[HN Gopher] Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guil...
___________________________________________________________________
Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal
charges
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 206 points
Date : 2024-11-18 00:39 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| dyauspitr wrote:
| You could get 10 year olds to make these calls for you and there
| would be no legal repercussions.
| recursive wrote:
| Maybe not for them
| stephen_g wrote:
| That's not really how this kind of thing works... As long as
| they can demonstrate that an older person directed them to make
| the call, then generally that older person will still have
| criminal responsibility.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's so much easier to blackmail a 10 year old over the
| internet while remaining completely anonymous.
| guccii wrote:
| Good
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| I'd be interested to know if any actual SWAT operations happened
| from these calls. I know that it does happen sometimes.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| Swatting people has gotten people killed... by swat
| bloopernova wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Wichita_swatting?wprov=sf...
| _def wrote:
| This is a very sad read.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The video of the Wichita shooting was, to me, the most clear
| cut example of how poorly police can respond to a swatting
| call. Guy comes out to his porch, having no idea what's going
| on, and within only a few seconds of time and 2 commands to
| show hands and walk toward the police, is shot and killed.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| I should have been more clear about the question. I am
| wondering how many of the calls made by THIS GUY resulted in
| actual swat deployments, how many got someone shot or killed,
| etc. That gives a scale of the severity of the crime. Like if
| you fatally shoot someone, that is murder. If you shoot them
| and they survive, or if you shoot and miss, that's attempted
| murder and you tend to get a lighter sentence than if you
| kill the person. It's not an extraneous detail.
|
| The guy in the article obviously belongs in jail. The
| question is how far up the scale he went in terms of actual
| damage and injury caused. It's just like if I read an article
| about Joe pleading guilty to shooting Fred, and facing 20
| years in jail, but the article doesn't say whether Fred
| survived the shooting. I'm not out to make a big moral
| judgment either way, and I have no stake in it, but it's a
| natural question for a reader to ask.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Even if nobody died, it depends how you want to classify
| intentionally swatting someone. 50 counts of attempted
| murder? 50 counts of inciting violence? 50 counts of
| assault?
| account42 wrote:
| Lol they charged the indended swatting victim but not the
| police officer.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Swatting is pretty common:
|
| -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...
|
| -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting_of_American_politicia...
| RajT88 wrote:
| I don't think there are any numbers published about the % of
| swatting calls result in a visit from a SWAT team, but I would
| wager it's higher than you are imagining. The police would be
| foolish to advertise the efficacy of swatting, so of course the
| real numbers are not out there AFAICT.
|
| It feels like between this and the prevalence of scam calls,
| the FCC has been asleep at the wheel for 20 years. There's some
| signs of the "sleeping dragon" waking up, but I fear all that
| will get walked back under the next administration.
|
| Bonus good read on the topic:
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/02/why-arent-police-doi...
|
| "Love of the game", Jesus Christ.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-teenager-pleads-gu...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Okay so like, genuinely not trying to do a "back in my day"
| fuckin thing here, but also: what the fuck is wrong with kids?
| Back when I was coming up, pranking at it's absolute worst was
| like, filling a dudes shoes with yogurt in the locker room, or
| like, putting plastic bugs in people's desks n shit. Why the fuck
| are teenagers trying to get each other murdered by cops!?
| burnished wrote:
| I suspect its more about how much national information you're
| exposed to today than any sort of time based moral failing.
| Loughla wrote:
| I cannot be convinced that swatting is something that used to
| happen. Is there a history of this?
|
| I legit do not remember seeing anything on the evening
| national news about that in the past, like from before 2000.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| The earliest it could have started is when SS7 links and
| the internet were bridged by dodgy / nefarious owners of
| said SS7 links. That started to take off around the mid
| 90's to spam phones with spoofed numbers. I wanted to get
| the SS7 links terminated but my boss _in the wireless
| industry, tied heavily to SS7_ would not let me _because
| they were paying their bill_. It would have been one phone
| call to terminate many of them.
|
| I suspect you are probably right about the timeline for
| swatting as shady VoIP providers started getting popular in
| the early 2000's and started being used for more than just
| spoofing text advertisements.
| tapoxi wrote:
| It became really easy and cheap to use a VPN and VOIP
| number.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| 9/11 policy panic, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
| producing surplus equipment, 400 million privately owned
| firearms in the US, US history of police standoffs, DoD
| investment in military PR including Navy Seals worship, and
| much more have ALL contributed to the Swatting phenomenon.
|
| I don't think we could have intentionally created an
| incentive structure for swatting more if we had tried.
|
| And it's going to continue because guess what was one of
| the major issues in this election? Domestic security!
| bigiain wrote:
| There's also the super weird (to people outside the US)
| insistence that the only possible response to gun
| violence (by gangsters, school kids, or cops) is
| "thoughts and prayers".
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Constitutional amendments are basically impossible in the
| US. A congress member shot at a congressional event won't
| even vote change the second amendment (Scalise).
|
| Even conservatives know the only hope is stacking the
| supreme court.
| nilamo wrote:
| The solution is obvious, but we unfortunately continue to
| choose not to do it.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| None of what you mentioned backs up the idea that
| swatting used to exist in the past as it does now.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| Maybe not swatting, but bomb threats were probably the
| equivalent. My junior high had at least 2 that I can
| remember where we were all cleared out for hours as the
| school was searched. Swatting had the internet to fuel it's
| rise, local news programs didn't use things like reporting
| on every fake bomb threat to generate views or "engagement"
| and in turn did not spread the idea to a massive amount of
| people. But they still happened, quite a bit. Like many
| things fueled from the internet it rewards the more
| extremes, bomb threats are childs play now--but at one time
| they weren't
| account42 wrote:
| Swatting is something new (popularized by the Internet,
| made possible by military surpluss gear sold police wanting
| to larp in tacticool shit) but stupid pranks with deadly
| consequences are not.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I suspect because now everyone is in front of a camera. It's
| all become a show.
| sukispeeler wrote:
| I feel like its partly due to our cultural shift for visual
| media, gags HAVE to be more extreme to get engagement. Back in
| the day you'd tell the tale to your friends and you could
| embellish it. Now it's everyone trying to emulate Paul
| Brother's content to get the reach to FINALLY BECOME AN
| INFLUENCE. I blame platforms just as much or more than users.
| Your incentives have driven behavior here.
| itake wrote:
| I finished HS in 2007. I remember equal, if not worse things
| growing up online. The internet was less moderated back then
| and there was a lot of communities that celebrated toxic
| behaviors (like 4chan).
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| To me it feels more like someone wanting control/power over
| others without being physically capable of bullying.
| mcherm wrote:
| Fair question, but I would also like to ask "What the f** is
| wrong with cops?".
|
| Receiving an anonymous call claiming some not-particularly-
| plausible threat at a particular location probably DOES deserve
| a police investigation. I see no reason why it impels police to
| drag people from their house in chains, threaten to shoot them,
| or actually shoot them.
|
| If police responses were reasonable and proportionate to the
| plausibility of the threat then swatters would not be able to
| use them as a weapon.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Extremely valid points there.
| hinkley wrote:
| Should be using plainclothes officers to scout out situations
| prior to sending in swat.
| luckylion wrote:
| What is the reasonable and proportionate response?
|
| "Swatting" isn't really a thing in Germany, but we've always
| had other disproportionate responses to single phone calls.
| One call (or even an email) that threatens to blow up the air
| port, or some particular air plane, and it's shut down for
| hours until they've looked in all the places you could hide a
| serious bomb (presumably, I have no idea what their "okay, I
| guess it was a hoax" signal is).
|
| But what's the alternative when somebody plausibly describes
| a situation that indicates someone is in extreme danger? Send
| out a single cruiser the next day to check out what was up?
| bigiain wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the US is unique in it's propensity
| for SWAT teams to shoot first ask questions later.
|
| Same way as the US is the only nation in the world where
| it's impossible to prevent weekly school mass shootings.
| stavros wrote:
| What happens in Germany when someone plausibly describes a
| situation that indicates someone is in extreme danger? Over
| here (in Greece), police officers will knock on your door,
| say they had a report and need to check, and then walk in
| and look around.
|
| I've heard of reports of domestic violence, child
| molestation, things like that, and it's always the same.
| They rush to the place, knock on the door, look around, and
| arrest the people they need to arrest. What they _don 't_
| do is start shooting.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| What if in the call they claim the suspect is armed and
| threatening to start shooting hostages if the police show
| up? Do they still just knock on the door?
| stavros wrote:
| What if in the call they claim the suspect has a nuclear
| bomb and is threatening to blow up the city? It's kind of
| a similar scenario, given that I can't remember either of
| these ever happening. People here don't tend to have
| guns.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| People in the US "don't tend to" take hostages and
| threaten to shoot them either. "Don't tend to" isn't the
| same as "it never happens".
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, this never happens here. Even if it did happen once
| a decade, it wouldn't be a valid reason to worry about
| once a week, and it wouldn't be a single anonymous person
| calling in a tip that someone is threatening to shoot
| hostages.
| saghm wrote:
| Yeah, as much as swatting is shitty behavior, I think kids
| behaving egregiously is a lot more understandable than adults
| whose job is ostensibly the protection of everyone.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like they take the seriousness of the threat
| into account when determining the response, but not the
| plausibility of the threat.
|
| If there's a 1% chance that the house contains a deranged
| gunman threatening to shoot his family and then himself, that
| probably shouldn't be met with the same response as a 30%
| chance of the same... There are probably a lot of situations
| where it's a tough call though.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Yeah wtf is wrong with cops being on edge when they think
| they're responding to a mass shooting. How dare they!
|
| Future headline: Police ignore mass shooting because they
| thought it was a prank
| baq wrote:
| 'there's no way to stop this' says the government of the
| only country where this happens regularly.
|
| source: the onion [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This
| ,%27_...
| bena wrote:
| You only linked the image.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%
| 27_...
| datavirtue wrote:
| The cops are reflective of the system that they operate in.
| Same as everyone else. Change the system, change behavior.
| swader999 wrote:
| We would order pizzas to one person who complained about our
| skateboarding.
| henry2023 wrote:
| Not sure about your neighbors but if I get a random pizza
| delivery I would just pay for it and eat it. :)
| Palomides wrote:
| swatting is older than I am, and kids have been calling in bomb
| threats to get out of school for the better part of a century
| kodt wrote:
| Swatting and bomb threats are different things. The rise of
| live steaming also seemed to encourage swatting as you could
| see the results live.
| sowbug wrote:
| Pulling the fire alarm, too. Given how many times this
| happened at my high school, I'm sure that at least one person
| in the US has died because first responders were at a false
| alarm rather than available to help them.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| From:
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/swat...
|
| > Prosecutors say the ... teenager advertised his services
| under the pseudonym Torswats on the encrypted messaging app
| Telegram, charging as little as $40 to get someone's gas shut
| off, $50 for a "major police response", and $75 for a "bomb
| threat/mass shooting threat".
|
| I don't think this is pranks. I had an antisocial stint in my
| late teens also and it was more about gaining some power over a
| world that wants to treat you like a cog. I bet it wasn't even
| about the money (at least it wasn't for me) it's just that
| having a "hussle" is a persona that you can wear if you want to
| focus somewhere besides the consequences of your actions.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| I guess my friends were weird, but our idea of doing a teenage
| prank with phone calls was to use our two phone lines (we had
| 2nd phone lines for our modems) to set up conference calls
| between each other, and then each of us would call a pizza shop
| (I might call Domino's, and he'd call Papa John's), and then
| mute ourselves and laugh while the pizza shop workers would
| argue about who called who. The smart ones would immediately
| catch on and say "I think someone is playing a prank on us" and
| hang up quickly, but the dumb ones would get into an argument
| with each other.
|
| When Caller ID became the norm, it completely ruined phone
| pranks like this.
| ghssds wrote:
| *67 could have enabled your shenanigan for years.
| Loughla wrote:
| It still works, as evidenced by the very active prank calls
| my neighbor's son plays on my wife and I.
|
| He is very sweet and sheltered, so it's a good outlet. He
| literally tried the Prince Albert in a can one. That hasn't
| been relevant for like what, 50 years?
| shiroiushi wrote:
| By the time Caller ID became ubiquitous, we were past the
| time when we found that prank really funny.
|
| Also, *67 also caused a lot of people to simply not answer
| calls that were blocked this way.
| blindriver wrote:
| It's not all kids, it's one particularly sociopathic kid and
| the fact that he suffered no accountability until now.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Regarding "no accountability", it seems 'wrong' that the
| response to the calls must be immediate, but it seems to have
| taken at least a little while to identify where the calls
| were made from / who made the calls. They started some time
| in 2022.
|
| That level of asynchrony is not how the system should work.
|
| (Admittedly "should" does a lot of heavy lifting in that
| sentence).
| account42 wrote:
| Bullshit. You just didn't hear about the kids like this from
| your generation.
| bcdtttt wrote:
| I'm probably your age, kids back in my day would kill or injure
| other kids for being gay or Black. I think a lot of bullying
| has actually gone down, but because of the internet one
| sociopathic kid can fuck over people at scale.
| bena wrote:
| I don't think they're trying to get anyone murdered by cops.
|
| I think they're really fucking stupid. I think they think that
| since they are making up claims that everything will be
| alright. Like the cops are going to bust in, see that there's
| no drugs/hostages/satanic rituals/whatever, say "My bad", and
| fuck off.
|
| But there's always the chance that things go horribly wrong.
| And that chance is actually pretty high.
| recursive wrote:
| I don't know when your day was, but back in my day (in the 90s)
| we had to evacuate the high school at least once a quarter for
| bomb threats. We wouldn't go back in until the FD cleared it.
|
| (There was never a bomb.)
|
| Whatever is wrong with kids these days is nothing new.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| And that's not even enough time.
| jojobas wrote:
| 20 days per swatting. Yeah, a couple of months would be more
| appropriate.
| tomcam wrote:
| Not sure why swatting isn't treated like attempted murder
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That requires not only people wrapping their mind around the
| fact that death is likely when the cops kick in a door but also
| the state overtly codifying that reality.
|
| It'll happen when pigs fly.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Well he _is_ facing 20 years
| saghm wrote:
| That's a pretty light sentence for 375 murder attempts and
| threats.
| nomilk wrote:
| Not to mention the opportunity cost: victims of _real_
| violent /urgent situations who couldn't access timely
| protection, as well as the cost to society of perpetrators
| who marginally escaped while law enforcement were occupied
| tending to fake call outs.
| leoqa wrote:
| He could face local charges in those jurisdictions? Does
| double jeopardy prevent each county seeking their own
| sentence?
| wavemode wrote:
| Yes, they can't charge him again for the same physical
| act.
|
| His federal guilty plea appears to admit to 375 swatting
| calls. So I don't think the state or local courts can
| subsequently charge him for any of those calls - they
| would need to find evidence of some separate calls.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| IANAL, but some googling suggests you are wrong about
| that:
|
| https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/federal-crimes/is-it-
| doubl...
| wavemode wrote:
| You're right, I stand corrected.
| pluc wrote:
| It's only attempted murder because American SWAT is trigger
| happy, equipped literally like an army and shoots before
| asking questions or establishing context, that's hardly his
| fault.
| lupusreal wrote:
| It's his fault if he knows his actions may result in the
| targets death and does it anyway.
|
| _" It's hardly my fault the police doused pluc with
| gasoline, all I did was throw a match"_
| pluc wrote:
| If you have smart police officers who do smart police
| work this is a mild annoyance at best. Not trying to
| defend him, but SWAT is just as guilty as he is.
| lupusreal wrote:
| AFAIK the swat teams involved in the OP incidents didn't
| kill anybody, so they more or less did their jobs
| properly. Nonetheless, the intent was there; this guy
| committed hundreds of attempted murders.
| everforward wrote:
| I agree that he is complicit, but I find it hard to view
| him as solely culpable for a death. If a child feeds law
| enforcement false data, and law enforcement then kills
| someone, both parties should have known better but I have
| much higher expectations of our law enforcement than a
| teenager.
|
| The kid needs to be punished, but that doesn't change the
| fact that we have a glaring hole in our law enforcement
| procedures so large that even children can exploit them.
| That's insane. Children are always going to do dumb shit,
| we need to have policies and procedures to guard against
| that.
| gsck wrote:
| Equipped like an army, unfortunately not trained like
| one.
| saghm wrote:
| My response is in the context of the parent comment
| saying that it should be treated like attempted murder,
| and then the response citing the 20 years of sentence
| reading to me like it was implying that the crimes were
| being treated seriously enough. The premise you seem to
| disagree with was established by previous comments and
| isn't something I proposed myself.
| coding123 wrote:
| There are at least 30 countries that would apply the death
| sentence for that.
| tptacek wrote:
| He's probably not facing anything resembling 20 years.
| Charged as an adult under the fact patterns we know about, I
| get something like 15 years. But he's being charged as a
| juvenile.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| It seems like he was a child when he made most of these
| calls.
|
| Regardless, this is unlikely to be much of a deterrent. The
| police need to be held accountable at some point.
| tptacek wrote:
| The police didn't hurt anybody in this case, despite this
| person's attempt to make them do so. What are you holding
| them accountable for?
| soraminazuki wrote:
| That's more than a decade less than what Chelsea Manning or
| John Kiriakou was sentenced to. It's absurd that the
| punishment is much harsher for unspecified theoretical harm
| caused by whistleblowing than the very real harm caused by
| literal murder attempts.
| account42 wrote:
| Perhaps, but 20 years is a significan portion of someone's
| life.
|
| The courts wanting to make an example of those that have
| embarrassed the government is a different issue entirely.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| There's a 0% chance he spends the next 20 years of his
| life incarcerated.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Crimes against the state or that that thumb their nose at
| the authority of the state always carry disproportionate
| punishments because the state is who's writing the rules,
| running the systems, creating the sentencing guidelines,
| etc.
| tzs wrote:
| Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 _months_ not 30 _years_.
|
| As far as harm goes Manning's leaks exposed the identities
| of a lot of people who cooperated with the US or the
| Afghanistan government against the Taliban. When the
| Taliban found out about such people they would go after
| them.
|
| We probably will never know how many, if any, people got
| killed from being exposed in the leaks because there is no
| way to know if the Taliban found them out through the leaks
| or through some other source. The odds are pretty good that
| it was more than one, probably a lot more.
|
| The swatting teen on the other hand is known to have not
| actually gotten anyone killed.
|
| A crucial difference is that when the teen sent someone to
| your house they were _not_ there to kill you. They were
| there to do something that sometimes goes wrong and does
| kill, but most of the time that doesn 't happen.
|
| Someone coming to your house because the Manning leaks
| identified you as cooperating against the Taliban was there
| to kill you.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| If there's one thing to take away from the last, idk, ten-ish
| years, it's that the US court system is remarkably forgiving,
| even on things it really shouldn't be.
|
| He's not facing 20 years; he's facing a small fraction of
| that.
| sontek wrote:
| Ideally sending cops anywhere shouldn't be treated as a murder
| attempt, no matter the persons intent. They should be trained
| to recognize if there is true threat or not.
|
| If our legal system started recognizing that sending the police
| somewhere is equivalent to calling an assassin then we've got
| larger issues to address.
| plagiarist wrote:
| It should really not be possible for a single anonymous phone
| call to dispatch a heavily armed response team to break down
| someone's door.
|
| Aside from that, people who do so are despicable. 20 years is a
| light sentence. Taking money to put people in situations that
| could easily become deadly.
| Affric wrote:
| If one were to believe there are actors in our society bad
| enough to justify a service existing then one would also have
| to believe there are actors bad enough to abuse that service
| with a view to kill anyone. It's paradoxical that such a thing
| exists.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Or you just believe (correctly, so far) there are far more
| instances that warrant it than there are people abusing it
| Affric wrote:
| A service where four counts of this offence can be
| committed before any action is taken?
| dmix wrote:
| I'm sure a lot of consideration was put into how to deal with
| this problem. It's probably not cheap or easy running
| specialized SWAT teams for calls and there's nothing police
| would hate more than being taken advantage of by criminals.
|
| But they seem to have decided this is the least bad option.
| They have a duty to respond to serious phone calls about armed
| situations.
|
| The main issue is the insecurity of the old telecom system
| where spoofing is so easy. But we're heavily invested in it as
| a society.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Those two things should not exist in combination.
|
| One must not result in, or be able to cause, the other.
|
| Let's say we have to deal with the fact that they do co-exist
| and interact. Maybe there should be additional protection and
| safeguards, and if there are some (which there probably are),
| don't stop there until the percentage of illegitimate calls
| is below a certain threshold.
|
| And maybe it is already below a certain threshold, and I'm
| getting all hot under the collar about an incredibly rare
| scenario. Maybe it's better than it was. 20-year sentences
| should go part-way to reducing the frequency.
|
| I'm mostly on the side of "letting a guilty person walk free
| is better than imprisoning (or arresting or shooting to death
| or even just violating the freedoms of) an innocent person".
| bigiain wrote:
| > The main issue is the insecurity of the old telecom system
| where spoofing is so easy.
|
| I disagree.
|
| The main issue is qualified immunity.
|
| The phone companies never killed anybody in a SWAT raid. The
| phone companies never claimed to be building a "secure
| telecom system", nobody ever offered to pay for them to
| ensure high grade authentication and integrity checking of
| phone calls.
|
| And the cops know that. And don't care. They are the people
| showing uo with military weapons to people's homes. It's
| their responsibility to know and understand the reliability
| of the information they're acting on, and the ease with which
| the phone system can be made to show them misleading
| information.
|
| Cops with guns and police unions and qualified immunity who
| now they're never going to be held accountable for killing
| people based on false information are the problem, not the
| phone system.
| aorloff wrote:
| Anonymous being the key word here
| bigiain wrote:
| It wouldn't be a problem, if the "heavily armed response team"
| was properly held to account when they killed innocent people.
|
| Cops kill people on the basis of ludicrous anonymous phone call
| because they know they'll get away with it when it turns out to
| be false.
|
| And they like it that way.
|
| There needs to be a few very public cases of entire SWAT teams
| getting 20 year sentences.
|
| ACAB
| Loughla wrote:
| While the acab is kind of rough, I'm absolutely with you on
| police accountability.
|
| If there was open and honest accountability, I don't think
| people would have as many problems with the police.
|
| The issue is that police operate in extremely high pressure
| novel situations all the time. Training only goes so far.
| After that, you're investigating mistakes versus violent
| intent.
|
| I'm not sure that's easy to do, and I'm certain the public
| would never accept the finding that a police officer made an
| honest mistake, and won't be punished, but somebody got
| killed.
| rendall wrote:
| > _The issue is that police operate in extremely high
| pressure novel situations all the time._
|
| In the US, _police officer_ does not even rise to top 10
| most dangerous jobs. _Groundskeeper_ is a more dangerous
| job than being a cop.
|
| The lack of training and toxic culture of policing is far
| more dangerous to cops than criminals are. The average US
| citizen simply does not, and should not, trust the average
| cop.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >In the US, police officer does not even rise to top 10
| most dangerous jobs.
|
| Which is really impressive for how much time cops spend
| standing on the side of highways.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Danger =/= high stress/pressure situations
| rendall wrote:
| Even if that were true, and it's not, it would be
| mitigated by better training and careful psychological
| filtering.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > and it's not
|
| At least try to be persuasive. There are a myriad of ways
| that jobs can be stressful without endangering your life,
| that should not be difficult for you to imagine. Shift
| work, demands for quotas and metrics (sales people can
| tell you this), dealing with violent and erratic
| individuals in the public with sometimes insufficient
| support, etc.
|
| Correctional Officers face similar circumstances and have
| a life expectancy of 58-59 years old. High divorce rate
| too, but people want to content themselves with the
| truism that "only bad people work these jobs", with no
| consideration for environmental effects. The divorce rate
| is higher among medical assistants and some skilled
| trades, for reasons that can just as easily apply: long
| hours, on-call, fatigue, etc.
|
| > it would be mitigated by better training and careful
| psychological filtering.
|
| Only on the conceit that any and all stress is imposed by
| lack of training and bad psychology.
| danaris wrote:
| But a very large percentage of the "high stress/pressure"
| of being a police officer in the US is literally
| _manufactured by the police themselves._
|
| For instance, several officers have been treated for
| severe symptoms after coming into contact with fentanyl.
| Except that there is no way, biochemically speaking, the
| kind of contact they had with fentanyl could have
| produced anything resembling those symptoms. It was an
| entirely psychosomatic reaction, brought on by the
| police's own utterly false propaganda about how
| terrifyingly dangerous fentanyl is.
|
| Similarly, so much of their "high stress" is because they
| expect to be attacked/shot/killed at any given moment
| even when, by any reasonable analysis, they are 100%
| safe. Furthermore, a lot of the _actual_ danger to them
| is manufactured _by this exact phenomenon_ : they expect
| a physical confrontation, so, in order to ensure they
| "win" it, they _create_ it, striking preemptively in one
| fashion or another.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > But a very large percentage of the "high
| stress/pressure" of being a police officer in the US is
| literally manufactured by the police themselves.
|
| This is conjecture with no measurable basis.
| danaris wrote:
| ....It is supported by specific facts in the rest of my
| post.
|
| I'll grant I didn't cite sources, because this is HN, not
| a scientific journal, and if you're interested enough you
| can Google it (or DDG it, or Kagi it) for yourself, but
| the basis really is _right there in my post_.
| coldpie wrote:
| > While the acab is kind of rough
|
| > If there was open and honest accountability, I don't
| think people would have as many problems with the police.
|
| To be clear, your 2nd statement is _why_ ACAB. The police
| _are the people_ fighting against the open & honest
| accountability you are asking for. When accountability
| comes up, they refuse to do their jobs[1], inflate crime
| numbers & incident severity[2], harass the few cops trying
| to improve accountability until they quit[3], and actively
| campaign against accountability[4].
|
| If some cops are bastards, and people who shield those
| bastards from accountability are also bastards, then all
| cops are bastards. ACAB is not rough, it exactly describes
| the situation.
|
| [1] https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/10/20/mpd-cop-says-
| office...
|
| [2] https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/12/15/the-bad-cops-
| how-mi...
|
| [3] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/only-
| minneapolis-...
|
| [4] https://apnews.com/article/elections-police-
| minneapolis-a1ce...
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >The issue is that police operate in extremely high
| pressure novel situations all the time.
|
| Police mostly act as professional witnesses taking reports
| and engage in revenue generating law enforcement.
|
| The most high pressure situations they deal with with any
| regularity involve mediating domestic disputes or wrestling
| angry drunks.
|
| Police absolutely are not dealing with violent criminals on
| the daily. And when they do go out of their way to deal
| with people who many become violent they show up with the
| kind numerical advantage that would make Stalin proud.
|
| Your average beat cop probably un-holsters their handgun
| once a month to once a year depending on where and when
| they patrol. These high stress high stakes split second
| judgement call situations are not a daily or weekly thing.
|
| >I'm not sure that's easy to do, and I'm certain the public
| would never accept the finding that a police officer made
| an honest mistake, and won't be punished, but somebody got
| killed.
|
| They do accept this and did for decades. The only reason
| it's no longer being blanked accepted is because the modern
| media landscape makes it much harder to hide the fact that
| a huge fraction of these "honest mistakes" were in fact not
| so honest and not so mistaken.
|
| Basically nobody has a problem with honest mistakes by
| themselves. What people have a problem with is thug
| behavior. Spending decades classifying various degrees of
| thug behavior as honest mistakes is why nobody wants to
| tolerate honest mistakes.
| jonp888 wrote:
| > Training only goes so far
|
| Compared to other countries American cops aren't really
| trained at all.
|
| In Germany the training period for a police officer is 2 to
| 3 years, in the US it's usually less then 6 months.
| Aloisius wrote:
| It's not _quite_ that bad.
|
| That US 6 month number excludes field training (typically
| 1 year) whereas the 2-3 year German number includes it (6
| months I believe).
|
| This largely stems from a difference in how academies
| work. In many countries, field training is required to
| graduate. In the US, field training is required _after_
| you graduate in order to get a permanent job. This skews
| the total training time numbers.
|
| That said, American police are still undertrained by
| comparison.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > It wouldn't be a problem, if the "heavily armed response
| team" was properly held to account when they killed innocent
| people.
|
| You're right, but it is a problem and people who choose to
| abuse that fact deserve to have the book thrown at them.
| account42 wrote:
| Before the people that make this possible and carry out the
| raids in an unsafe manner and without due dilligence?
| Before the ones protecting the police from any
| accountability?
|
| The kid should be punished, yes, but a quarter of his
| lifespan is not exactly a light sentence.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Before, after, concurrently - it doesn't matter.
|
| Both issues need to be addressed and addressing one
| doesn't relate to the other.
|
| This kid shouldn't get off easy just because his crime
| shouldn't be possible. It is possible, and he chose to do
| it. Most people are good and choose not to do it.
| leoqa wrote:
| How many police officers do you know? Have you been on a ride
| along or attempted to understand their job?
|
| Swatting victimizes the police as well, they're responding to
| a potential hostage situation and do not have the benefit of
| hindsight. I guarantee these officers are horrified that the
| man was innocent and frustrated that they were put in this
| situation.
|
| I encourage everyone who is adamantly "ACAB" to go on a ride
| along- contact your local department. At best, you get first
| hand experience to justify your beliefs and can virtue signal
| even more to your friends. Or you may be able to humanize the
| police.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I guarantee these officers are horrified that the man was
| innocent and frustrated that they were put in this
| situation.
|
| How many cops do _you_ know? They might say they 're
| horrified to the media, but that's not how they operate
| when no one's watching. There's a reason these SWATting
| events keep happening: cops enjoy them just as much as the
| SWATters do. They get to bust out their fun military
| surplus toys and do their SEAL Team 6 cosplay. If they
| wanted to stop these SWATting events, they would have found
| a solution by now.
|
| Check out these highlights (lowlights?) from the Minnesota
| Department of Human Rights investigation of the Minneapolis
| Police Department:
|
| https://racketmn.com/human-rights-report-mpd-needs-major-
| ove...
|
| These are not people known for nuance or remorse.
|
| Link to the full investigation report:
|
| https://mn.gov/mdhr/assets/Investigation%20into%20the%20Cit
| y...
| bcdtttt wrote:
| Do you know why ACAB? Is not because they are rude, it's
| not cause they mean. It's because they participate in a
| societal role that requires them to do bastardly things.
|
| They have to enforce unjust laws and unjust outcomes, and
| statistically do so more heavily across minority
| populations.
|
| The institution _requires_ them to be bastards, ACAB is a
| statement about the institution of police and the people
| who elect to join that institution.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> It 's because they participate in a societal role that
| requires them to do bastardly things. They have to
| enforce unjust laws and unjust outcomes_
|
| The problems with American policing aren't merely that
| the cops have to enforce the law.
|
| It's the qualified immunity, the get-out-of-jail-free
| cards for their buddies, and the dog shootings.
|
| If the police never shot the wrong guy, always replaced
| your door after breaking it down, and were polite and
| apologetic when a mistake was made - people in this
| thread wouldn't be equating swatting with attempted
| murder.
| baq wrote:
| man who do you think joins swat teams
| pugworthy wrote:
| I'm finding very few cases of actual Swatting itself leading
| to deaths.
|
| Here is a reference for 3 events in the US (https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...).
| sirspacey wrote:
| You are asserting quite a lot here.
|
| Have you spoken with SWAT team members?
|
| The few I know would find this attitude of "killing is fine
| because we won't be sued" abhorrent
| bigiain wrote:
| > Have you spoken with SWAT team members?
|
| Not only do I have zero interest in speaking with SWAT team
| members, I have very real reasons why I choose wherever
| possible to not talk to any cops at all.
|
| https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE
|
| The fact that you "know a few" SWAT team members
| immediately makes me strongly suspicious that you are part
| of the problem, perhaps not directly corrupt yourself, but
| very likely to be complicit in hiding the misbehaviour of
| police you know who are corrupt.
|
| ACAB
| rgmerk wrote:
| To be ever so slightly sympathetic to American cops, unlike
| just about anywhere else in the developed world, it is
| plausible that the person behind the door is armed with
| anything up to an automatic rifle, and any random person they
| stop may be carrying a concealed firearm.
|
| Given that, if I was busting down doors in the US, I'd want to
| be armed to the teeth, equipped with the best body armour money
| can buy, and wouldn't waste a lot of time on niceties until I
| was sure that nobody was going to attempt to kill me.
|
| Blame the Second Amendment as currently interpreted.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| Simple solution: only allow weapons that existed during the
| creation of the Second Amendment.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Ban mechanical printing presses too then.
| 1986 wrote:
| The printing press predates the 1st Amendment
| lupusreal wrote:
| Not the fully automatic machine presses. The founding
| fathers had printing presses that had to be hand loaded
| one page at a time. Clearly, they had no ability to
| conceive of more advanced technology than that.
| maxwell wrote:
| And the First should only cover religions, forms of speech,
| printing technologies, venues of public assembly, and
| petitioning grievances that existed before it was
| "created"?
| larkost wrote:
| The argument that the grandparent is making is that the
| U.S. Supreme Court recently created legal president that
| only restrictions on firearms that have similar laws that
| were enforced during the creation of the Second Amendment
| can be considered constitutional under the Second
| Amendment. The argument that that means only firearms
| similar to those available at the time of the passing the
| Second Amendment sounds largely similar to the thinking.
|
| And be careful about brining the First Amendment into
| that... the First Amendment as it was understood by its
| creators was not about your write to say anything you
| wanted without government response, it was about your
| right to publish your own newspaper (or
| broadsheet/advertisement) without the government issuing
| you a license or collecting a tax (both of which the
| colonial government did).
|
| The second amendment was ratified in 1791, and just 7
| years later (1978) the Alien and Sedition Acts were
| ratified by congress, in large part other silence critics
| of the federal government by making it illegal to say
| "false, scandalous, and malicious" about it (with the
| exception of about the Vice-President). And it was
| absolutely used as a political tool, and this was
| approved of by the Supreme Court at the time.
|
| So I don't think that anyone really wants this horrible
| president that the modern Supreme Court has yoked us
| with. Unfortunately, given the election results, it
| appears we are going to be subject to these horrible
| ideas for a whole generation.
| smolder wrote:
| That's actually a bad solution. Weapons weren't much less
| brutal then, mostly just less precise. You'd have people
| accidentally shooting bystanders in armed conflicts.
| larkost wrote:
| We already have that: spray-and-prey is common, as are
| bystanders killed (even those who are just going about
| their lives in their own homes). But the weapons of the
| day were single-shot before reloading. In your argument
| we would only be reducing the number of bystanders
| reasonably shot.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| The repeating air rifle with a 20 round magazine that
| Lewis and Clark brought on their expedition was invented
| over a decade before the ratification of the US Bill of
| Rights. If you're worried about capacity for
| indiscriminate violence, there were also cannons and
| grenades.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girardoni_air_rifle
| indymike wrote:
| Old problem: AR-15 behind door. New (old) problem: 18
| pounder loaded with grapeshot behind the door.
|
| I'd take the AR.
| maxwell wrote:
| Why would we want to incentivize and optimize for busting
| down doors? Sounds more like the Bill of Rights working as
| intended here.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| When the cops think they are actually likely to encounter
| genuine armed resistance they ambush the suspect outside
| their home. If that's not practical they set up a perimeter.
| Police are not profession combatants. Their tactical doctrine
| is dominated by "gotta go home safe." SWAT raids exist mostly
| for the image and spectacle.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Blame the Second Amendment as currently interpreted.
|
| It's been largely interpreted this way throughout most of our
| history, until around the 1960s when civil rights activists
| started carrying them. All the modern gun regulation started
| then.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
|
| Of course 1934 gun control came about due to people like Al
| Capone and the like.
| larkost wrote:
| No, you have history on its head. It was not seen as an
| absolute until the , and 2008, in District of Columbia v.
| Heller, then strengthened in 2010 in McDonald v. City of
| Chicago. Prior to that reasonable regulations were allowed
| (and what is reasonable was hotly debated) were permitted,
| so long as there were legitimate government interests.
|
| The main point of the Second Amendment from the framers
| perspective was to prevent the need (or even the existence)
| of a standing army. Of course from a modern perspective
| this is near-ridiculous.
| Clubber wrote:
| You could have fully automatic Thompson sub machine guns
| mailed to your house before 1934. You could have any
| other type of gun shipped to your house before 1968. All
| this is (relatively) recent.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Control_Act_of_1968
| amatecha wrote:
| "Could"? Absolutely _should_.
|
| > from approximately August 2022 to January 2024, Filion made
| more than 375 swatting and threat calls, including calls in which
| he claimed to have planted bombs in the targeted locations or
| threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at
| those locations.
|
| ( from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-teenager-pleads-
| gu... )
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I'm unwisely and unadvisedly wading into this half-cocked.
|
| Swatting wouldn't even be a thing if <any number of logical
| things>
|
| - Anonymous calls should be treated with high levels of suspicion
| as to their legitimacy
|
| - First response training that's even moderately appropriate
|
| - Situational awareness beyond what one's been informed by third
| parties
|
| - Empathy for all humans
|
| - Any kind of notion of that a scenario may not actually be as
| described by a single anonymous voice
|
| A very (un)funny irony is that there are numerous stories I've
| read about domestic violence victims being arrested, as opposed
| to the attacker, which implies there's some level of suspicion in
| some circumstances about the information the police are being
| fed. Swatting, as a thing, indicates there's some kind of hero-
| pressure build-up that overrules any kind of <all the things I
| listed above> whereby that pressure has the possibility of
| impending release.
| blindriver wrote:
| No, because if every call isn't treated like a real emergency,
| in the off chance that one of them actually is an emergency
| then everyone would be crucified by the media and lawyers. Look
| at all the school shootings as an example, or even the Trump
| assassination attempt.
| stavros wrote:
| Right, but when you smash down someone's door and see them
| playing games on a computer, instead of cooking meth while
| making bombs by tying guns together, maybe you shouldn't
| continue treating the situation as an emergency.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| And if they can't find the person who made the call to
| charge them for door repairs, then they shouldn't have
| busted down the door (and should pay for the repairs).
| stavros wrote:
| Over here (Greece), anonymous reports are generally given
| very low priority, to the point where if someone
| anonymous reports a suspicious vehicle, the police might
| not even investigate. A report by an eponymous reporter
| does generally get investigated, though, because there's
| a lower likelihood of the report being frivolous.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| That doesn't cover all the things I'm (maybe poorly)
| attempting to suggest.
|
| Treat calls that don't have the hallmarks of an emergency as
| "maybe not an emergency" - I admit that sounds simplistic and
| requires heavy training, however.
|
| But my commentary was more about the gung-ho-ness of the
| follow-up. Don't houses have windows that aren't always
| blocked by drawn curtains? Don't binoulars exist and are
| relatively portable? Aren't there relatively quick and
| painless methods to adjudicate a situation prior to knocking
| impolitely? Even if time may be of the essence. One day maybe
| the heavy knock on the door is a trigger that blows up an
| entire Police / SWAT response team - then there might be some
| new policies around situatonal awareness instituted. (not
| that I would in any way promote such a grotesque act of
| violence).
|
| The police are putting themselves in danger by their own
| behaviour.
|
| Re: Trump assassination attempt, wouldn't that have been
| averted if someone just "went and had a look"?
| sixothree wrote:
| If it's real you don't need to be anonymous.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Fear of retribution/not wanting to get involved is a real
| thing. Also are you proposing that 911 operators confirm
| people's real identities before accepting their call and
| dispatching someone?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| No, but at least have the calling number presented to the
| 911 operator, with various options categorised as more or
| less trustworthy. And 911 calls should bypass any
| 'calling number protection'.
|
| Someone else pointed out that the whole phone system is a
| dog's breakfast, which also needs to be fixed for various
| easy-scam-exploitation reasons as well. The only reason
| not to do it is that the corps that run the networks
| don't want to have to pay to make their shit fit for
| society's purpose rather than their own.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| What specific effect would you expect "categorize as less
| trustworthy" have?
|
| Agreed on telephone infra in general
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Non-spoofable and local number: trustworthy
|
| Spoofable local number: slightly less trustworthy
|
| Non-local number: less trustworthy
|
| International number: barely trustworthy
|
| VoIP: maybe slightly more trustworthy than international.
|
| Said infra probably limits the ability to distinguish
| between these, however, so that becomes the primary
| issue.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| That's also observably not a thing. Castle Rock is a rather
| famous scotus case where the cops failed to do squat about a
| guy with a restraining order kidnapping his kids despite a
| law specifically saying that they shall act on said
| restraining orders and there was no allowable section 1983
| claim against the cops just failing to act.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| That is the same bullshit logic used for zero tolerance
| policy for "preventing lawsuits" but somehow even worse.
| stavros wrote:
| It's a US cultural thing to either avoid blaming the police for
| anything, or make excuses for them. Brutal police behavior is
| seen as either acceptable, or what even _desirable_. I 've seen
| reddit posts where a protester slightly taunts the police and
| gets pepper sprayed in the face, and all the commenters were
| gleefully saying things like "fuck around and find out",
| without even thinking that maybe there wasn't enough fucking
| around to warrant any finding out.
|
| When you try and point this out, you're called various names,
| because apparently you either support the police 100%, or
| you're a criminal.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there are a number of people in the US who
| don't support the police in any way at all. There was a whole
| song a few years ago called Fuck the police, I'm pretty sure.
|
| It's like sweeping categorizations of an entire country are
| usually not accurate or something.
| davely wrote:
| That song was released in 1988 by NWA, a hip hop group from
| Compton, California.
|
| I don't think it's too far fetched to think that song was
| colored by their experiences with the notoriously corrupt
| LAPD of the 1980s.
| bear141 wrote:
| I live in America and while I have compassion for some
| individual cops, I hate them as a whole with a burning
| passion. I know lots of people that feel this way. It's
| almost like social media comments sections are not an
| accurate representation of a population or something.
| stavros wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure there are a number of people in the US
| who don't support the police in any way at all.
|
| Yes, this is so trivially true of any place that it's not
| worth mentioning, as generalizations are meant as just
| that: Something that a majority (or at least a large
| minority) are like. For example, people do say "people in
| the US speak English", even though there's a number of
| people that don't. This doesn't make the generalization any
| less useful than "Americans like baseball" or "Americans
| wear shoes around the house".
| scruple wrote:
| I grew up in a small town and was on the wrong side of law
| enforcement (sometimes rightfully -- underage drinking,
| etc., nothing that serious -- but oftentimes not) around 2
| dozen times between 16/17 and 21 when I got the fuck out of
| that town. I haven't so much as spoken to an on-duty cop in
| over 20 years. To this day I still get nervous when I see a
| police car. They earned their image problems and they
| haven't even begun to try to correct it. Even if they
| started tomorrow, it would still take them decades to fix
| it. I'm not hopeful that any meaningful change in policing
| in the US will take place in my lifetime.
|
| And, for anyone who isn't reading between the lines here,
| without a doubt I'm only so lucky as to avoid their
| attention today because I _made it_ and have spent the last
| 2 decades living in nice neighborhoods and driving nice
| cars.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| There's no fixing the system when there is no onus on the
| police to act like they care. They enter a home that was a
| victim of swatting and kill everyone? Tough luck, "it's part
| of the job", "we told them to stand down and they didn't",
| "we couldn't risk the life of the first responders".
|
| There's always a reason as to why police violence is fine.
| Its almost as if the police isn't really there to protect
| normal people.
| stavros wrote:
| > Its almost as if the police isn't really there to protect
| normal people.
|
| Well, it's not. Even here, the function of the police is to
| enforce the will of the state, not to protect people. The
| protection is a side-effect of the enforcement, but
| enforcement can also be things like terrorizing minorities.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I've also seen reddit posts where the cop did everything
| right and people still criticized.
| bcdtttt wrote:
| Cop didn't do everything right. A cop who does everything
| right leaves the force.
| kernal wrote:
| The only time I've seen police use pepper spray or aggression
| are when the protesters become violent. Do a YouTube search
| for Antifa protesters and tell me who the violent people are
| again?
| archagon wrote:
| I see news stories like this all the time:
| https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/caron-nazario-army-
| lieutenant-...
| snozolli wrote:
| The first thing that came to mind:
|
| https://www.kxan.com/investigations/everything-we-know-
| about...
|
| I saw countless similar videos of cops violently attacking
| -- often with permanent, life-altering results -- people
| who were exercising their constitutional rights or simply
| minding their own business.
| scoot wrote:
| Apparently you can even (unintentionally) swat yourself:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=lv+killed+for+calling+the+po...
|
| (Google link for choice of news sources...)
| nkrisc wrote:
| And yet choosing to weaponize that against innocent people is
| as bad as those other illogical things.
|
| Yes, the police response in this country is often absurd. Using
| that to harass and harm people is equally awful.
| edm0nd wrote:
| These are not "Anonymous" calls though.
|
| The SWATer kids call into 911/e-911 centers using a spoofed
| number of the victims.
| adolph wrote:
| > using a spoofed number of the victims.
|
| Open telephone system security holes seem as much a
| malpractice as the militarization of police.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| That's not mentioned in the article. It does mention that the
| numbers of the victims were shared, but doesn't specifically
| say they were spoofed.
|
| If it's that easy to spoof a phone number then that system is
| completely fucked and not fit for purpose.
|
| And the efforts that a private investigator needed to go to,
| to track down the perpetrator, indicates that there is no way
| to track the source of the phone calls - that's ludicrous
| (but probably the norm).
| mml wrote:
| this is a police problem. as usual.
| thousand_nights wrote:
| the linked article is very light on details, here is a better
| one:
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/alan-filion-torswats-guilty-plea...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! We've changed to that from
| https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/18/teenage_serial_swatte...
| above.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| It looks like the 20 years is a theoretical maximum. Isn't it
| pretty rare for anyone to ever get the maximum sentence?
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes. He's being sentenced as a juvenile, which will further
| complicate (and likely mitigate) his sentence.
|
| If I had to guess, he'll do a couple years.
| tptacek wrote:
| From the Information he pled to: ALAN W.
| FILION, a/k/a "Nazgul Swattings," a/k/a
| "Torswats V3," a/k/a "Third Reich of Kiwiswats,"
| a/k/a "The Table Swats," a/k/a "Angmar," and
| a/k/a "Torswats"
|
| Seems like a fun guy. It looks like most of this story was
| covered a year ago:
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/alan-filion-torswats-swatting-ar...
| mrshu wrote:
| https://archive.is/FozW8
| joemazerino wrote:
| This is the older article. Have this one?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Are you meaning to tell me that people who make references to
| the Nazis a part of their identity might not be the most well-
| adjusted people around?
| hereforcomments wrote:
| In Europe this would have been a completely different story. It's
| highly unlikely (compared to the US) that a SWAT team equivalent
| would kill anyone. The guy could have got away with 5-7 years
| max. I know it's a museum, but I prefer to live here.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's probably about what he'll get here.
| lupusreal wrote:
| A European swatting may be highly unlikely to succeed in
| killing somebody, but the murderous intent is still there. It
| should be punished as attempted murder both in America and
| Europe.
| delusional wrote:
| 6 years is the baseline for attempted murder in denmark.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| What's the baseline for 100s of attempted murders?
| croisillon wrote:
| i kind of remember a journalist having a heart attack 10 years
| ago during a swatting event in france but i couldn't find it
| anymore
| dani__german wrote:
| remarkably similar story to JStark1809, creator of the FGC9
| [1] and thus a great boon to the people in Myanmar fighting
| against a tyrannical government. JStark died of a heart
| attack during a european swat raid.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9
| pugworthy wrote:
| It seems statistically rare (highly unlikely) that a SWAT team
| would injure or kill someone in the US too. I can only find
| references to 3 - of which only 1 is a result of a direct
| shooting by law enforcement. The other two are a shooting of
| law enforcement and a heart attack.
|
| Here is my reference for 3 events in the US (https://en.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...).
| 5h56nb5 wrote:
| I have been following swatting incidents of content creators
| for years and I have learned that police jurisdictions where
| this happens frequently in are becoming wiser and spreading
| information around, so the threat of getting killed from a
| swatting incident has gone down. Places with pockets of content
| creators like Austin Texas have become very aware of these
| types of things.
|
| If you are a content creator, or someone who might be at risk
| for swatting you can call your local PD and explain the
| situation. You can let them know that you understand they must
| respond to those types of calls, but just wanted to call in and
| let them know it could happen. Most are happy to hear from you
| and take note.
|
| Before swattings became popular, people used to send pizzas
| (popularized by old 4chan) and you would have to call all the
| pizza places in your area and get your address blacklisted.
| That was a pain.
| dmonitor wrote:
| Ye olde 4chan's reputation for being an evil website is funny
| in retrospect. The mortality rate on phony pizza deliveries
| is pretty close to zero and harmless compared to what goes
| down on the internet these days.
| buffington wrote:
| I'd recommend that if you receive threats of a swatting,
| whether you're a content creator or not, it's a good idea to
| talk to your local police department about it the moment it
| happens.
|
| Unfortunately, I speak from experience. I received a credible
| threat, called my local PD, and they began to investigate
| immediately. They also put notes in their dispatch system
| (which is shared by the local SWAT team) indicating that this
| had happened before, and to proceed with extreme caution.
|
| The "swatter" never did follow through on the first attempt,
| but did follow through about 6 months later. I didn't get any
| threats from the swatter that time, but did get a call from
| my local PD while I was at work, and they let me know they'd
| driven by my place and called it off after being confident it
| was a false alarm.
|
| Anticipating questions: no, there's no sort of protocol I
| setup with the PD. They have to investigate every threat, and
| even if we setup some sort of "shared secret" ahead of time,
| if a swatter says I'm cutting up my family in the basement,
| the PD can't know with certainty that I'm not. About the best
| I can do is make sure to answer the door when/if the PD shows
| up so they can more quickly establish things are safe.
|
| Also: the attackers were after some OG Twitter accounts I
| used to use, and they thought they could intimidate me into
| giving the accounts to them.
| marze wrote:
| Couldn't this fellow been identified after ten, rather than 200+?
| downrightmike wrote:
| cops don't actually solve 90%+ of their cases, that and they
| are too busy robbing people through civil asset forfeiture
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > In January 2024, an individual affiliated with the Torswats
| Telegram account and claiming to be a friend of Filion suggested
| that he was part of a group aiming to incite racial violence and
| that he sought money to "buy weapons and commit a mass shooting."
| The allegation aligns with a written tip, placed to the FBI's
| Internet Crime Complaint Center in April 2023 and obtained by
| WIRED, alleging that the person behind the Torswats account was
| involved in a neo-Nazi cult known as the Order of Nine Angles.
|
| I wonder if this was supposed to be Nine Angels. Copy editing on
| the web is so sloppy that I'm going to assume so because it makes
| more sense (to me).
|
| Wow, neo-nazis are a fun bunch. Their ideas about accelerationism
| and trying to induce race riots have got to be our biggest semi-
| organized domestic threat. It's encouraging to see authorities
| seemingly beginning to catch on to this, as well as widespread
| recognition of what swatting is. Five years ago was a very
| different story, especially on the latter.
| grraaaaahhh wrote:
| >I wonder if this was supposed to be Nine Angels. Copy editing
| on the web is so sloppy that I'm going to assume so because it
| makes more sense (to me).
|
| I'm going to assume that wired got it right and it's the neo-
| nazis that misspelled it; it's much funnier that way.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| You could have Googled it. First result
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Nine_Angles
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Probably not:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Nine_Angles
| elzbardico wrote:
| The militarization of law enforcement and its consequences have
| been a disaster for the human race.
| bcdtttt wrote:
| Cops are a relatively recent phenomena. (Cops as a uniformed,
| central office, patrolling force.)
|
| That concept is from the mid 1800s. They evolved out of
| warehouse guards and slave patrols.
|
| After 9/11 we really quadrupled down on arming and militarizing
| cops and yes, it's been a disaster.
| andrewla wrote:
| > They evolved out of warehouse guards and slave patrols.
|
| This is not accurate.
|
| The timeframe is not wrong; it is true that the concept of
| the modern police, at least in the US, was largely based on
| the Peelian model created in London in the 1820s. But saying
| it evolved from "warehouse guards and slave patrols" is
| ahistorical. Most modern police forces modeled after London's
| Metropolitan Police replaced night watch systems that have
| been around for literally all of recorded history.
| bcdtttt wrote:
| While some night watches were public safety distributed
| among community members, they were often there to protect
| the goods of merchants rather than protect the ordinary
| citizens of an area from petty crime. As merchants grew,
| and their goods became more valuable targets, the merchants
| would hire on guards, but saw the opportunity to turn the
| existing night watch systems in place to their favor,
| essentially insisting on distributing the cost of guarding
| their goods across the community.
|
| I'm not saying the night watches didn't evolve into police
| departments, I'm saying the night watches were co-opted
| prior to them becoming uniformed departments.
|
| And slave patrols led directly into being police
| departments in some parts of the US. I do not claim that's
| in the history of all depts, but across the south there are
| many cases of patrols becoming formalized into police
| departments.
| adolph wrote:
| >>> That concept is from the mid 1800s. They evolved out
| of warehouse guards and slave patrols.
|
| >> This is not accurate.
|
| > I do not claim that's in the history of all depts, but
| across the south there are many cases of patrols becoming
| formalized into police departments.
|
| What percentage of current police departments were
| conversions from slave patrols? What is the source of
| this data?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >> And slave patrols led directly into being police
| departments in some parts of the US.
|
| > What is the source of this data?
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=police+departments+were+c
| onv...
| adolph wrote:
| Ok, first link in results contradicts "slave patrols led
| directly into being police departments in some parts of
| the US":
|
| _While it is true that slave patrols were a form of
| American law enforcement that existed alongside other
| forms of law enforcement, the claim that American
| policing "traces back" to, "started out" as, or "evolved
| directly from," slave patrols, or that slave patrols
| "morphed directly into" policing, is false. This
| widespread pernicious myth falsely asserts a causal
| relationship between slave patrols and policing and
| intimates that modern policing carries on a legacy of
| gross injustice. There is no evidence for either
| postulate._
|
| https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-
| pol...
| andrewla wrote:
| For the warehouse guards, to summarize, you're saying
| that night watchmen and city watchmen were de facto
| warehouse guards before the formation of professional
| police forces? That seems a far cry from "evolved out of
| warehouse guards". Police still put resources into
| protecting property, but this does not make them
| "warehouse guards" any more than resources put on petty
| crime make them "cutpurse chasers" unless you're just
| making rhetorical points.
|
| For the slave patrol point, I would appreciate a single
| example of this phenomenon. Is it the claim that there
| exists at least one professional police force that was
| created to replace a "slave patrol", which previously
| performed some subset of the civil duties of police
| officers? I have not been able to find an example; can
| you point me to one?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > For the slave patrol point, I would appreciate a single
| example of this phenomenon
|
| Potter, Gary "The History of Policing in the United
| States"[1] references Platt, Tony, "Crime and Punishment
| in the United States: Immediate and Long-Term Reforms
| from a Marxist Perspective, Crime and Social Justice 18"
|
| 1. https://www.academia.edu/30504361/The_History_of_Polic
| ing_in...
| joemazerino wrote:
| Marxist references are valid?
| sangnoir wrote:
| I suppose if you dismiss an article out of hand due to
| the ideology of the author without even seeing what
| historical facts they claim or _their_ references, they
| might not be valuable to you.
|
| Should progressive academics declare all CATO papers
| invalid because they are ideologically misaligned with
| the institute?
| adolph wrote:
| Did you read Platt? Its a mistake to grant any assertion
| as valid, especially given what we now know about
| academic fraud. The Platt article is freely available and
| does not reference slavery in any way that I can see from
| searching (the bad OCR) and quickly reading through the
| paragraphs.
|
| Potter: The genesis of the modern police organization in
| the South is the "Slave Patrol" (Platt 1982).
|
| Potter: Platt, Tony, "Crime and Punishment in the United
| States: Immediate and Long-Term Reforms from a Marxist
| Perspective, Crime and Social Justice 18 (1982).
| "CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE UNITED STATES: IMMEDIATE AND
| LONG-TERM REFORMS FROM A MARXIST PERSPECTIVE" Tony
| Platt Crime and Social Justice, No. 18, REMAKING
| JUSTICE (Winter 1982), pp. 38-45 (8 pages)
|
| 1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29766165
| sangnoir wrote:
| I have noted we have shifted from "I can't find a single
| example" to "I don't trust the first provided source",
| and yet there are plenty of other sources, if you're
| searching in good faith.
|
| The history of the United States is well documented - it
| was only for a brief period during reconstruction that
| policing was deracialized in the American South, and even
| saw a number of formerly-enslaved lawmen. There were
| numerous violent revolts against this, and in support of
| white supremacy in places like Oklahoma, Louisiana[1],
| Mississippi and elsewhere where egalitarian leaders were
| ran out of town, and the law enforcement (along other
| administrative leadership) was reconfigured against the
| then "new", post-civil-war ways.
|
| Do you see any functional differences between slave
| patrols (membership free from white land owners or their
| nominees) and the group that overthrew and reconstituted
| reconstruction-era law enforcement (mobs drew from white
| landowners, or their hired grunts).
|
| https://naucenter.as.virginia.edu/blog-page/1761
| graemep wrote:
| Given the origin of modern police forces in the Met, the
| principles set down by Peel would indicate that the aim
| was to have a force that was backed by the public -
| "policing by consent".
|
| One of their predecessor organisations was the Bow Street
| Runners which was set up by magistrates with the aim of
| providing a less corrupt system than that of "thief
| takers" and a more professional one than parish
| constables.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> the concept of the modern police, at least in the US,
| was largely based on the Peelian model created in London in
| the 1820s._
|
| There are some pretty big differences between the UK
| policing model and the one used in the US.
|
| The UK model was set up against the backdrop of the
| Napoleonic Wars (the French police's role included
| monitoring dissent, suppressing political opposition [1]
| and even censoring books) and the Peterloo Massacre [2]
| (where cavalry were set on a peaceful protest campaigning
| for more than 2% of people to be allowed to vote)
|
| The Peelian model [3] is one of 'policing by consent' where
| the police focus their efforts on the sorts of crimes the
| average citizen wants solved - rather than on suppressing
| political dissent, or censoring books, or launching cavalry
| charges against protests. Peel's police aren't a military
| force, which is why very few of them have guns.
|
| If the American police are based on Peelian principles,
| then an awful lot of the principles have gotten lost in
| translation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fouch%C3%A9#In_Nap
| oleon... [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre [3] https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles#The_nine_pr...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The previous comments weren't specific to America. This
| is a global website.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> the modern police, at least in the US,_
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _If the American police are based on Peelian
| principles, then an awful lot of the principles have
| gotten lost in translation._
|
| "Peelian police, but with guns!" isn't _that_ far off, I
| believe.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Can you tell me more or more about where I should look?
| What did people do about crimes like robberies etc?
| diggan wrote:
| > Cops are a relatively recent phenomena. (Cops as a
| uniformed, central office, patrolling force.)
|
| Not at all, Spain for example had local "brotherhoods" who
| were meant to protect the local communities against bandits
| and other unwanted people, and this was back in the 12th
| century. I'm sure other countries could have been even
| earlier with their early versions of a police force. "Santa
| Hermandad" is a term you can look up to find some history
| about it.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > They evolved out of warehouse guards and slave patrols.
|
| Are we still spouting this nonsense? They do come from the
| mid 1800s. Modeled after the London Metro Police, where there
| were so many slaves to catch. American cities soon imitated,
| based on how many slaves were recovered.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Are we still spouting this nonsense? They do come from
| the mid 1800s. Modeled after the London Metro Police
|
| All of the above is true. In the US, slavery enforcement
| evolved into police forces and police forces were modeled
| after UK police.
|
| Many police forces, many origin stores.
|
| https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/3/did-american-
| pol...
| andrewla wrote:
| The article you point to is explicitly debunking the idea
| of slave patrols evolving into police forces.
|
| > The claim that modern police originated from slave
| patrols is a dangerous slur designed to delegitimize
| policing ... Bad policing must be criticized, but we
| should not do so by resorting to historically flimsy
| myths, especially myths that unfairly tarnish the
| reputations of those in law enforcement and cast
| aspersions on their motives.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| It does not matter... he believes it, so it must be true.
| But it does feel weird to wander among humans, listening
| to the nonsense being discussed so earnestly.
|
| The truth of the matter is this: if you refuse to believe
| that modern policing evolved directly from slave patrols,
| it means you are a racist and you voted for Trump. This
| is undeniable, and by denying it you prove it true.
| Nuanced and sophisticated descriptions of how historical
| circumstances came to be are repressive and the enemy of
| social justice. Thomas Jefferson ate babies and George
| Washington stomped on little latinx children.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _But it does feel weird to wander among humans,
| listening to the nonsense being discussed so earnestly._
|
| It's even weirder when you're from any place on Earth
| other than the USA.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| It would be fair to say that early US police were mostly
| about protecting the interests of the powerful. Over time
| that diminished and police protected an increasing number
| of less powerful groups.
|
| During my childhood, it was common for police to defer to
| husbands regarding domestic abuse. And kids all over knew
| to not go to the police - for any kind of abuse from
| authority figures.
| qznc wrote:
| Accidentally, I read about the Romans recently. They had the
| Cohortes Vigiles, which was mostly a night time fire watch
| but it included night watch duties. Daytime was the
| responsibility of the Praetorian Guard. They were more kind
| of a part of the army but under the mayor's control (to some
| degree at least). I think they meet your definition of
| uniformed, central office, and patrolling.
| voxic11 wrote:
| A very interesting piece on the history and development of
| modern policing https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/sarah-
| seo-how-cars-tra...
| janalsncm wrote:
| This seems like a genetic fallacy. Police might have been
| former slave patrollers at one time in some places. That
| doesn't mean all US police are the same or have anything in
| common with them.
|
| I'm not sure what it means for US police to have "evolved out
| of" slave patrols in places that never had slaves, like New
| York City (northern states didn't want to enforce the
| Fugitive Slave Act), or even in places like Hawaii that were
| founded well after slavery was abolished.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Specifically, SWAT teams didn't exist until the 1960s. I'd
| wager their escalated use against civilians in their homes
| likely coincided with the War on Drugs in the 1980s.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The story I've heard is the North Hollywood shootout led
| to increased militarization when police were outgunned by
| two bank robbers.
|
| https://www.policemag.com/weapons/article/15348048/how-
| the-n...
|
| Of course, there must have been many other causes. It
| wasn't the first time in US history that police were
| outgunned.
| gruez wrote:
| >That concept is from the mid 1800s. They evolved out of
| warehouse guards and slave patrols.
|
| Isn't this just guilt by association? Whether police are bad
| or not should be judged on its merits, not what its history
| is. The Autobahn and VW was built by Nazi Germany, but it'd
| be absurd to bring that factoid up when discussing road
| transport or the German car industry.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's guilt by association _and_ that narrow nationalistic
| perspective that the US is the entirety of the world. Turns
| out, most of the planet managed to form similarly-operating
| police forces without first having slave patrols.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _slave patrols_
|
| Yeah, right. Those were distinctly US-ian things; somehow,
| the rest of the world managed to develop a similar form of
| police force at similar time, too.
| valval wrote:
| Not at all. It's good that law enforcement have the tools to
| deal with serious threats. You're just throwing around a fear
| word.
|
| The big guns are hidden from sight anyway, and only brought out
| when need be. We don't need any Oct 7th type attacks happening
| on home soil.
| LargeWu wrote:
| If they can be summoned by just placing an anonymous phone
| call with an unverified claim, that might be a problem
| though.
| everforward wrote:
| This. There are valid reasons to have the big guns, though
| I still think we've overreached. It is terrifying that a
| damn teenager managed to trick the cops into whipping out
| the big guns hundreds of times.
|
| Despite that the teenager will likely be going to jail, the
| most damning indictment is of the police forces that were
| repeatedly co-opted by the teenager. It should really take
| something much more clever to trigger this kind of systemic
| response repeatedly.
| gruez wrote:
| What's the alternative? Waiting for New York Times to
| verify a home invasion has indeed taken place before
| sending over cops?
| LargeWu wrote:
| Maybe just sending out a single squad car first to get a
| credible assessment?
| slightwinder wrote:
| > We don't need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home
| soil.
|
| USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average. This is far
| worse than a singular big attack. And how long would the
| reaction of police to any big attack even take? Is it
| actually realistic that they will have a useful impact with
| big guns?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >USA has 1-2 mass shootings everyday on average.
|
| 2+ victims is a mass shooting per the FBI definition so
| while what you say is technically true it's also a
| particularly evil way to mislead the reader as the typical
| mass shooting of the FBI definition consists of 2-4 people
| shot over the course of an otherwise normal crime wheres
| the colloquial definition of "mass shooting" is more along
| the lines of a crazy suicidal person killing as many others
| as they can.
| agubelu wrote:
| The USA is the only first-world country I'm aware of
| where many people are happy to argue that a 2+ victim
| shooting (in any context) is NOT a mass shooting.
| tomsmeding wrote:
| "2" being a large number of people to be killed in a
| crime does not necessarily make it sensible (to me, a
| Dutchman, very much not American) to call that crime a
| "mass shooting". If the crime was e.g. a bank robbery
| (sorry for the unimaginative example), and they shot a
| member of staff and later a civilian to get away, then
| that's a robbery with two dead, not a mass shooting. What
| people imagine when you say "mass shooting" is
| sensational stories from (predominantly) the US where
| some mad kid takes a gun to a school and shoots around.
| If _that_ kid shoots 2 people, that 's a mass shooting
| with 2 dead.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Mass shootings as defined to inflate statistics by groups
| like the Gun Violence Archive aren't what people usually
| think of when they think of mass shootings. Those figures
| include anything with four victims including gang violence,
| robberies, etc. The more accurate measure is from the
| Mother Jones database, which lists just two this year.
| bilekas wrote:
| > We don't need any Oct 7th type attacks happening on home
| soil.
|
| Well homegrown attacks happen DAILY. "Averaging almost 50,000
| deaths from firearms annually". But no, once they're not on
| the news like the Oct 7th attacks where, it's fine I guess.
|
| https://www.statista.com/topics/10904/gun-violence-in-the-
| un...
| nickff wrote:
| The number you're citing is much higher than the number of
| firearm-related homicides on your linked page; I believe
| that's because it includes suicides, which are not relevant
| to this conversation.
| psychlops wrote:
| 2023 which was the peak had homocides at 14,244.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/249803/number-of-
| homicid...
| cowgoesmoo wrote:
| So you want police to deal with 10k+ gun related homicides
| using only batons and pepper spray?
| valval wrote:
| If there are guns, there is death. Frankly, if there are no
| guns, there's still death.
|
| You pulling an argumentative sleight of hand here
| conflating your run of the mill gun violence with terrorist
| attacks or mass shootings isn't cool.
|
| It doesn't matter how the police is equipped, they can't
| stop a guy from walking up to his neighbor and shooting him
| in the face unless they're already there pointing guns at
| him. Although, maybe some sort of remote mind control chip
| is the answer there?
|
| Also, I'm certain every shooting ends up on local news.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The military model is that they are organized into units with
| training, and obey a central authority. On the whole, it's been
| an improvement over forming ad hoc posses of farmers and
| shopkeepers and arming them, or the medieval hue and cry model
| where someone screams and then everybody in town comes over and
| beats a stranger to death for having a different accent after
| dark. I'd love to see some statistics about how much worse it
| is now that we have professional police, though, if you've got
| any to share.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| The "military model" goes so much further than that. They are
| "officers" and have military ranks as their position/title.
| They wear military-styled uniforms and headwear. They engage
| in military-style ceremonies.
|
| > I'd love to see some statistics about how much worse it is
| now that we have professional police,
|
| How fortunate that they're willing to collect statistics on
| their own performance for you.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > The "military model" goes so much further than that.
|
| Claiming that police are being militarized is a very broad
| statement. Depending on your perspective it can be positive
| or negative.
|
| You could argue that consistency and having a common
| operating model with accountability is a good thing.
| Unfortunately many would argue the adopted model is very
| flawed and that the level accountability is tied to public
| outrage or scrutiny.
|
| I think everyone would agree that adequate training is
| essential but we would disagree on what type of training is
| appropriate. Some argue that sensitivity and deescalation
| training are where the focus should be, while others are
| arguing for the warrior training.
|
| The true conservative would say that we can't do it right
| so we shouldn't attempt because doing it badly will be more
| harmful than not having done it at all.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > You could argue that consistency and having a common
| operating model with accountability is a good thing.
|
| Why would that require that a "captain" has several
| subordinates ranked "Lieutenant" and "Sergeant"? Why do
| the highest ranked police have caps with brocade, and
| gold braid on their shoulders? Is that part of the
| consistency? Why does the NYPD have dress uniforms? Why
| do they give military style funerals for those who die,
| or x-gun salutes? We're often told they're out there
| fighting "wars", though everyone is always vague about
| who the other side is.
|
| I'm not making the claim that they've been militarized
| recently. It seems to have been the case no matter how
| far you go back.
|
| > I think everyone would agree that adequate training is
| essential but we would disagree on what type of training
| is appropriate.
|
| I don't think this is a training problem. When they shoot
| some grandma or shake down travelers for the cash in
| their wallets, I don't think this could ever be corrected
| no matter how much or what sort of training they are
| required to undergo. This is some baseline ethics
| problem, that could only be corrected with initial
| selection, and then only if the selection process itself
| were relatively uncorrupted (and it's not).
|
| Your comment doesn't just suggest you are mistaken about
| this or that, but that you aren't in a frame of mind
| where you could recognize or appreciate that there is a
| problem.
|
| > The true conservative would say that we can't do it
| right so we shouldn't attempt because
|
| What if the task were something absolutely morally
| abhorrent? What if the task was to efficiently and
| artfully carve the hearts out of newborn babies and
| toddlers, and to terrorize the parents with the mutilated
| remains of their children? But you've been doing this
| task for so long, that you and everyone else just assumes
| that it's something that needs to be done. You're sitting
| around arguing "ok, maybe we need to do only have as many
| satanic baby sacrifices, and I won't listen to the people
| who say we need to have more not less". And there's
| another guy sitting next to you saying "I don't know why
| we need the terror... we could kill just as many babies
| without being cruel, they could get anesthesia, and we
| could do grief counseling for the mom and dad".
|
| And you endlessly yammer about this stuff, for decades,
| never noticing that you're all lunatics. The concept that
| this just shouldn't be done at all, in any manner, it's
| something you can't possibly hear. Even those who can
| understand this like to whine that they're powerless to
| stop it, that they don't have the tools to put a stop to
| it, etc. The truth is we all have the power to stop, none
| of you want to.
| graemep wrote:
| > The militarization of law enforcement and its consequences
| have been a disaster for the human race.
|
| Do you mean for the US, rather than the human race? Some of us
| live in countries where the only weapons most cops carry are
| truncheons and tasers.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| The weapons are orthogonal to the culture; most of the police
| abuse volume is in beating, arrest and confinement, property
| destruction and confiscation, etc. The shootings make news,
| but lots of people don't get shot and still suffer lasting
| material consequences
| graemep wrote:
| I agree those are problems in many places (and to some
| extent will be with anywhere), but would not describe them
| as militarisation.
| chgs wrote:
| Whats bad for the US is bad for the rest of the world.
| America uses its outsized influence to impact the entire
| world
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Plenty of countries are benefiting from U.S. mistakes and
| 'badness'...
| righthand wrote:
| And yet your country may have an NYPD office.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| This is at best naive, and reads pretty smug and self-
| satisfied. You likely still have a military, and policing
| isn't really about the weapons a cop carries. Ironically less
| deadly weapons can encourage more liberal use, so maybe you
| can be proud of your higher rate of non-lethal beatings?
| graemep wrote:
| Someone subjected to a non-lethal beating can complain, and
| be a witness to what happened. They can be medically
| examined to determine what happened. Its far harder to
| cover up.
|
| I am pretty happy with the police hardly ever killing
| anyone, and that almost always someone who is a real danger
| to others. I am happy fewer people being killed by police
| so far this decade (and that includes road accidents
| involving police!), than have been killed by police in the
| US so far this month.
| bko wrote:
| Its not just the weapons. In parts of Europe you can get
| arrested for posting the wrong kind of meme online.
|
| As a side note, when trying to research this you'll see weird
| double speak fact checks like below:
|
| > Fact Check: 11-year-old arrested on suspicion of violent
| disorder after riots, not 'mean tweets'
|
| > Sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent, or menacing
| messages on public electronic communication networks is a
| criminal offence in Britain under Section 127 of the
| Communications Act 2003
|
| > Misleading. An 11-year-old was arrested on suspicion of
| violent disorder, not for social media posts, during a swathe
| of arrests by British police targeting those involved in
| rioting.
|
| But then the authors don't write what 'violent disorder' is.
|
| Then they try to further confuse the matter by talking about
| a completely unrealted 11 year old boy that was arrested for
| suspicion of arson
|
| > The spokesperson said the 11-year-old, one of five
| juveniles arrested on suspicion of violent disorder by the
| force on Aug. 28 in relation to the riots, was later bailed.
|
| > Cleveland Police arrested another 11-year-old on suspicion
| of arson after a police vehicle was set alight in Hartlepool
| on July 31, according to the spokesperson and an Aug. 1
| statement, opens new tab . The child was also released on
| bail, the spokesperson said.
|
| And this isn't some weird online political rag, it's Reuters.
| It's all very strange.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/11-year-old-arrested-
| susp...
| growse wrote:
| > But then the authors don't write what 'violent disorder'
| is.
|
| "Violent Disorder" is a specific offence listed in the
| Public Order Act.
|
| > Then they try to further confuse the matter by talking
| about a completely unrealted 11 year old boy that was
| arrested for suspicion of arson
|
| The way it reads doesn't seem like it's "completely
| unrelated" at all.
| bko wrote:
| > "Violent Disorder" is a specific offence listed in the
| Public Order Act.
|
| So the article should explain it.
|
| > The way it reads doesn't seem like it's "completely
| unrelated" at all.
|
| How is this related apart from the person sharing the
| same age and the town being the same? One is suspected of
| arson and the other of Violent Disorder? Does this add
| value to the fact check?
| illiac786 wrote:
| If you insist on the original article being very precise
| and very exhaustive, you should too: "wrong kind of meme"
| is very vague. A meme of a swastika will indeed land you in
| trouble in multiple countries, to pick a lightweight
| example. What kind of meme do you mean?
| smsm42 wrote:
| I just read about a kid being arrested for $2 bill because
| the cops didn't know such bills exist. Not the first time
| it happens too. Some of them aren't exactly brilliant,
| unfortunately. And there are almost never any consequences
| for doing stupid while in the uniform.
| cmuguythrow wrote:
| FYI this is a reference to the opening statement of the
| Unabomber Manifesto "Industrial Society and its Future".
| Don't think OP meant anything by the distinction of US/humans
|
| > The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a
| disaster for the human race.
|
| https://ia600300.us.archive.org/30/items/the-ted-k-
| archive-t...
| graemep wrote:
| Is this an obvious reference? Do people often know the text
| of this, or of bits of it?
| acureau wrote:
| Fairly obvious for those who've spent enough time online,
| I'd say most people would only recognize that first
| sentence. The Unabomber Manifesto has become something of
| a copypasta
| elzbardico wrote:
| It would obviously fuck with the cultural reference replacing
| US for the world in the phrase.
|
| But if you believe that only the US has this problem, I am
| sad to inform you that Taylor Swift and Hollywood Movies are
| not the only American cultural exports eagerly consumed
| around the world.
| magnetowasright wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than just equipment I reckon.
| Australian cops don't necessarily use literal military
| equipment (as frequently as US cops) but they sure know how
| to and make time to beat and rough ride someone within an
| inch of their lives, harass and arrest political youtuber
| staff members (friendly jordies) for literally no reason, or
| tase people to death (a tiny ~92 year old demented lady at a
| nursing home with a blunt steak knife, for example) at
| impressive scale. Aboriginal Australians couldn't be the most
| incarcerated peoples on earth without the dedication of our
| repugnant police forces. It speaks to militarisation or being
| a disaster to me despite not rolling out the tanks because of
| the severity of responses is still utterly beyond reason and
| has basically the same outcomes including no repercussions
| for going so far beyond what could possibly be justified even
| when there actually is danger or a crime happening.
| joemazerino wrote:
| How is this even related to militarization? The perp is abusing
| emergency response systems with a total lack of empathy for the
| damage it did to the victim and the department.
|
| The separation of empathy from an 18 year old online kid from
| his peers is the true tragedy here.
| anonu wrote:
| Your comment is a bit off topic IMO. Swatting can occur
| regardless of how "militarized" a police force actually is.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Can it?
|
| Do you really think that dressing in military special ops
| tactical clothing, with advanced and powerful weaponry,
| balaclavas, helmets and responding to a call in a armoured
| vehicle doesn't create any weird expectations on the mind of
| police officer of how they should behave in a call?
| magnetowasright wrote:
| Does playing dress up make any difference to how much
| murdering they do? I don't think that outcomes would be any
| different if they were sent in in their regular uniforms
| with their regular weaponry.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| This type of behavior is why I am so adamant about not doxxing
| myself on the internet. I had a belligerent internet-goer track
| me down last year through some open profiles. Luckily, they were
| the non-swatting type, and it allowed me to fix the gaps. It
| sucks to live in fear of these people.
|
| Also, HN seems to have a bad echo chamber on both policing and
| gun control.
| stepupmakeup wrote:
| Just like the evolution of sim swapping and how it went from
| hijacking celebrity accounts for a day to stealing millions
| from crypto investors, cybercriminals slowly realized that it's
| far more easier to get personal data through bribing/hacking
| companies (telecoms, amazon) or even by directly sending
| emergency data requests from stolen law enforcement email
| addresses.
|
| No amount of opsec can save you from corrupt employees making
| below minimum wage.
| illiac786 wrote:
| Does swatting only exist in the US? By swatting I mean "causing
| life threatening police action to innocent people by giving false
| information to said police".
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