Two Teenaged Gamers Plead 'Not Guilty' For Fatal Kansas Swatting Death (reuters.com) 149
Two more men entered pleas in federal court for their roles in a SWAT call that led to a fatal police shooting in Kansas: not guilty. An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
Shane Gaskill, 19, of Wichita, Kansas, and Casey Viner, 18, from a suburb of Cincinnati, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday and remained free on $10,000 bond, court records showed. Both of the suspects live with their parents, local media reported. In the so-called "swatting" incident, in which someone falsely reports an emergency requiring a police response, Viner got upset at Gaskill over a video game they played online, federal prosecutors said, and Viner contacted a known "swatter"...and asked him to make the false report to police at an address that had been provided by Gaskill. Viner did not know that Gaskill no longer lived at the address, but Gaskill knew, prosecutors said.
After media reports of the shooting, Gaskill urged [swatter Tyler] Barriss to delete their communications and Viner wiped his phone, according to the indictment... Barriss and Viner face federal charges of conspiracy and several counts of wire fraud. Viner and Gaskill were charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, and Gaskill was also charged with wire fraud and additional counts of obstruction of justice.
In a jailhouse interview in January, Barriss told a local news team that "Whether you hang me from a tree, or you give me 5, 10, 15 years... I don't think it will ever justify what happened... I hope no one ever does it, ever again. I hope it's something that ceases to exist."
In April, while still in jail, Barriss gained access to the internet then posted "All right, now who was talking shit? >:) Your ass is about to get swatted."
After media reports of the shooting, Gaskill urged [swatter Tyler] Barriss to delete their communications and Viner wiped his phone, according to the indictment... Barriss and Viner face federal charges of conspiracy and several counts of wire fraud. Viner and Gaskill were charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, and Gaskill was also charged with wire fraud and additional counts of obstruction of justice.
In a jailhouse interview in January, Barriss told a local news team that "Whether you hang me from a tree, or you give me 5, 10, 15 years... I don't think it will ever justify what happened... I hope no one ever does it, ever again. I hope it's something that ceases to exist."
In April, while still in jail, Barriss gained access to the internet then posted "All right, now who was talking shit? >:) Your ass is about to get swatted."
Execute Barriss (Score:5, Informative)
He said he would do it again, voluntarily, while in prison for it. He knows it can lead to death because that's why he is behind bars yet he says he will not stop. He has no remorse and is trying to keep swatting from inside prison.
Re:Execute Barriss (Score:5, Funny)
To Barriss: "I heard you like games - so we start the show 'The Running Man' and you are the first participant."
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a better idea: change the policing policies so that swat teams aren't deployed for stupid shit like online squabbles. Of course, then we can't push the police state agenda without those hair trigger militarized police.
Re: Execute Barriss (Score:1)
They were not deployed for an online anything. They were deployed for a hostage situation that just happened to be fake.
I do not know why SWAT cannot use FLIR...it would have prevented this.
Re: Execute Barriss (Score:5, Interesting)
the idea of swatting only started when the police started responding to everything with heavily armed SWAT.
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So police shouldn't response with people with training and equipment for a certain situation? Hope you think the same thing if you ever get caught in a robbery as a hostage...
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Re: Execute Barriss (Score:5, Insightful)
With a SWAT team showing up, my chances of surviving a small robbery turned hostage situation starts to drop fast. I would prefer enough law enforcement to lock down the area & one very good hostage negotiator.
Re: Execute Barriss (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. I don't even know where to start in a reply to that post. The only thing I agree with is most law enforcement do not have experience with hostage situations. The rest is pretty wacky. The war on drugs is not at all a real war. It's a tragic business of law, prisons, & money. Trillions spent on it & you can still score dope anywhere. Some day maybe we will completely change our because we all know what we are doing now is a total failure.
BLM & Antifa deploying guerrilla tactics? I'm not sure if your serious but if you are, citation please. Fake 911 calls are usually mentally ill suicide by cop situations. Please link these "occasional YouTube movies". I think your thinking of regular hollywood movies.
Re: Execute Barriss (Score:1)
To be fair, guru up there, and guys like him, always thought that the cops would only behave that way towards dark skinned people.
After all, it is a well known fact in his mind that Chicago is full of AR 15s, Teflon coated bullets and has been a solid supporter of the NRA, voting heavily Republican in every election since Lincoln, who many people don't know was a Republican and freed the slaves. Lots of people are saying.
Or maybe it is that a dark skinned guy with a sweatshirt looks scarier than an open car
Re: Execute Barriss (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that most law enforcement aren't trained to handle hostage situations and unless you deal with it every day there is no way you can get someone good in every precinct.
Wait a second... let me get this straight.
There is no way you can get a good negotiator in every precinct... but you can get a heavily armored SWAT team in every precinct instead?
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They should respond, but they need a lot more training, apparently. Including figuring out when the report is false (without killing people) and making sure the person they can see is a bad guy and not a hostage. Trigger happy police increase rather than decrease danger to the public.
We've gotten to the point where an officer shot a GROUNDHOG that "lunged at him menacingly".
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So police shouldn't response with people with training and equipment for a certain situation? Hope you think the same thing if you ever get caught in a robbery as a hostage...
The fact that they SHOT an unarmed innocent answering the door is enough to tell you the police responded with people WITHOUT PROPER TRAINING.
Sending heavily armed people without proper training makes the situation worse even in real hostage situation, the thugs are more likely to start shooting, and also adds the chance of hostage getting killed by the police. Add in the possibility of swatting innocent people on top of that, NO, the police should NOT repond with a poorly trained team in ANY situation.
Re: Execute Barriss (Score:2)
The police should be demilitarized. The idea that paramilitary death squads somehow make the public safer is a little silly, to say the least.
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So police shouldn't response with people with training and equipment for a certain situation?
Of course they should. The problem is that they didn't.
As we know they responded with people that clearly didn't have the training or the equipment to deal with the situation.
The consequence is that an innocent man was shot to death.
This is a real situation countering your hypothetical one.
Speaking of hypothetical situations, in this case the swatter used a traceable phone.
You could easily just use a disposable phone and call the police on someone without getting caught.
Just punishing the swatter isn't enou
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the idea of swatting only started when the police started responding to everything with heavily armed SWAT.
Police started responding like that because people demanded, infucking-letter-writing campaign style demanded that police respond in that manner. It's the same way that the black communities demanded more police, and the police engage in stop and fisk like behavior because of crack. That was in the late 90's, it's not hard to find. All the moral outrage mouth pieces from Sharpton to Jackson screeched for it.
People got what they wanted, and they don't like that the police took it at face value.
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How would FLIR prevented anything? Analyzing temperatures of outside surfaces doesn't do much. Not even the current "grail" of terahertz imaging wouldn't have done much, at best it can penetrate thin walls or doors.
Re: Execute Barriss (Score:2)
You can ask in most places for a FLIR energy asssessment (sometimes free). They really can't see through walls, perhaps in video games but there is currently no technology that can actually see through walls (except for windows which FLIR can in some occasions see through as well).
There are some microwave and light wave technologies under development that can "see" through walls but they aren't ready and they can't see very far, very accurate and usually have some requirements like a big opening with a refl
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Oh gee I wonder what houses are made of...thin walls, doors, windows. All things you can see theough with FLIR.
You can't even see through glass with a FLIR camera, much less wood or walls (especially insulated walls). Unless the people inside are extremely hot and pressed up against the walls so the heat transfers through, a FLIR camera is useless. I own two, and they are great at finding drafts or poor insulation but they are useless for looking "into" anything.
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Surely "we have been informed there are hostages on the premises" is reasonable cause?
Shit, they got away with murdering some poor cunt and you think FLIR is less acceptable?
Stupid charge (Score:5, Insightful)
How about you charge the police officers who unjustifiably shot the victim to death with murder first?
Re:Stupid charge (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupid charge (Score:5, Insightful)
The military has ROE.
The police has contempt for anyone else.
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So what you are saying is the caller and the police should be put into the thunderdome?
Re: Stupid charge (Score:5, Insightful)
A hitman and his client are equally guilty: this legal principle goes back thousands of years, and should apply here as well. If a prosecutor refuses to charge the hitman (i.e. the officer), that's a serious problem that needs to be fixed. But refusing to charge the client (i.e. the swatter) just to protest not charging the hitman is counterproductive. Swatting is attempted murder, and swatters should have the book thrown at them.
Re: Stupid charge (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
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when sending cops to somebody's home counts as attempted murder? Britain and Canada don't have this problem,
Everything works in a context. With the realization that the US cops are trigger happy (partly justified because a lot more suspects are armed and dangerous), a swatting call has a decent chance to turn violent. Obviously, a similar attempt in Britain or Canada would be judged in the context of their society.
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I'm Canadian. I hope nobody call the cops on me because yesterday I took some leftover KFC home and now I have two plastic sporks.
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No idea, I've never bought anything from that place but I had friends who ate there a decade ago. I just assumed they still gave plastic sporks in 2018 for the sake of my joke.
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(I hear in Britain the correct strategy is to claim the homeowner shot a burglar, then their version of SWAT will show up. Might've just been a joke, though.)
The British equivalent of SWAT is Specialist Firearms Command [wikipedia.org] (usually referred to as SO19 in films and TV). They train specialist firearms officers, who receive extra training and must pass a battery of psychological tests before they are even accepted for training. There is an automatic investigation in the case of any firearm discharge by one of these officers.
SFC is almost never the first response. An unarmed officer will attempt to judge whether they need to be deployed. When they are deployed,
Re: What the hell is wrong with our country (Score:2)
Besides a few libtards like me on /. bitching about it I've seen zero discussion about what got us to this point.
Way to out yourself as a fake liberal. Go back to /v/, creep.
Re: What the hell is wrong with our country (Score:2)
Huh?
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First of all, Britian and Canada aren't full of gun nuts, and guns we do have generally are used for either recreation, sport or hunting. From my interactions with Americans, it appears a lot of Americans use guns for a purpose other than those listed - namely,
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Point of order: in Canada, a semi-automatic AR-15 is considered a 'restricted' firearm. Most handguns are also 'restricted.' The main difference between a 'restricted' firearm and an 'non-restricted' firearm such as a shotgun or non-AR-15 rifle are a) stricter storage and transport laws, and b) can only be fired at an approved range; not usable for hunting, shootable on public Crown Land, in your back yard if you have the space, and so on.
There's nothing preventing a licensed Canadian gun owner from using
Re:Stupid charge (Score:5, Insightful)
There's enough blame to go around.
But the best thing to do would be to stop sending swat teams as first response.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except if they stopped using swat teams to respond and someone really was being held at gunpoint, as a hostage in their own home? You'd likely create a scenario where the officer who goes in to verify it's not just another prank call winds up getting everyone involved killed. Then, people would be screaming about law enforcement failing to take the call seriously enough and not leveraging the swat team taxpayer dollars funded.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Except if they stopped using swat teams to respond and someone really was being held at gunpoint, as a hostage in their own home? You'd likely create a scenario where the officer who goes in to verify it's not just another prank call winds up getting everyone involved killed.
Why send an officer?
First, observe from afar. If it is determined without doubt that a crime is going in, take actions to stop it. Whether that is a hostage negotiator, sharp shooter, tear gas or other.
If you see that people mill around, grilling, playing croquet and having a good time, you can also safely assume that a report of multiple gunshots and people down is downright false.
If it cannot be determined, send someone non-threatening with training in determining what is going on.
But keep the armed po
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Re: (Score:2)
Except if they stopped using swat teams to respond and someone really was being held at gunpoint, as a hostage in their own home? You'd likely create a scenario where the officer who goes in to verify it's not just another prank call winds up getting everyone involved killed.
Oh? Is America special in this regard? I mean it doesn't routinely happen anywhere else in the world. Maybe if your police officers get people killed because someone has a gun you should train your police officers better and not just approach every situation with military force. ... You know the kind of force which clearly IS getting people killed.
Seriously this isn't Hollywood.
In a hostage situation / murder, send meter maid? (Score:2, Interesting)
--
Barrios told the emergency operator that he had killed his father and âoewas holding his mother and brother at gunpoint.â Barriss allegedly gave the operator the West McCormick address. The caller then âoeinformed the dispatcher that he was considering lighting the house on fire before committing suicide,â the indictment stated.
--
So you've got one victim dead already, or perhaps the gather isn't quite dead and could still be saved. Two more victims are being held hostage. The perpetrat
Re:In a hostage situation / murder, send meter mai (Score:5, Insightful)
Your mistake is assuming that there IS a hostage situation. It's one of many possibilities. First response must be to find out whether something is going on, and if so, what.
A swat team is what you send in if and only if you need someone taken down, not to determine whether it's needed. That's not their job, and they are exceptionally bad at it.
Re: In a hostage situation / murder, send meter ma (Score:2, Insightful)
So when the guy who calls the police claims to have killed one hostage already and is talking about burning down the building before committing suicide, the default response should be "I don't believe you"? This does not strike me as a good idea.
Re: In a hostage situation / murder, send meter ma (Score:4, Interesting)
So when the guy who calls the police claims to have killed one hostage already and is talking about burning down the building before committing suicide, the default response should be "I don't believe you"?
The default response should be that they have understood what he said, and try to get a negotiator involved before hanging up.
At this point, they have a tip that needs to be investigated with urgency. They should not make assumptions that it's either true or false, but determine whether it is. And that determination should never be made by anyone holding a weapon or battering ram. Their job is to take people down, not to determine whether they themselves are wasteful.
Okay *unarmed* people raid a hostage situation? (Score:2)
> that determination should never be made by anyone holding a weapon
Okay, so one person has apparently been murdered and the perp says two more are about to. The perp says he's probably going to kill everyone - including himself. Your suggestion is to send in people who do NOT have weapon, to check to see if the dead is in fact dead? Then when the person you sent radios in "I've been shot!", you don't believe him. Presumably you send in two more unarmed people to see if he has really been shot?
Re: (Score:3)
Okay, so one person has apparently been murdered
I think you have some problems understanding words like "apparently". What makes it apparent?
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So when the guy who calls the police claims to have killed one hostage already and is talking about burning down the building before committing suicide, the default response should be "I don't believe you"? This does not strike me as a good idea.
Infinitely better than running in guns blazing and literally getting people killed. But like in every stupid discussion on slashdot there's a happy medium that exists between doing nothing and fucking showing the site with bullets.
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The SWAT team was quite good in this case. They held their fire. It was the additional cops they brought on the scene who panicked and shot the unarmed person.
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So you shoot the first person to come to the door? Because there's no chance a hostage taker would ever send a hostage with a message for the police rather than making himself an exposed target?
Having a weapon doesn't mean you shoot everyone (Score:2)
Perhaps you aren't aware, but being armed doesn't mean you randomly shoot people. I've been armed every day for years and never shoot anyone. I *almost* had to put a stop to an armed robbery at a store, but fortunately that wasn't necessary.
The proposal which I responded to said sending armed officers to the scene is the wrong response to a 911 call reporting a hostage situation with one person already killed. GGP wasn't entirely clear whether he though 911 should ignore such situations entirely, or send
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And my comment reflects exactly what happened in Kansas.
You send a bunch of people with inadequate discipline in to a situation that's hyped as dangerous with a prevailing attitude that danger is everywhere and that they have an incredibly dangerous job, and arm them to the teeth and somebody is sure to get shot.
If you arm them heavily, you create a disposition to shoot first.
Note, until officers see a shooter or you have multiple reports, all you have is report. I wouldn't suggest they be unarmed, but the
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure?
Forgot to read the subject line? (Score:2)
Did you forget to read even the subject line before replying?
Sending armed, trained people to an apparent hostage situation doesn't mean âshooting people who haven't committed any crimesâ. It means being prepared in case the perp (who says he has already murdered one person) has to be shot.
The proposed solution was to send *unarmed* people into the building to check it out.
Re: In a hostage situation / murder, send meter ma (Score:2)
I'd send a policeman. Not a paramilitary death squad.
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Well that's OK then. Because as we all learned in kindergarten, two wrongs totally make a right.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
This is a situation where actual justice would get messy
and no two wrongs do not make a right but
TWO WONGS MAKE IT WHITE!! (this week only 25% off all formal shirts)
there is a list of folks that should face charges
1 the police admin that set the default stance to SHOOT FIRST SHOOT OFTEN
2 the dispatcher that did not verify anything
3 the officers that went to the call
4 the swatter(s)
everybody on that list should do TIME for their actions and that police department should face a massive Civil Suit (judgment ta
Re: Stupid charge (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what would have happened in the 1970s when I was growing up. Think of Reed and Malloy from Adam 12:
1. Dispatcher gets the call.
2. Dispatcher assigns the call to a pair of uniformed patrolmen in their squad car.
3. Patrolmen arrive and knock on the door
4. Patrolman 1: "We've got a report that you're holding a hostage here."
5. Citizen (suprised): "Huh? There's nothing like that going on here."
6. Patrolman 1: "Do you mind if we come in and have a look around?"
7. Citizen: "Sure."
8. Patrolman enter the home and wander around. They find nothing.
9. Patrolman 1: "Sorry to have bothered you. Must have been a false report. Do you know of anyone who might want to file it?"
10. Citizen: "No idea."
11. Patrolman 1: "We'll turn it over to the detectives. They might come by to ask some questions. If you think of anything, give us a call. Here's my card."
12. Citizen: "No problem. Sorry you had to waste your time."
13. Patrolman 1: "Better to be safe than sorry. We'll let you get back to watching TV."
14. Patrolmen get back in their car and relay the false report to the dispatcher.
While I have no sympathy for the swatters, I also have no sympathy for the police on this one. A simple knock on the door would have sufficed.
This ultimately comes down to an over-militarized police. The solution is simple:
Take away all the hardware. Limit the average patrolman to a sidearm (I'd recommend a .45ACP M1911 rather than a 9mm Glock). Give them a shotgun in the door in case things get dangerous.
No flack vests. No M16s, except for the SWAT team that would rarely be called. If the patrolmen can't handle it, then call SWAT.
If SWAT can't cope with it, police cordon off the area for several blocks and call in the national guard. It's part of why they exist. It's just that now that we've armed police to the teeth, it never happens.
It used to. Get rid of the hardware.
Again, no sympathy for the swatters. I hope they get life. But this is what happens when you over-militarize your police.
"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
- Commander William Adama, Battlestar Galactica
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're describing the national guard now, not what they've been historically.
The national guard's historic role has changed for one reason:
We've over-militarized our police into paranoids who'll shoot first and ask questions later.
Get rid of the military hardware. Stop training multiple generations of police to be paranoid, thinking that every citizen could stab them in the face at any moment.
And no, I'm not kidding [youtube.com]. Surviving Edged Weapons [youtube.com] is a real video produced by the Milwaukee PD in the 1990s. Tha
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Planet: Earth.
Locations (all places I've lived in half a century on the planet, in order of where I lived):
Yankton, South Dakota
Lincoln, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Chicago, Illinois
Several suburbs of Chicago, Illinois
Sioux City, Iowa
Des Moines, Iowa
Several suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa Several feeder-towns of Des Moines, Iowa
Other locations (of which I'm aware via family members or extended stays):
Denver, Colorado
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
Sheveport, Louisiana
Little Rock, Arkansas
Allentown, Pennsyl
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The quote describes our current situation.
In over-militarizing the police and training them to be unrealistically hyper-paranoid, we have created the situation Adama describes.
You knock on the doors of the people you protect and serve. You kick down the doors and shoot anyone you think might cause trouble when fighting the enemies of the state.
We are no longer a people who are protected and served. We are the enemies of the state and are treated as such.
Police work and warfare aren't the same. When you t
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Re: Stupid charge (Score:2)
Almost as dangerous as overnight 7/11 clerk.
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This Washington Post story explains it the story better.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/06/14/two-rival-gamers-allegedly-involved-in-kansas-swatting-death-plead-not-guilty-in-federal-court/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4c37f1c30c49 [washingtonpost.com]
But when Gaskill noticed that Barriss had started following him on Twitter, he realized what the Californian and Viner were plotting. Instead of backing down or running for help, Gaskill taunted the alleged swatter via direct message on Twitter.
“Please try some s–t ,” Gaskill allegedly messaged Barriss on Dec. 28, according to the indictment. “You’re gonna try and swat me its hilarious I’m waiting buddy.”
In one twist, police say that when Gaskill and Barriss were speaking over Twitter, Gaskill gave the alleged swatter an address he claimed was his own — 1033 W. McCormick
.
Gaskill became aware what Viner and Barriss were planning, but instead going to the police, he lied about living at a former address and then taunted Barriss to "Try something please kid". He encouraged Barris to carry out his threat knowing that innocent
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Of soliciting the hack? Of course. Next question?
Ridiculous (Score:2, Interesting)
This Gaskill guy was the intended victim of the swatting, but he gave a false address. He's so far detached from the actual crime that I don't think he should be charged with anything and shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of other people.
He's being charged with wire fraud and obstruction of justice, which seem to be the standard charges for people who haven't actually done anything. It's amazing how often you see these charges used.
Knowingly destroyed evidence, urged others (Score:5, Informative)
âoeNeed to delete everything,â he messaged, the indictment said. âoeThis is a murder case now. ⦠This isnâ(TM)t a joke.â
He wiped his phone and told the other people involved to do the same - while saying "this is a murder case". Intentionally destroying evidence in murder case, knowing it's a murder case, sounds like obstruction of justice.
He's being charged with obstruction of justice.
He apparently not being charged for taunting the guy after the swat threat, saying oh yeah just try to swat me. My address is ...
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You can't obstruct justice in the USA because there are zero legal prosecutors or police forces now that the Republic has been re-inhabited.
The courts disagree with you, and they're the authority on how the law is interpreted.
Your Birth Certificate is a bond; You are executor of a corporation
Ah, sorry. You're a fucking looney. Could I suggest you avoid trying this shit with actual law enforcement or justice officials as it will end very badly for you.
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Re: Not Being Charged for the Death (Score:2)
So they're being railroaded with vague catch-all charges, as a smokescreen to shield the murderous law enforcers from public scrutiny. Nice!
Sounds like the police screwed up (Score:1)
This is why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
Nice things like a paramilitary police force.
Damn (Score:1)
Fatal deaths are the worst.
Improved fail-safe swat's (Score:1)
Perhaps there should be a small radio-controlled explosive mounted around the neck of all cops.
That way you could send out an emergency auto-destruct command, in case you deploy them in the wrong direction by mistake.
blink
[ CANCEL MISSION ]
blink
lets be sensible here (Score:2)
Seriously folks: Back In The Day HANGINGS were PUBLIC for very good reasons
Dead people don't become repeat offenders, and when the word on the street is "remember Jimmy, he was boiled in oil on national television for his crimes" that's a fairly significant deterrent.
People commit crimes for three very specific