<story><title>Call of Duty gaming community points to ‘swatting’ in Wichita police shooting</title><url>https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>What do you think happens in a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; scenario where someone has shot someone and is holding a group of other people hostage? You think they get some agents on a jet from Quantico to start collecting evidence?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what makes this crime so evil: the people doing it are deliberately trying to put the police in the worst possible scenario. Police need more training and better procedures and they are certainly abusive, but it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;this exact situation&lt;/i&gt; --- when it&amp;#x27;s really occurring, and isn&amp;#x27;t just some troll --- that drives most of those abuses.</text></item><item><author>andybak</author><text>Wow. Let me take a breath here.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m British and the words you just wrote sound insane to me.&lt;p&gt;The key point here is that the threshold for the use of lethal force by the state should be much, much higher than merely an anonymous call. If that makes me &amp;quot;anti-police&amp;quot; then I&amp;#x27;m very happy not to live in your great nation.</text></item><item><author>krapp</author><text>&amp;gt;Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.&lt;p&gt;Telling the police &lt;i&gt;someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages&lt;/i&gt; is likely to result in SWAT responding with potentially deadly force, because that&amp;#x27;s what they&amp;#x27;re supposed to do.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not at all equivalent to a proof that &amp;quot;calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I understand the anti-police contingent in these threads tends to be strong, and the feeling is often justifiable, but let&amp;#x27;s not pretend what happened here is a typical police response, even in the US.</text></item><item><author>rcthompson</author><text>Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed. And however obvious that fact may be, it&amp;#x27;s probably not something that the justice system (of which the police are a part) will be willing to acknowledge.</text></item><item><author>baddox</author><text>Is this even controversial for anyone beyond the most die-hard blue liners? &lt;i&gt;Of course&lt;/i&gt; this is homocide, both for the caller and the shooter. If it’s not, then it’s hard to imagine anything is.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Two things can obviously be true at the same time: that &amp;quot;police officers&amp;quot;† are improperly keyed up as if they&amp;#x27;re shock troops preparing for a battle, and that calling in a false report with the hope that it will provoke an armed response is effectively an attempt at homicide.&lt;p&gt;To me, the (standard) overreaction by the police makes arguments minimizing what the gamer did here even harder. Unless you live under a rock, you&amp;#x27;re aware of the controversy about armed police response in the US. Surely this gamer knew that, and called a fake report in anyways --- one involving an active shooter and a hostage.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m with Ken &amp;quot;Popehat&amp;quot; White: what the gamer did here is homicide. We can argue about the degree.&lt;p&gt;† &lt;i&gt;really, in almost all cases in the US, &amp;quot;assault officers&amp;quot;, and we should separate the two concepts, stop hiring new assault officers, and start hiring a new class of less-armed police officers&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Later&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It turns out there&amp;#x27;s already a concept in US law that captures this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Depraved-heart_murder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Depraved-heart_murder&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gregmac</author><text>While SWAT should respond, shouldn&amp;#x27;t they cordon off the area and try to make contact? Actually going inside seems like it should be the last resort, after there is no response or there is observable probable cause or imminent threat.&lt;p&gt;Especially if the call is anonymous with few concrete details -- the police should consider why does this caller know the info they know? Why is the call anonymous or otherwise untraceable?&lt;p&gt;How many times have lives been saved by SWAT entering after a call like this vs an innocent person getting injured or killed? How many anonymous, untraceable calls to 911 have even turned out to be legitimate?</text></comment>
<story><title>Call of Duty gaming community points to ‘swatting’ in Wichita police shooting</title><url>https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>What do you think happens in a &lt;i&gt;real&lt;/i&gt; scenario where someone has shot someone and is holding a group of other people hostage? You think they get some agents on a jet from Quantico to start collecting evidence?&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s what makes this crime so evil: the people doing it are deliberately trying to put the police in the worst possible scenario. Police need more training and better procedures and they are certainly abusive, but it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;this exact situation&lt;/i&gt; --- when it&amp;#x27;s really occurring, and isn&amp;#x27;t just some troll --- that drives most of those abuses.</text></item><item><author>andybak</author><text>Wow. Let me take a breath here.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m British and the words you just wrote sound insane to me.&lt;p&gt;The key point here is that the threshold for the use of lethal force by the state should be much, much higher than merely an anonymous call. If that makes me &amp;quot;anti-police&amp;quot; then I&amp;#x27;m very happy not to live in your great nation.</text></item><item><author>krapp</author><text>&amp;gt;Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.&lt;p&gt;Telling the police &lt;i&gt;someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages&lt;/i&gt; is likely to result in SWAT responding with potentially deadly force, because that&amp;#x27;s what they&amp;#x27;re supposed to do.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not at all equivalent to a proof that &amp;quot;calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I understand the anti-police contingent in these threads tends to be strong, and the feeling is often justifiable, but let&amp;#x27;s not pretend what happened here is a typical police response, even in the US.</text></item><item><author>rcthompson</author><text>Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed. And however obvious that fact may be, it&amp;#x27;s probably not something that the justice system (of which the police are a part) will be willing to acknowledge.</text></item><item><author>baddox</author><text>Is this even controversial for anyone beyond the most die-hard blue liners? &lt;i&gt;Of course&lt;/i&gt; this is homocide, both for the caller and the shooter. If it’s not, then it’s hard to imagine anything is.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Two things can obviously be true at the same time: that &amp;quot;police officers&amp;quot;† are improperly keyed up as if they&amp;#x27;re shock troops preparing for a battle, and that calling in a false report with the hope that it will provoke an armed response is effectively an attempt at homicide.&lt;p&gt;To me, the (standard) overreaction by the police makes arguments minimizing what the gamer did here even harder. Unless you live under a rock, you&amp;#x27;re aware of the controversy about armed police response in the US. Surely this gamer knew that, and called a fake report in anyways --- one involving an active shooter and a hostage.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m with Ken &amp;quot;Popehat&amp;quot; White: what the gamer did here is homicide. We can argue about the degree.&lt;p&gt;† &lt;i&gt;really, in almost all cases in the US, &amp;quot;assault officers&amp;quot;, and we should separate the two concepts, stop hiring new assault officers, and start hiring a new class of less-armed police officers&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Later&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It turns out there&amp;#x27;s already a concept in US law that captures this:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Depraved-heart_murder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Depraved-heart_murder&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grw_</author><text>&amp;gt; when it&amp;#x27;s really occurring, and isn&amp;#x27;t just some troll&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA, but I read about instances of &amp;#x27;swatting&amp;#x27; constantly. Given the false-positive rate of such reports, it&amp;#x27;s no surprise that sending military-style squads to &amp;#x27;shoot on sight&amp;#x27; ends in tragedy again and again.</text></comment>