American News: police shoot man dead responding to hoax 'swatting' call
 

https://news.sky.com/story/arrest-af...-call-11189742
The call is said to have followed a dispute between two online gamers playing first-person shooter Call of Duty.
Police have reportedly made an arrest after a hoax emergency call led to an unarmed man being shot dead in a so-called "swatting" incident.

Los Angeles Police detained 25-year-old Tyler Barriss, according to NBC News, after officers more than 1,300 miles away in Kansas fatally shot 28-year-old Andrew Finch.
The arrest comes after police said a prankster had lured officers to a house in the city of Wichita on Thursday.

The practice of "swatting", most common among online gamers, involves making false emergency calls to get a heavily armed SWAT team to attend a location.

This is the hoax call the police responded to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-u...eath-explained

idiots

My thoughts are with the poor officer involved. I hope jail time is in order to prevent this pathetic "game"

the sad thing about this particular one is that the gamer gave a false address, so the person who got shot was just someone completely uninvolved. It's scary stuff, and it could happen here too if someone suggested a terrorist was at a location

The act of Swatting is more of an internet thing than a gaming thing. I think there's been a fair few incidents of internet famous people getting swatted. This idiot, if there's any justice in the world, should go down for a long time since it's basically manslaughter.

He's killed a man, destroyed a family, potentially traumatised a police officer and all this over a game of Call of Duty.

My thoughts are with the family of the innocent man who was killed.

He was unarmed... that's on the police in any reasonable country.

I know the police told him to keep his arms up and foolishly he didn't, but he could of been disabled, deaf, mentally deficient, etc. The officer who shot him needs to take some responsibility for shooting an unarmed man.

You obviously have no clue about armed response or law enforcement to make such a ridiculous statement

The problem here is two-fold... 1) the fact that it's possible to do this in the first place, and 2) that the officer quite blatantly fired needlessly and prematurely. AGAIN I can only assume that the police weapons handling training and psych evaluations are dangerously inefficient. How can the officer involved possibly claim to have perceived a threat? There was no threat - and the officer who was speaking hadn't even finished what he was saying before the first shot was fired. Madness.

and you are basing this on what evidence?

https://news.sky.com/story/multiple-...oting-11191040

Also in the news. I think there are people who make mistakes but it seems glaringly obvious to me that the police in the US have a very difficult and dangerous job with the lack of gun control. I do feel sympathy for them on many situations. They are human and often it's a split second decision. Do you go home to your family or does he?

We used to play ganging up tig when we wanted to play a game, either that or Monopoly. But then again I didn't grow up in a fantasy world.

The death of Magdiel Sanchez a deaf man http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41351249

Walter Scott shot for a traffic offence http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42259256

Police in Miami have defended the officer who shot an unarmed behavioural therapist, saying he missed his actual target – a man with learning difficulties.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7149791.html

Police shoot homeless man who was illegally camping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tpAZObNZfI

When you factor in that SWAT may not even have the correct address due to
dispatch error, on route map error, hoax calls (over 400 swatting events have happened this year) then there has to be a huge police liability issue here. It's the premature fatal shooting of an unarmed man unconnected to any report, regardless of real or hoax; prior to any confirmation of any actual threat. The police are not combat troops but that's how they too often behave.

I know you can see no wrong in American policing. I mean ****, you never even passed your thoughts on to the dead man and his family :conf:

im not that sycophantic as to make a meaningless statement on a big brother forum

no

On the fact that innocent people keep getting shot by jumpy police officers :umm2:.


:idc: Started the New Years' festivities early there LT? These memory problems are concerning. I mean... it's not like it's a long thread...

i would say the police were victims in this case as well as the person that got shot, and if i'm not wrong, there seems to be a substantial amount of victim blaming right here in this thread

They are, to an extent, though obviously not as much as the completely uninvolved led party who ended up dead. But I still say the fact that it is POSSIBLE for this to happen is hugely concerning.

My main point with LT is that he claims that extending online sympathies is pointless on one hand, whilst actively doing so with the officer on the other :shrug:. Someone is either being disingenuous, or telling porkies.

oh and

1. a thread started solely to bash the police in the USA
2. could not give a flying fck about dead people..

No i did not think TS would be brave enough to tackle that, too busy playing to "the gallery"

in with the old...

etc

no, not a pathetic RIP meaningless post ala DR but a genuine regret that Law officers have to put up with bollocks like this whilst people like you -who would sh1t their pants if a 15 year old called you a Dick - sit in your hoose slagging them off

sad

you would be the first to reach for 999 if someone stole your PS4 and mario kart

:idc:

What the **** are you talking about... Mario Kart is a Nintendo game.

In all seriousness though, it's sort of worrying that you think it's "meaningless" to express concern that an innocent man was shot on his own doorstep for nothing... But "genuine" to express concern for the jumpy officer who shot him. I actually do feel bad for the officer as well. This will likely haunt him for life. The idiot who made the call should be charged - and not just with manslaughter IMO - with full murder. Everyone knows that these calls have ended with deaths, therefore he knew when he made the call that someone might die. That's premeditation and therefore, murder.

However, the people who came off worst from this are the man who is dead and his poor family.

Also, it is concerning that the officer fired as quickly as he did when he can't possibly have identified a threat (as there wasn't one, the guy simply answered his door and had absolutely no idea what was going on). The other officers on scene did not fire. The one speaking hadn't even finished his sentence. One officer prematurely fired his weapon, probably because of anxiety, which yes is a natural response, but trained officers carrying lethal weapons are NOT supposed to respond that way - he needs to be psych evaluated and have his gun taken away if he's too twitchy to carry it safely. Simple as.

If you can't see why that is the case then there's not much more to say.

Cop should be charged...a simple afternoons viewing of cops the tv show, should confirm this.

No surprise you try to turn it around on the American Police. You weren’t there - very easy to speculate especially when you see what you want to see,

There's a video, and there's also nothing to "turn around", because the man who was shot had nothing to do with any of it.

There are clearly a couple of faults here; the first and most obvious is the idiot who deliberately sent armed police to a random house knowing full well what could happen.

The second is the American system overall, the gun violence they're used to dealing with, and the prevalence of firearms which makes it possible to do this in the first place; in most countries, it simply wouldn't go down the same way.

And the third simply IS the police officer who fired. There were loads of officers there - only one fired. He fired before the officer with the megaphone had even finished communicating. And he fired on an unarmed man when they're trained NOT to fire until they've seen a threat (a gun, bomb, knife at close range etc.). He didn't have any of those things and the officer made a mistake. I don't see how there can be any argument that he didn't make a mistake?? He shot an unarmed, innocent man in his own doorway.

^Exactly
Shooting an unarmed person is murder regardless of who it was by imo - they should know better

From the police body cam it appears to be about 14 seconds. His mother said he was going outside to see what the police were doing and believed it was a neighboring house. They shone a spotlight in his face, told him to put his hands where they can see them and to walk towards them. Definitely a "What the **** moment" for the guy. As far as I can tell from the video he was complying if not ****ting himself. When someone shines a bright light in your face its blinding and you can't see anything other than the bright light. This gave the police a good level of protection. The police didn't seem to be using a loud speaker either and were a good distance away so he likely couldn't hear them.

It was one cop who pulled that trigger and he pulled it before the cop who was shouting out to him had finished giving demands.

Was it a close-up video. Did we see whether the man (and I know the poor man was completely innocent which is awful) made a sudden move that may have caused the reaction from this police officer who at that point didn’t know he was innocent.

There is always one person who is the first to take the shot in genuine situations, I doubt very much he was simply trigger-happy as suggested. Again it is easy to make judgements when never having been in such a situation.