Hoaxer with a history of fake bomb threats SWATs and murders a random bystander over a $1.50 Call of Duty bet

Yeah, I suppose, ironically, that it’s much easier to pin murder charges when it results in a death than attempted murder when it doesn’t, because of the whole felony murder rule thing.

Now that I think about it yeah.

That’s really surprising. Its exactly their sort of harassment.

And I wish that they would get off my lawn.

No mention of this on Breitbart yet. Too close to their base?

Indeed.

Armed response should be YOUR ABSOLUTE LAST RESORT, AS IN YOU THINK YOU’RE IN DANGER OF BEING KILLED WITHIN THE NEXT FEW SECONDS’ response, not the goddam default response.

Even pulling a live gun on someone at all should be a disciplinary offence unless you have damn good evidence to support it.

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A “professional” swatter.

Holy fuck.

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Techno-ferals.

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Too much tea. The caffeine’s making you twitchy; stick to horlicks.

Why/How is it that coordinated 911 call operators and the tech that supports them cannot put a location on a cellular call? That would go a long way towards preventing these kind of hoaxes. I called in an active graffiti vandal last week because I happened to be looking over at a roof across from my job and saw the guys climbing up and getting out their cans and painting. The dispatcher had me give the address of the crime and my location, did they not know it already? (after listening to the obviously disinterested dispatcher I politely hung up and called the targeted building manager directly)

But in this SWATTING instance they could have known the call was not coming from anywhere near the address given, I thought that was the point of cel tower triangulation/surveillance state actions - to know where we are all the time? Yet they don’t seem to.

I’m curious as to why something like this hasn’t happened sooner. Is it that the overwhelming majority of 16-year-olds have the common sense not to call down fire and brimstone on people that they don’t like? Or is it more common that people realize they should not leak their home addresses (let alone supply a fake address) in a conveniently-accessible fashion? Or could it be that there are actually a lot of stories we don’t hear about where police actually manage to decide that a report isn’t credible for some reason?

Except of course, for the fact that white supremacists have been joining the police for decades, and recruiting internally. The FBI has been investigating this for a long time: “In Los Angeles, for example, a U.S. District Court judge found in 1991 that members of a local sheriff’s department had formed a neo-Nazi gang and habitually terrorized black and Latino residents.” And: “If you look at the history of law enforcement in the United States, it is a history of white supremacy, to put it bluntly,” said Simi, citing the origin of U.S. policing in the slave patrols of the 18th and 19th centuries. “More recently, just going back 50 years, law enforcement, particularly in the South, was filled with Klan members.”

So, you’re not wrong about top-down elected officials. But it does appear as though people join the police for the specific reason of being a murdery douche.

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I suspect a lot of swatting attempts are recognized as bogus, or end with no loss of life and don’t make the news. I also suspect that as time goes on, the attempts are getting finer tuned as to what works. (There are probably damned FAQs out there.)

From the stories, the call was to a tertiary police number, rather than 911. Also, it was probably done through some service that bridges Internet to phone, and allows an arbitrary number to be spoofed in the call ID, probably not Skype or Google Voice, but some skuzzy outfit.

I hope this incident wakes up some of the idiots who didn’t realize that they could be sending a literal “Ping of Death”.

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Events this morning in Colorado responding to a domestic disturbance call.

One shot go might be acceptable regardless of injury to victim/suspect , although, sending a second volley of shots at a victim all ready wounded and down is difficult for (at lest) the Toronto Police Union to shield.

1: the swatter obfuscated his call, at least according to him.
2: He was caught anyway, so clearly it didn’t work so well.
3: The 911 system is still running mostly on technology that has changed little since the 1960’s (Next gen systems have started being deployed over the last year or so.)
4: Why do you assume he used a cell phone?

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Not all, but definitely far too many cops, treat every situation, as though a suspect will break out some firearms, then begin killing everyone nearby systematically.

It’s a bizarre mix of fear and fantasy, hoping to be a hero, if, and when (almost never does) that old woman with the broken tail light breaks out her mac 10, because, why not?

This isn’t some kid grasping at straws and painting a picture because 'fuck the police", I’m around cops ALL OF THE DAMN TIME, and no, I’m not going to give specifics.

They VERY badly need better training, and I will admit, they very sorely lack excellent defensive options that instill confidence (tasers are garbage in many situations). So it’s a mix of issues, though I will definitely say. mentality is a very large one, and threat assessment tends to lean towards aggressive actions, since they can be safer, but that isn’t really great, now is it?

There is a much larger issue at hand (cops are the ruff orderly types, in the asylum, if you catch my drift) but as always, we tend to forget the age old problem of “humans controlling humans”. Not an excuse, but not something to ignore, like we have for literally our species entire history.

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Gamer culture has managed to turn every innocent bystander into a non-player character. And that’s considered a feature, not a bug.

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I’ve got to strongly disagree. Even with every structural problem, the victim would be alive if the cop hadn’t pulled the trigger. We hold prison guards in genocidal regimes to that standard. You don’t get to sideatep your share of the culpability in state murder just because everyone else is doing it too.

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Sounds like premeditated murder to me.

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I think you’re disagreeing with something I didn’t say.

I didn’t at all address the detail of what happened here. Or who was at fault.

That was a side discussion about the overarching source and cause for these sorts of incidents.

It appears I replied to the wrong one of your posts, but this was the line I took issue with. “This is not an issue of officers on the ground.” because it is. Every structural step before that can be broken, but the dude would be alive if the officer on the ground had acted reasonably. Pointing only to structural issues feeds a culture of individual impunity. No matter how broken the systems we find ourselves embedded within, we are responsible for maintaining our humanity in our actions. There’s a tendency when trying to fix systemic problems within previously respected segments of society to let individual culpability fall by the wayside.

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