any deaths that resulted from that should be considered felony murder. The police higher up in the administration, and the department as a whole, should be civilly liable in a wrongful death claim. In other words, the
Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Prankster"? That doesn't even begin to describe the act of getting armed police to think a life-or-death situation is going on, and that the perpetrators are your target. Even the best police occasionally make mistakes, and anyone who sets someone else up to be at the receiving end of a situation where deadly force is authorized has a reasonable chance of getting his target killed. The caller was the murderer and the police were his weapon, just as if he had hired a hit man.
Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
> Even the best police occasionally make mistakes
Yes, but with the US police "mistakes" seem to be the norm and it is news when one of their innocent victims does not even gets hurt.
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There are nearly a million police officers in the US. How many of these sort of mistakes do you hear about every day? The number of officers making mistakes is a tiny fraction of 1%, and most of those officers making mistakes don't do it often. Yes there are bad apples out there, but the overwhelming majority of officers are not. And I would not say it is "the norm". If you say that, then you'd have to say that Americans killing/raping/robbing other Americans is "the norm" too. It's not. It's a fairly rare
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Unfortunately, the "overwhelming majority" is overwhelmingly likely to cover up for the bad apples.
In answer to your question, We hear about police shooting unarmed civilians at a rate of more than one per week. In 2015, US police shot 94 unarmed civilians. In 2016, the number was 51 and in 2017, it was 68
Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the "overwhelming majority" is overwhelmingly likely to cover up for the bad apples.
My cure for the "blue wall" problem would be to take police malpractice judgements directly out of the police retirement fund, rather than the city's general fund. Good officers would then rush to turn in the bad apples.
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Muslims are not paid (by taxpayers) to protect us (the taxpayers).
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Some things actually call for a much lower error rate. Operating a nuclear plant, flying commercial jet, killing people with your gun, etc.
In two of those 3 cases, any incident results in a thorough investigation and changes to procedures and practices to make sure it doesn't happen again. In the third, it gets swept under the rug.
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My observation of two people I know who became police officers is that the job and their colleagues changed them from nice people into utter bastards who prejudge everyone.
1% is bullshit. There might be 1% who maintain a reasonable outlook and don't prejudge people and situations. But the rest do not. They didn't get into the police by getting straight As.
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What did I think? Police should act with caution. (Score:4, Interesting)
The caller was the murderer and the police were his weapon, just as if he had hired a hit man.
If police are just a weapon, then we should get rid of them. Police should be thinking professionals who protect the public, not shoot the public because someone on the phone told them to. They should know what swatting is, act accordingly. At least that is how I think I should be spending my tax dollars.
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If police are just a weapon, then we should get rid of them.
But... second amendment!
Seriously, nobody said the police are just a weapon. Where I live, we had two car attacks last year resulting in seven deaths, but nobody would claim that a car is just a weapon.
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"Prankster"? That doesn't even begin to describe the act of getting armed police to think a life-or-death situation is going on, and that the perpetrators are your target. Even the best police occasionally make mistakes, and anyone who sets someone else up to be at the receiving end of a situation where deadly force is authorized has a reasonable chance of getting his target killed.
Speaking of being rather dismissive, an "occasional mistake" ended a mans life. I hope that the hype surrounding the concept of swatting doesn't bury the fact that a family deserves some answers for that fuck-up. Society has grown tired of finding the "occasional" happening perhaps more than necessary.
The caller was the murderer and the police were his weapon, just as if he had hired a hit man.
OK, enough with the ignorance already. Every US military leader would not take kindly to being labeled a mass murderer, and they certainly have engaged vast armies of "weapons" authorized to use deadly forc
Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, enough with the ignorance already. Every US military leader would not take kindly to being labeled a mass murderer,
...but most of them absolutely are, because they were not fighting a war to protect people, but to protect profits [usatoday.com] . Who gives a fuck how they feel about being called what they are? Ignorance is no excuse, either. It's your responsibility to do your homework before killing people.
Also intent matters, which is exactly why he's being charged with involuntary manslaughter and not murder.
That's wrong, though. His intent was to get someone killed. He should be charged with first-degree murder [wikipedia.org], since it was "willful and premeditated with malice aforethought." Or with being an accessory or accomplice to same, as I have argued, although I am fast coming around to the idea that the cop is the accomplice (and guilty of voluntary manslaughter) and the SWATter is the murderer in the first degree. He planned the murder (via SWAT team) and then carried it out. The only reason anyone SWATs anyone is because they know that it is dangerous [motherjones.com], and that the danger goes up to and includes the death of the victim (and possibly innocent bystanders, maybe even babies [cnn.com].)
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Should all swatters be charged with attempted murder even when nobody was injured or killed?
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Should all swatters be charged with attempted murder even when nobody was injured or killed?
Yes. That was an easy one! If it's not appropriate, then let them bargain their way down to whatever is.
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Re: What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing it to hiring a hitman is actually the best analogy I've seen in all this mess.
If you hire a hitman, you are guilty of the murder. So is the hitman. You are BOTH guilty. In the same vein, both the *spits* prankster AND the officer who fired the killing shot are guilty.
Re: What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
For murder there must be intent or premeditation.. I doubt the policeman knew he was sent to kill an innocent man. Manslaughter would be a more appropriate charge for him.
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Well, if you point a gun at someone, then pull the trigger, that is premeditation. So the issue is not murder or manslaughter, I would have thought. The policeman would claim to be operating in the course of protecting someones life (including his own).
All the discussions here seem to be whose fault it was. Clearly, the caller has some responsibility, and also the police. But, at the same time, there has to be the issue of the gun obsessed violent society. Always easy to pass the blame on to other people.
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Well, if you point a gun at someone, then pull the trigger, that is premeditation.
Unless the SWAT officer left the station "OH BOY I GET TO KILL SOMEONE TODAY!!!!" it's not premeditation. They are trained to be quick with the trigger because if they aren't, they may be the ones dead. Add adrenaline and stress to the mix and the trigger finger may get a little too quick, which is what happened here.
... But, at the same time, there has to be the issue of the gun obsessed violent society.
That and the fact that the local police are becoming more militarized. I get it, Chicago may need a SWAT team or two, but podunkville police with a town population of 10k doesn't need an ar
Re: What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are trained to be quick with the trigger because if they aren't, they may be the ones dead.
And that would not be a worse outcome than a dead innocent non-police.
Police, firemen and emergency medical personnel used to be expected to put themselves in harm's way to protect people. Protecting themselves was secondary to protecting innocents. They took oaths on doing so, and people were proud of them for it.
When did this change?
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Firemen and emergency medical personnel seem to still do that.
Firemen, at least, yes. And people like Medicines Sans Frontiers.
And I am proud of them. They willingly put their lives on the line so all of us can have better lives.
I'm sure there still are policemen who would do that too, and not just look out for #1. But they seem to be few and far between these days.
I have no respect for police anymore. None. I have fear.
That is not the way it should be, and it is not my fault.
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I agree that it doesn't appear to be premeditated homicide by the police, but manslaughter seems too mild a term. What do you call murder by premeditated incompetence?
Re: What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, this is not a good analogy. Swatting was recognized as a prank before this incident. And intent matters.
Anyone who has ever thought of swatting as a prank is an idiot who should be removed from the gene pool.
Intent matters you say? The intent of swatting is to send an armed force to someone's house, believing they may have to kill someone. Swatting needs to be stomped down on hard. Ruin some lives. Make an example of them. Make others think "Hmm, maybe I should just stick to posting shit on 4chan."
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It's still obviously much more the police's fault than his.
Hogwash. The responsibility for this man's death lies solely with the criminal who made the call. It's called proximate cause [wikipedia.org].
But for his phone call, the police would never have gone to the residence and interacted with the man.
This murder lies solely with the criminal whose panties got in an uproar and who thought he'd be tricky and get back at the guy. Congratulations, he played himself.
Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called proximate cause
Only in a Civil case.
The responsibility for this man's death lies solely with the criminal who made the call.
Obviously not..... there's something wrong here, that a random person anywhere in the world can make a caller-id spoofed VoIP call to a police department anywhere in the US: impersonate the addressee/target, conjure up a pretend emergency, and incite sufficient panic that the police go on a shooting spree and kill people.
How about: The simplified proximate CAUSE of the death is unreasonable actions by the police, which the SWATter could not have entirely anticipated, But the police in this situation Violated their Duty to serve and protect the public and killed innocent people. What about that? Where are the consequences for that, for the officers' gross misconduct?
Re:What did you THINK would happen? (Score:4, Informative)
It's still obviously much more the police's fault than his. They straight up murdered someone without even giving him time to react. A judgement was made based on incomplete information and a person was executed. Police being willing to murder someone over mere suspicions is the real issue. This idiot prankster should be punished but the murder of this man is a symptom of the way police are trained/operate. Now, they are trying to displace responsibility and clean their hands. In the end, the prankster didn't pull the trigger and there is no reasonable world in which one should expect to be killed by police over a prank phone call.
Absolutely agree. Putting the spotlight 100% on the prankster is creating the perfect storm in which to simply bury the actions of SWAT behind the hype of a swatting story. I sure as hell hope not, as the family DESERVES a fair investigation of ALL parties involved. The prankster certainly had a part in this and earned his punishment, but he wasn't the one who pulled the trigger and ended an innocent mans life.
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The prankster certainly had a part in this and earned his punishment, but he wasn't the one who pulled the trigger and ended an innocent mans life.
Culpability isn't a limited resource. The swatter is 100% responsible for calling a heavily armed force in and pretending a live-and-death situation, thus being fully responsible for an outcome that will occasionally occur in this situation. If you pull the trigger on someone with a single bullet somewhere in six chambers and the gun does kill him, of course you are not just 16% responsible for his death.
That does not change that the policeman is 100% responsible for not being up to the requirements of this situation. There must be consequences for both, but the fault of the respective other does not lessen each of the involved person's blame in any manner.
Your argument about culpability tends to fall flat when we have a legal system that has added aiding, abetting, and accessory as methods of differentiation that also tend to influence punishment. Another example of how hollow that can be is looking at the lack of charges against a bartender who aided the patron who ends up taking a life after driving drunk.
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It's still obviously much more the police's fault than his.
You're a fucking idiot. This brainless psychopath sat at home and decided to have fun by sending the police into a situation where the expected a dangerous armed person holding hostages. Without him doing this, the police would have stayed at their police station and nothing would have happened.
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Suppose that there is a real situation with a dangerous armed person holding hostages, and I call the police but there is a typo in the address that I give. Suppose that the police does their SWAT thing at this wrong address and kills someone innocent. Who's fault is it now?
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In the end, the prankster didn't pull the trigger and there is no reasonable world in which one should expect to be killed by police over a prank phone call.
Exactly. That's why the police/man who pulled the trigger ought to get Life imprisonment, and the person who did the SWAT'ing should get 20 years.
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He didn't make a 'prank call', stop calling it that. Read what he said to the emergency operators. He was convincing enough to get them to think this was a time critical situation. That they hadn't gotten time to ask around.
If someone call in a bomb threat and say that the bomb will detonate in 45 minutes and gives enough information so that everyone involved takes the threat is serious enough, you are not going to want the responders to take a few hours to get a second or third source to verify the threat.
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Re: What did you THINK would happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no. I agree, undertrained, underpaid and trigger-happy american police forces played a big role in this.
But this guy swatted multiple persons in multiple states! Even if our police is far less trigger happy, I am quite shure that you could get someone killed if you repeat the swatting often enough.
This guy played russian roulette with other peoples lives countless times.
- He should have been stopped long ago.
- Police should be able to detect spoofed or suppressed caller IDs.
- Police should de-escalate a hostage situation, not fire shots into unarmed people.
But this was murder: Not only did he know that the US police forces are badly trained and militarized, so he was able to see the danger he was putting his victims into. He did it repeatedly so even by european standards I would argue that eventually, he will get someone killed or badly injured.
He knew that but did not care - he even went to jail for swatting and continued. He knew of the danger. He did nothing to defuse the situation, he did everything to let the danger appear imminent. Now he got someone killed.
He is a murderer. No police failure could change that.
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But this guy swatted multiple persons in multiple states! Even if our police is far less trigger happy, I am quite shure that you could get someone killed if you repeat the swatting often enough.
Get someone killed? Yes. Kill someone? No.
He is a murderer. No police failure could change that.
No, he is not a murderer. He is an accomplice or accessory to murder. The cop who killed the victim is a murderer.
Re: What did you THINK would happen? (Score:2)
This is not how it works. His call was the conditio sine qua non the shooting would not have happened. He knew of the danger his criminal actions posed to other peoples lifes, he simply did not care.
He did it for thrills and for money.
He killed this guy by proxy, but he still killed that guy.
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By that reasoning, the cop wasn't the murderer either. The guy was killed by a bullet that wasn't even attached to the gun he was holding at the time.
This is the point I keep going back and forth on. But no, your post has clinched it for me. The cop is the murderer. Because the whole point of sending a cop and not a cruise missile or a manhack or a doberman is that he's supposed to be capable of not firing the gun.
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He didn't pull a trigger. He killed no one. The cops did.
Although I think you are a fucking idiot for thinking like that, let's assume you are right and this case was the cop's fault.
Can we then agree that any slashdot reader in the future who has read that the cops are mindless killers, and who makes a swatting call, is now fully aware that he or she is sending mindless killers to a person's home, and is therefore guilty of premeditated murder?
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He didn't pull a trigger. He killed no one.
Sounds like Felony Murder to me. Here's the classic example for those who have forgotten:
My buddy and I decide to rob a bank. We have no weapons of any sort, we're going to fake it. I stay in the getaway card outside. My buddy goes in, tells the clerk to give him the money. The guy standing in line next to him panics, has a heart attack, and dies. The getaway driver (that would be me) is guilty of Felony Murder.
Psychopath (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Psychopath (Score:5, Insightful)
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His earlier response shows he's a psychopath, so there' no doubt that he's only feeling remorseful "for the cameras", so to speak.
He said basically "I understand that I'm not the only one who suffered. The family of the victim is also suffering".
That's a psychopath for you. And when people say they are sorry for the family of the victim, they should first and foremost feel sorry for the victim, who is now lying in a coffin six foot deep.
Good for him! (Score:2)
Good for him! It makes you worry about the ones smart enough to avoid getting caught although.
SWAT teams should better confirm their targets anyway...
And the police (Score:2, Informative)
As a European the sole focus on the author of the call is really stunning. Itâ(TM)s like itâ(TM)s only his fault and not in any way the fault of your police who tend to shoot way too many innocent people. EU has twice the number of inhabitant as the US and how many EU citizen get killed by the Police? For Germany it is 15x less. why? because in Europe police officer know that there will be consequences for killing an innocent citizen. In US most of the police officer just go away with it.
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Also as a European, I do fully understand that if a heavily armed team like a SWAT team is sent in, they will be expecting a certain situation. Now, the question is, why were they and not a nomal police unit sent in on the basis of one call? (I'm not saying there wasn't a reason, just thinking out loud.) I agree that the US and other places have issues with police using excessive force but in this case their actions were the result of a multitude of contributory factors. Highly armed response units like thi
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Re: And the police (Score:2)
Which had nothing to do with armored cops being trained to kill civilians freely.
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I can understand the heavily armed response, I just don't understand why heavily armed police aren't also highly trained.
Highly armed response units like this are trained to shoot because generally that's what they need to do.
No. Normally they need to be present in case a situation escalates, but most of their deployments end peacefully or without shots being fired. They should be trained to shoot only when necessary.
On this occasion it pretty fucking clearly wasn't necessary.
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Ridiculous! Did you know that the amount of people regularly carrying loaded guns in the US is larger than that in the EU?
In order to be able to carry a gun on your person ready to use in the EU you have to show that you have a reason for that (under severe threat of deadly violence), you have to be in a position where you have no reason to have constant police protection and you have to be sane, very experienced with handling weapons etc. Very few people will ever get that permission - and rightly so IMO.
T
One down, at least one to go (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so this douchebag will get what's coming to him. We're still missing at least one person, though: The cop who shot an innocent, unarmed person. You know, the guy who did the actual killing.
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DA said they're still determining if they're going to charge the cop or not, so that's not decided yet. But the caller was an easier decision, I guess.
Person A kills person B. No obvious extenuating circumstances, seeing as Person B wasn't armed, was not threatening Person A, in fact wasn't even near Person A. This should not be a difficult decision - and _would_not_be_ if the guy weren't a cop. The only real question is what to charge him with.
I'm still wondering about the guy who gave the caller a wrong a
what about the officer? (Score:2)
Re: what about the officer? (Score:3)
Share, hell. He is the sole killer.
Re:what about the officer? (Score:5, Informative)
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Then shooting to kill was still an asinine idea, if he was holding a dead mans switch. Just another bullshit excuse for trigger happy cops.
Not at range at armored cops with bulletproof shields.
Try
"a little of remorse" (Score:3, Insightful)
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Which is eleven years according to the summary, for involuntary manslaughter. It's not murder without intent. He's a dumb-ass, not a murderer.
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IF you look at his past and posts I think Murder would have been more appropriate charge, it seems obvious his intent was to get someone hurt or killed, though I guess for prosecutors manslaughter will be the easier to prove and at least keeps him off the streets for a few more years.
Personally I wouldn't be opposed to murder charges with the possibility of death penalty (let a jury decide his fate). It's one thing for a stupid 15yo kid to do this their first time (though they still should be punished).
"Barriss, 25, was already well known to local law enforcement. Glendale Police Sgt. Daniel Suttles said he was behind at least two dozen fake bomb threats in the area in recent years, including incidents that prompted the evacuations of television stations and an elementary school."
"In M
15,000 life sentences woo hoo ha ha hah!!!1!!1!!! (Score:2)
Feed the Gulag!
A Northern Point of View (Score:2)
To add another source for the attempted swat in Calgary.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
One has to wonder what would happen if he wound up facing a crown prosecutor in Calgary. I'm just curious how many charges he would be hit with under the Criminal Code of Canada.
I believe he would be busted if he tried doing either land air or sea to get into this country.
why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? (Score:2, Insightful)
why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? they killed an unarmed man for no reason.
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why isn't the SWAT team in jail as well? they killed an unarmed man for no reason.
They didn't kill an unarmed man for no reason. They killed an unarmed man because a psychopath convinced them to expect an armed murderer holding hostages.
Assume that an armed person enters a house, kills one inhabitant, holds the rest hostage, and a neighbour calls the police with exactly the same message as this psychopath. A SWAT team will arrive, and the situation will be dangerous for the killer. However, the killer has the advantage (compared to the innocent victim in this case) that he can expect
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It could have been a hostage sent to open the door. So yes, they have killed an unarmed man for no reason.
i don't disagree with this person's sentence (Score:2)
but it'd also be nice if our cops weren't so eager to fucking kill people at the drop of a hat.
what a dick (Score:2)
I never intended for anyone to get shot and killed.
Just to waste tax dollars (sending the police nowhere).
And to waste police time, potentially diverting them from an actual emergency where some unintended victim might die.
People should also comment (Score:2)
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How many fatal encounters do you think there are, exactly? Let me enlighten you with some actual facts:
According to the FBI UCR, the total number of arrests (not traffic stops but arrests) in 2015 was 10,797,088. Probably double that for traffic tickets and other "interactions". Out of all those arrests, approximately 965 were fatally shot. Of those, 564 were armed with a gun, 281 had a weapon of some kind, only 90 were unarmed and essentially all of them were attacking officers, resisting arrest or felony
Charge the police!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
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Manslaughter is under charging (Score:3)
The manslaughter charge is actually under charging the swatting perpetrator. A more reasonable charge would be negligent homicide or Murder 2. If suicide by cop is a thing, swatting is essentially murder by cop or attempted murder, depending. It is equivalent in culpability to putting on a blindfold and firing into a crowded street. You are not trying to kill anyone by aiming at them, but by taking those actions, any reasonable person can assume that someone is likely to be killed. Much like a gun, police officers responding to active shooter/hostage situations can be counted on to act a specific way, and like a gun they are deadly in their intent.
Manslaughter is more along the lines of a bar fight where you are both equally responsible for starting the altercation, but the other guy has a bad heart and dies during the fight. You didn't mean to kill the guy and his death was not an expected outcome of some drunken fisticuffs.
Cops are trained to behave a certain way when responding to a violent felony/murder/hostage situation. They are keyed up expecting to be facing an armed person who just killed an innocent victim and is likely to do so again at a moments notice. They are still imperfect humans that make mistakes of a fraction of a second, and the fact that an innocent person was killed in this case is a tragedy that that police officer will have to live with for the rest of his life.
All the pinheads saying the cop is a murderer need to look up the definition of murder, namely, that the perpetrator needs malicious intent specifically against the victim. The cop who fatally shot the victim never laid eyes on him before that moment and by definition harbored no ill will against him, it was the victims bad luck that he made some sudden move, innocent though it may have actually been, that caused the officer to shoot, expecting to protect innocent lives and/or his fellow officers from what he understood to be an armed murderer.
I hope the swatting perpetrator gets a very public trial and gets the maximum sentence as well as a civil suit that takes every penny he ever makes. Swatting as a practice needs to be severely punished and treated as attempted murder with every incident and investigated both locally and by the FBI. A few more cases like this and we might actually get some investment in proper infrastructure that eliminates spoofing caller IDs (all emergency lines should be able to trace the call back to a house number, IP phones should either be blocked from emergency services, or require a credit card/drivers license pre-authentication to a physical address to access emergency numbers over VOIP). Sure, there will still be a few hundred people on the planet who can place emergency calls anonymously, but no system is perfect, the perpetrator in this case certainly is no hacking genius.
Re:Too harsh IMHO. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you rob a 7-11 at gun point, and the clerk pulls a gun in self defense and accidently shoots a bystander, not only might you get charged with murder the clerk might not be.
If someone dies as a result of a crime you committed, you can be charged with murder.
In this case, the 'prank' was to commit a felony by intentionally reporting a false alarm. For the express purpose of having an armed force dispatched into a private residence, and to maximize their tension by leading them to believe they were likely going into an extremely volatile situation with an armed murderer.
"He didn't pull the trigger."
So fucking what? What's next? You'll be telling me that mafia bosses who send thugs to intimidate people aren't responsible for any injuries or deaths that result...
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Say I was legally carrying a gun at that 7-11, and the clerk said "help this robber is going to shoot me!". If he was actually holding a gun on the clerk at that point and I shot him, I wouldn't get charged. If I summarily executed him without bothering to even look and it turned out he was not in fact holding a gun on anyone, I'd be locked up for decades. That's more along the lines of what happened here.
What if it was a replica gun that couldn't actually shoot anyone? What if he was wearing a ski mask and pointing something at the clerk but your view was obstructed? What if you by some strange mistake you had wandered into a film recording or training exercise? The threat doesn't have to be real, if:
1. It would seem real to a reasonable person
2. You acted in good faith to save the clerk's life
3. The response appeared necessary both in terms of force and urgency
then I'd acquit you no matter what the real tr
YAAFM (Score:2)
Re: Too harsh IMHO. (Score:2)
How many more murders will these trigger-happy law enforcers commit while this dumb kid rots in a torture camp?
Re: Not at all. (Score:2)
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Re: Felony Murder? (Score:2)
He tried multiple times. That is a way to increase the odds.
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