> Barriss pretended there was a hostage situation at the Wichita house that previously belonged to Viner’s Call of Duty enemy.
While this is terrible, police have no choice but to operate under the assumption that the 911 call is in good faith. From what I read, the police seem to have been acting appropriately for a hostage situation. I would certainly be wary of ruses to make me drop my guard if I thought I was entering a hostage environment.
They had him with his hands up and shot him. They claim he was going for his waste band but there was no gun there.
Pulling up your pants is not a reason to get shot. Other jurisdictions don’t seem to have the same problem of shooting people who have already surrendered.
I certainly believe there are plenty of things that can be improved in training. However, in a supposed hostage situation I would imagine it is quite tricky to know that this isn't a trick. How do you know this person isn't meant to disarm you and then someone else takes you hostage and now the situation is worse?
EDIT: You are right, that was a poor example for this situation. I can't reply to you, but the only point I'm trying to make is that it is very easy to see this situation after the fact. But I would imagine it is next to impossible to verify some of these facts in real time with confidence.
I don’t see how that has any relevance to the situation where this man was shot. Police were arrayed out in front of the house and he came out the front door with his hands up. Somehow he was going to disarm every cop on the lawn?
Back in reality the police shot a man who already surrendered and was unarmed. This would be a war crime on a battlefield, but the police are held to a lower standard.
I don't think that is a fair comparison. In most situations there is no reason to presume danger when you pull over a car. If you are responding to a hostage call, well then you very well should assume it is a dangerous situation.
> How many hostage calls are real, vs. fake?
How do you propose verifying if a situation is real vs fake short of entering the premise prepared for a real situation?
For starters; he had to call a general, city line, to get the public (non-local, 10 digit) line for the dispatchers, so he could actually call the '911' (three digit) line.
From what I gather, The area code itself is a give-away.
If you say 'what about people who just moved, but haven't changed their number yet,' then I'd say that the dispatchers (should) be able to see if it was a honest 911 (three digit), or the public line (10 digit.)
The plea bargain says that he used VoIP to appear to be calling from the local area code (although I agree that the dispatchers could still be informed whether the call was placed by 911 or via a 10-digit emergency number—but currently VoIP subscribers might also be able to register their self-reported location, in which case a distant VoIP 911 call might conceivably look the same to a dispatcher as a nearby VoIP 911 call).
Easily spoofed, and the phone company will laugh in your face if you ask them for the billing address of the person who called you at 10:37pm on Nov 12, 2018.
I believe that the defendant in this case did frequently spoof caller ID, so relying on that wouldn't be particularly helpful. But 911 operators do also already receive more information about who is calling them, and perhaps the quality of that information can be improved and augmented.
(I think this is tough in the general VoIP case because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency—which in my opinion are usually good things that are not primarily used to murder people. Even if VoIP operators verify some kind of information about subscribers' identities before allowing them to establish service, it's not completely clear what they should ideally report to 911 services in all cases because they'll presumably never be certain of the end-user's identity and location at a particular moment. And for other purposes, users of the phone network might want to reduce how much the phone companies know about their whereabouts.)
But 911 operators do also already receive more information about who is calling them, and perhaps the quality of that information can be improved and augmented.
Yeah, I didn't say the information didn't exist, I'm saying the phone company makes it basically impossible to get, and certainly the most difficult for home customers.
because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency
I don't care. If you're calling me, I should be able to find out who's paying for the call, and the phone company knows this info. Sure, there's still an "over 9000 proxies" bug, but that's not the problem. The problem is robocallers and telemarketers, and I should be able to configure my line to block every call that originates from any portion of that billing entity. Heck, when I describe it that way it could be blockchain'd!
> How do you propose verifying if a situation is real vs fake short of entering the premise prepared for a real situation?
I meant statistically. Most cops don't approach a car with their guns drawn, because statistically most car stops don't end up with anyone getting shot. (Although some do.) How many hostage situations are actually a danger to anyone, vs. not?
If there were reports of a hostage situation and an active shooter in a car, and they pull it over, the police will definitely approach it with their guns drawn.
They have hostage situations in other countries, and they do not shoot habitually shoot civilians there. In fact, they hardly fire a shot ever. In Britain, where police are routinely unarmed, there are 5 or 6 incidents a year when an officer discharges a firearm. In Germany police officers are armed, and they fire ~ 100 rounds/year. There's something very wrong with American police and their fire discipline.
Yes, but sadly in America police need to assume a gun could be present in the home. It is a lot easier to not shoot your gun if you aren't worried about being shot yourself.
In the US, police shoot dead about 1000 civilians every year, and 40 or so police officers are shot in the line of duty. Consider that there are 325 million people living in the US, and 1 million are police officers. It's completely out of control.
Of those 1000 civilians who were shot dead, how many of them were in immediate risk of harming others? Just saying "1000 civilians every year" as if policemen had simply assassinated them is dishonest to say the least.
And here we see the famous "we didn't know they weren't dangerous" excuse:
"There is no evidence to suggest that the officers did not honestly believe that Dorner was in the vehicle, nor is there evidence to suggest that the officers did not honestly believe they were being fired upon."
Where are the adjudicated results of these incidents available where there are reasonable and transparent investigatory and evidentiary standards in place? Otherwise we’re relying on a biased parties description of events alone.
What would be an acceptable figure of those that aren’t immediately at risk of harming others being killed? What about injured? The media rightly tends to focus on killings, but what about unnecessary shootings or use of force that don’t result in death.
Currently that’s a non-zero number and we know that the man killed in this case was not a threat as well.
We should strive to make it a non-zero number, but saying "policemen should not be able to use deadly force against aggressors" just because the number is >0 is profoundly retarded.
Unless the US police is worried about being shot by innoscent civilians that is no justification. And if they are then why on earth aren’t they doing a better job of verifying credible threat in these situations before they enter?
From what I read, the police seemed to have jumped to killing him far too quickly, and it's frankly a sickening embarrassment to civilization. I have nothing but respect for public servants who risk their lives, but their job is unfortunately to do just that: Risk their lives for the safety and freedom of the public. Not to unload deadly fire into anybody who's hand moves toward their pants. I understand if some people think there is simply no way to reasonably make a distinction in these "he's reaching for something" scenarios, but I respectfully disagree.
> police have no choice but to operate under the assumption that the 911 call is in good faith
Why the hell not? Swatting is a well-known phenomenon, and even if that weren't true, killing somebody without a single shred of direct evidence that the situation calls for that level of response is insane. We absolutely have to do better. Police cannot (responsibly) put themselves in completely unknown situations and then start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger.
It seems that police departments have started to respond to the threat of swatting with streamer whitelists and such. That's good. It's just a shame that someone apparently had to die for them to sit up and take this obvious problem seriously.
The issue is that it's not isolated to just streamers. Given an infinite number of possibilities of how a situation can occur (and given an infinite number of GIVEN POSSIBILITIES by the "swatter") how do you solve the issue of putting together a response team in as little time as possible to respond to a threat while at the same time not undermining the idea that it could very well be a real threat?
What I mean is, it's very easy to say that they can't put themselves in these completely unknown situations. Unfortunately that simply is the job of the response teams and often of local law enforcement. How do you verify quickly and accurately that a call is not a trap? How do you do so consistently -- that is, how do I know the NEXT call is NOT a trap? A streamer whitelist does no good if swatting can be done to anyone.
I don't mean to assume that there aren't already answers to these questions, but to say that they are being irresponsible when dispatching officers and teams is making light of the issues.
> to say that they are being irresponsible when dispatching officers and teams is making light of the issues
Are you implying that I said that? I said no such thing, anyway.
I will say, again, that "police cannot (responsibly) put themselves in completely unknown situations and then start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger."
Speaking of things I never said... I also didn't say streamer whitelists would completely fix this problem. It's a good start, and should help officers to go into these situations with more information. That makes everybody safer.
Overall you've put a lot of words in my mouth and you seem to be implying this false dichotomy in which officers either "aren't taking the call seriously" or are justified in pulling the trigger on someone with zero direct evidence that they're actually in any danger. That dichotomy is bullshit.
No, what I'm saying is that a "completely unknown situation" may present itself with a reason to "start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger". You just don't know. I'm saying that it is difficult to be "responsible" (by what I'm assuming you mean taking in more information before dispatching) in balancing appropriate responses when it's much safer to err on the side of danger and reduce response time.
I'll admit I didn't think too much about the whitelists (I assume it's just a list of streamers kept somewhere, not people sending their names in if they're a streamer to be placed on the list). It is a good idea because streamers are most often targeted by swatters (citation needed), though it obviously can't solve the problem since not all people swatted are streamers. I apologize.
"At numerous points, however, he reached for his waistband."
You will often see this phrase, or something very similar, whenever the police intentionally kill an unarmed person. It seems to work very well as an excuse.
I'm not saying it's right but cops in America are trained to protect themselves and to shoot first. They won't wait to see if you had a gun or not, if you are reaching for your waistband you will likely be shot.
I think yakz meant, that its easy to say "he reached for his waistband" whether he did or not, because you know, somebody shot him and lets just say there was a reason other than the officer was terrified and/or coked up so we don't have to prosecute one of our own.
The article says that NPR reported that the Deputy Police Chief said this, but is there video evidence of it? Was this Deputy Police Chief even on the scene? Finch was shot within seconds of stumbling out of the door with his hands up, lets not forget that.
Let me ask you something: It is perfectly legal for me, an ordinary civilian, to use a firearm in defense of my own life. In this respect my rights are no different than those of a member of the police force. If I shot a man in the street on the grounds that he was reaching for his wasteband, what do you think is the likely outcome?
Well since you're asking cops are in a position of authority. If they tell you not to move, then don't move. If you reach for your waistband while they have guns drawn and pointing at you then you're gonna have a bad time.
There are definitely cases when there are multiple officers shouting different instructions at you. If I was in a situation like this I would keep my hands up and slowly get on the ground face down with my hands on my head and hope I'm not shot at....it's pretty sad when it comes to that
Have you seen a felony police stop? Civilians caught up in them make a massive number of mistakes for the simple reason they aren't exactly used to someone pointing a gun at them and yelling. LivePD is rather illuminating because unlike COPS not all encounters end in an arrest so you see how innocents react with police encounters.
Its easy to say they should follow directions when you are safe and comfortable at home. Quite another when you don't know why angry police are pointing their guns at you and any false move could mean death.
There was that case a while back where the guy did exactly that, just kept kneeling down on the floor sobbing. He reached for his pants that were falling and got shot with several assault rifles.
I'm in mobile, but there is body cam footage of the cop who shot him.
I can't imagine why this guy would think it's remotely ok to do such a thing.
Nobody should ever, EVER misdirect police or emergency responders in such a way. There are all kinds of downsides and NO upside.
Was this guy raised by animals, or is he some kind of sociopath? Either way, I hope enough publicity is raised that anyone else remotely considering such a stunt is discouraged.
No matter how much you want to blame the police for this, keep in mind that if you did this in a thousand neighborhoods with many different police officers and jurisdictions, many many many more people would die. In my eyes nearly 99% of the guilt is in the man that falsely called this in.
That doesn't mean more training couldn't hurt, but at a certain point, training in a live situation will always go out the window. People are not perfect.
> No matter how much you want to blame the police for this, keep in mind that if you did this in a thousand neighborhoods with many different police officers and jurisdictions, many many many more people would die. In my eyes nearly 99% of the guilt is in the man that falsely called this in.
No, sorry, but the first task for the police is to protect innocent civilians. Even if it causes harm to the policemen themselves (this is why they get all those jackets and equipment). Murdering them is not protecting, how can you defend the type of police that goes and kills a gamer in his house with no other proof than a phone call?
The primary oath of doctors is "do no harm". Maybe you should get payed as a doctor too since that's your rule as well. You haven't killed anyone due to medical error either so you also deserve that raise.
> On the other hand, the First Rule of Policing is "get home for dinner."
Is that in US? Because in my EU country, "Protect life" is pretty much what they're trained to do. That includes life of civilians, themselves and criminals in this order. Killing anyone is seen as a failure which results in an investigation into why hurting someone was necessary.
> the first task for the police is to protect innocent civilians
The first task for police is to keep crime reduced. Notice the police don't usually arrive until after a crime has happened. Not to say they won't genuinely do their best to help you, but that isn't their job. Their job is to keep crime down. The only person responsible for your safety and protection is yourself.
> Even if it causes harm to the policemen themselves
A fair bit of cops get killed in the line of duty. A lot more are "lucky" and only get injured - that might mean losing an eye, permanent spinal cord injuries, or just losing a few fingers or toes. Sucks to be the police officer, also sucks to be their family.
Cops deal with the worst of the worst on a daily basis - the rapists, the murderers, the drug dealers - and they have to constantly make life and death decisions. Is that junkie reaching into their pocket to grab their ID or a used needle to stab you with? Would you take a bullet for a serial rapist or a spouse abuser?
It's easy to cast stones. It's a lot harder to be the one driving up to a potential hostage situation where innocent lives may depend on you. Sure, it might be a prank - or it could absolutely be a barricaded suspect with innocent family inside the house with them.
> I think the phenomena of swatters is really highlighting how the police can be dangerous towards innocent people.
The phenomenon of police shooting innocent people without a SWATter being involved seems to be a more powerful and direct illustration of that, but, sure.
If the police kills an unarmed and innocent man, it definitely means that police in general is not acting efficiently.
Right now, I see no movement with police higher officers to improve police response protocols to reduce fatal encounters.
The narrative is not about "all people are different" and "some neighborhoods are bad" and not about "some officers can use more training";
I think there is an institutional problem, with police protocols that prescribe police chasing/hunting, swarming, incapacitating, shooting, all topped up with officers having no strong knowledge of the law, and not being punishable for lying on duty and unnecessarily hurting during arrest.
I've never understood how "the police have a systemic problem rather than this being an isolated problem" is supposed to be a defense of the police. That just makes it worse!
I'm sorry but I don't think if you did this in Canada, Great Britain, or Sweden you'd get the same results at all. If you want to control for gun ownership Switzerland has very high rates and police shootings of civilians are nowhere near proportional to what happens in America.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadHere's a crazy idea, maybe the police should reconsider their approaches in these situations. I don't understand how this is even possible.
Why isn't there more steam behind this?
While this is terrible, police have no choice but to operate under the assumption that the 911 call is in good faith. From what I read, the police seem to have been acting appropriately for a hostage situation. I would certainly be wary of ruses to make me drop my guard if I thought I was entering a hostage environment.
Pulling up your pants is not a reason to get shot. Other jurisdictions don’t seem to have the same problem of shooting people who have already surrendered.
EDIT: You are right, that was a poor example for this situation. I can't reply to you, but the only point I'm trying to make is that it is very easy to see this situation after the fact. But I would imagine it is next to impossible to verify some of these facts in real time with confidence.
Back in reality the police shot a man who already surrendered and was unarmed. This would be a war crime on a battlefield, but the police are held to a lower standard.
You say that, but... they do. How many hostage calls are real, vs. fake? Why don't police approach all cars they pull over with their guns drawn?
> How many hostage calls are real, vs. fake?
How do you propose verifying if a situation is real vs fake short of entering the premise prepared for a real situation?
For starters; he had to call a general, city line, to get the public (non-local, 10 digit) line for the dispatchers, so he could actually call the '911' (three digit) line.
From what I gather, The area code itself is a give-away.
If you say 'what about people who just moved, but haven't changed their number yet,' then I'd say that the dispatchers (should) be able to see if it was a honest 911 (three digit), or the public line (10 digit.)
Easily spoofed, and the phone company will laugh in your face if you ask them for the billing address of the person who called you at 10:37pm on Nov 12, 2018.
(I think this is tough in the general VoIP case because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency—which in my opinion are usually good things that are not primarily used to murder people. Even if VoIP operators verify some kind of information about subscribers' identities before allowing them to establish service, it's not completely clear what they should ideally report to 911 services in all cases because they'll presumably never be certain of the end-user's identity and location at a particular moment. And for other purposes, users of the phone network might want to reduce how much the phone companies know about their whereabouts.)
Yeah, I didn't say the information didn't exist, I'm saying the phone company makes it basically impossible to get, and certainly the most difficult for home customers.
because the Internet itself supports anonymity and location transparency
I don't care. If you're calling me, I should be able to find out who's paying for the call, and the phone company knows this info. Sure, there's still an "over 9000 proxies" bug, but that's not the problem. The problem is robocallers and telemarketers, and I should be able to configure my line to block every call that originates from any portion of that billing entity. Heck, when I describe it that way it could be blockchain'd!
I meant statistically. Most cops don't approach a car with their guns drawn, because statistically most car stops don't end up with anyone getting shot. (Although some do.) How many hostage situations are actually a danger to anyone, vs. not?
"There is no evidence to suggest that the officers did not honestly believe that Dorner was in the vehicle, nor is there evidence to suggest that the officers did not honestly believe they were being fired upon."
What would be an acceptable figure of those that aren’t immediately at risk of harming others being killed? What about injured? The media rightly tends to focus on killings, but what about unnecessary shootings or use of force that don’t result in death.
Currently that’s a non-zero number and we know that the man killed in this case was not a threat as well.
Unless the US police is worried about being shot by innoscent civilians that is no justification. And if they are then why on earth aren’t they doing a better job of verifying credible threat in these situations before they enter?
Even if there were a genuine hostage taker, shooting them on sight isn't the right thing to do. They usually succeed in talking them down.
Why the hell not? Swatting is a well-known phenomenon, and even if that weren't true, killing somebody without a single shred of direct evidence that the situation calls for that level of response is insane. We absolutely have to do better. Police cannot (responsibly) put themselves in completely unknown situations and then start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger.
It seems that police departments have started to respond to the threat of swatting with streamer whitelists and such. That's good. It's just a shame that someone apparently had to die for them to sit up and take this obvious problem seriously.
What I mean is, it's very easy to say that they can't put themselves in these completely unknown situations. Unfortunately that simply is the job of the response teams and often of local law enforcement. How do you verify quickly and accurately that a call is not a trap? How do you do so consistently -- that is, how do I know the NEXT call is NOT a trap? A streamer whitelist does no good if swatting can be done to anyone.
I don't mean to assume that there aren't already answers to these questions, but to say that they are being irresponsible when dispatching officers and teams is making light of the issues.
Are you implying that I said that? I said no such thing, anyway.
I will say, again, that "police cannot (responsibly) put themselves in completely unknown situations and then start shooting to kill at the slightest suggestion of danger."
Speaking of things I never said... I also didn't say streamer whitelists would completely fix this problem. It's a good start, and should help officers to go into these situations with more information. That makes everybody safer.
Overall you've put a lot of words in my mouth and you seem to be implying this false dichotomy in which officers either "aren't taking the call seriously" or are justified in pulling the trigger on someone with zero direct evidence that they're actually in any danger. That dichotomy is bullshit.
I'll admit I didn't think too much about the whitelists (I assume it's just a list of streamers kept somewhere, not people sending their names in if they're a streamer to be placed on the list). It is a good idea because streamers are most often targeted by swatters (citation needed), though it obviously can't solve the problem since not all people swatted are streamers. I apologize.
You will often see this phrase, or something very similar, whenever the police intentionally kill an unarmed person. It seems to work very well as an excuse.
99.9999% (more likely far more 9's) cases are your normal, everyday dealing with police (if you even encounter the police at all!).
They aren't out to kill, hurt, jail or ruin your day just for funsies.
An infinitesimally small percent of police are the "bad actors", while the overwhelming majority wake up each day and set out to help their community.
America is a big country, with a lot of people...
The article says that NPR reported that the Deputy Police Chief said this, but is there video evidence of it? Was this Deputy Police Chief even on the scene? Finch was shot within seconds of stumbling out of the door with his hands up, lets not forget that.
There are definitely cases when there are multiple officers shouting different instructions at you. If I was in a situation like this I would keep my hands up and slowly get on the ground face down with my hands on my head and hope I'm not shot at....it's pretty sad when it comes to that
Its easy to say they should follow directions when you are safe and comfortable at home. Quite another when you don't know why angry police are pointing their guns at you and any false move could mean death.
And if you had a bad time, well, they can always claim you reached for your waistband.
I'm in mobile, but there is body cam footage of the cop who shot him.
At the same time police would be much less likely to shoot if guns were banned in America (like Australia).
Because of a culture that glorifies guns.
Nobody should ever, EVER misdirect police or emergency responders in such a way. There are all kinds of downsides and NO upside.
Was this guy raised by animals, or is he some kind of sociopath? Either way, I hope enough publicity is raised that anyone else remotely considering such a stunt is discouraged.
That doesn't mean more training couldn't hurt, but at a certain point, training in a live situation will always go out the window. People are not perfect.
No, sorry, but the first task for the police is to protect innocent civilians. Even if it causes harm to the policemen themselves (this is why they get all those jackets and equipment). Murdering them is not protecting, how can you defend the type of police that goes and kills a gamer in his house with no other proof than a phone call?
On the other hand, the First Rule of Policing is "get home for dinner."
Actually, you might as well give me a raise because I haven't killed anybody in the process either.
Is that in US? Because in my EU country, "Protect life" is pretty much what they're trained to do. That includes life of civilians, themselves and criminals in this order. Killing anyone is seen as a failure which results in an investigation into why hurting someone was necessary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
The first task for police is to keep crime reduced. Notice the police don't usually arrive until after a crime has happened. Not to say they won't genuinely do their best to help you, but that isn't their job. Their job is to keep crime down. The only person responsible for your safety and protection is yourself.
> Even if it causes harm to the policemen themselves
A fair bit of cops get killed in the line of duty. A lot more are "lucky" and only get injured - that might mean losing an eye, permanent spinal cord injuries, or just losing a few fingers or toes. Sucks to be the police officer, also sucks to be their family.
Cops deal with the worst of the worst on a daily basis - the rapists, the murderers, the drug dealers - and they have to constantly make life and death decisions. Is that junkie reaching into their pocket to grab their ID or a used needle to stab you with? Would you take a bullet for a serial rapist or a spouse abuser?
It's easy to cast stones. It's a lot harder to be the one driving up to a potential hostage situation where innocent lives may depend on you. Sure, it might be a prank - or it could absolutely be a barricaded suspect with innocent family inside the house with them.
> keep in mind that if you did this in a thousand neighborhoods
Sure, but if so few people can cause so much damage only with a phone, do you really think the police is still not part of the cause of the problem?
I don't think it's worth it to have the police react this way to a call. I'd rather see criminals get away than innocent die because of swatters.
> People are not perfect.
Exactly, and that's the same for swatters, you will always have a good supply of people idiot enough to do that.
So what is the solution, putting future idiots in jail and let future innocents die of swatting?
I'm not american and I often hear about police issues in the US.
The phenomenon of police shooting innocent people without a SWATter being involved seems to be a more powerful and direct illustration of that, but, sure.
The emphasis on speed is not to arrest the criminal but to stop innocents from dying. Swatting calls always involve hostages.
Right now, I see no movement with police higher officers to improve police response protocols to reduce fatal encounters.
The narrative is not about "all people are different" and "some neighborhoods are bad" and not about "some officers can use more training"; I think there is an institutional problem, with police protocols that prescribe police chasing/hunting, swarming, incapacitating, shooting, all topped up with officers having no strong knowledge of the law, and not being punishable for lying on duty and unnecessarily hurting during arrest.