>Unfortunately, calling this homicide requires acknowledging the fact that calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed.

Telling the police someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages is likely to result in SWAT responding with potentially deadly force, because that's what they're supposed to do.

That's not at all equivalent to a proof that "calling the police on someone is likely to result in them getting killed."

I understand the anti-police contingent in these threads tends to be strong, and the feeling is often justifiable, but let's not pretend what happened here is a typical police response, even in the US.

Wow. Let me take a breath here.

I'm British and the words you just wrote sound insane to me.

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 "anti-police" then I'm very happy not to live in your great nation.

What do you think happens in a real 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?

That'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's this exact situation --- when it's really occurring, and isn't just some troll --- that drives most of those abuses.

While SWAT should respond, shouldn'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.

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?

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?

Not in the active shooter scenario. The standard approach now is to not even wait for SWAT, but to go in as soon as at least two officers are on the scene. The rationale is that active shooters usually stop killing people as soon as they get any kind of resistance, so timing is very important.

Of course "going in" does not mean shooting indiscriminately.

"Active shooter" scenarios usually only apply to areas with more than a few potential victims, e.g. not a single household.

It definitely seems like some simple heuristics could help a lot in giving police a sense of the probability that it's a false alarm. They will of course still need to assess the situation, but systemic police accountability issues aside, harming completely innocent people is still no picnic for the officers involved, so knowing when the fraud likelihood is particularly high should help them calm down and take a more measured approach.

Apart from call tracing, I'd expect simple things like whether the caller stays on the line and cooperates with the dispatcher (vs hanging up immediately) to be quite predictive.

  Actually going inside seems like it should be the last resort

and they did not go inside to shoot the victim.

> when it's really occurring, and isn't just some troll

I don't know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA, but I read about instances of 'swatting' constantly. Given the false-positive rate of such reports, it's no surprise that sending military-style squads to 'shoot on sight' ends in tragedy again and again.

> I don't know how often hostage scenarios as extreme as you describe actually occur in the USA

Often. Mostly domestic violence barricading scenarios, which are usually handled by front-line officers with sidearms and negotiation. SWAT deployment is usually discretionary at such a scene, predicated on an active shooter, and anticipates forced entry. In an active shooter scenario, front-line officers will typically defer to SWAT to force entry, given the risk.

But yes, it does happen. A lot of domestic violence ends badly.

A lot of domestic violence ends badly because police actions ensured that it would. E.g. instead of leaving the bastard the woman develops a sort of codependent relation with local cops so that every busted lip she suffers means the bastard gets a tag-team beatdown from everyone on duty. Nightly entertainment for the whole neighborhood!

I'm no fan of wife-beaters, but somehow every other nation on earth has figured out less violent ways of dealing with them. Yes, in many cases "the way" is to simply accept that wives will get beaten. Admitting this is no more an acceptance of police violence than admitting that not all nations are governed with perfect justice would be an acceptance of all of our damned wars. This is a "won't somebody please think of the children?!" level of argument.

I think a big compounding problem is the overall prevalence of guns. In most places domestic abusers aren't untrained gun nuts living in a macho wave-your-gun-whenever-you-want culture.

People can obviously do plenty of damage beating each-other with objects, slashing with kitchen knives, or whatever, but guns seem to lead especially often to escalation from shoving to instant death.

When police show up, if someone has a gun everything is a lot more difficult/dangerous.

Agents, jet, Quantico? No.

Collect some evidence? Absolutely.

I think part of the problem is a indirect result of the US gun policy. In pretty much any other civilized country is very, very rare that the police will encounter someone who is armed. In the US guns are everywhere. So the police constantly feels threatened for good reason. So to me lots of these issues are even more cost from the US not being able to move its gun policy into the same century as every other civilized country.

I get the point about guns being important to protect against a fascist government, but then I literally see a p protest march by Nazis armed with assault rifles...

> So the police constantly feels threatened for good reason

So should we take away rights so the government feels less threatened? That seems like the wrong reason.

I want to have the right to feel safe knowing that random people around me won't be carrying weapons made for the sole purpose of killing people.

"The government" - that's supposed to be the way we organize ourselves and stand up together to above things we believe in as a nation. While that's not always working well talking about it as if its given that it's a malevolent, suppressive regime is only going to make things worse. The US finally needs to do its wild West mentality and arrive on the 21st century with the rest of the civilized world.

That's a catch-22 isn't it?

Asking the most armed government in the world to eliminate gun violence, by using their guns?

I'd hope we can get away from both armed government and armed citizens

That’s the great thing about the USA. You don’t have the “right to feel safe”. I’ll keep my guns, thank you.

That's surprising since we are putting a whole lot of money on making people feel safe from much less dangerous things.

Respecting any right comes at a cost in human lives. We should think very carefully about which things we consider so important as to be worth elevating them to that kind of absolute.

The cost:benefit of the second amendment is way out of proportion, IMO.

Don't worry. Lefties are arming up too.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/antifa-movement-...

It's ok, nationalism makes some people emotional, take a deep breath and calm down.

I don't actually disagree with you. The use of lethal force was the mistake here, but the presence of force was justifiable. The problem is how easily one seems to lead to the other. What should have happened is the police realizing their force was unnecessary and then standing down.

Also, if someone were to call in, say, a terrorist threat or a bomb threat in Britain, someone would show up with guns there as well. You know, because Britain also has their equivalent to SWAT teams. With guns. That they shoot people with.

The British 'firearms units' aren't trained to bring aggression to a situation. They're trained to properly identify targets before shooting, knowing that they will be required to justify their actions in court. Completely different to SWAT team training in the US. Here in the UK, an officer shooting someone dead as soon as they answer the door won't fly in court. The number of police killings in the UK vs US is relatively less controversial by a significant margin.

Just for the sake of accuracy, the victim here wasn't 'shot dead as soon as they answered the door[0].'

Not that 'shot dead from across the street as soon as his hand twitched' is justifiable.

[0]http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html

The article you reference currently says just this:

“A male came to the front door,” Livingston said. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.”

Perhaps it previously had some other claim about the circumstances, but if so it has since been revised to remove it.

Watch the body camera video in the same article.

UK armed police shot and killed and unarmed, innocent man in 2005. Nobody was charged or had to justify their actions in court. It happens far less often but when the situation does arise, it's not obvious British police are better trained and react better. What does work is the policy of restricting both firearms ownership and the number of armed police.

The fact that you didn't even need to know his name and most in Britain know who you're talking about says all you need to know about the scrutiny of it. Every time a British police officer discharges their weapon it is automatically investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

No, that doesn't, in itself, say anything about the degree or quality of scrutiny. It just says the events are so rare, they're memorable. Officers discharging their weapons are reviewed in the US as well.

If you're referring to the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting, then there were weeks of hearings where the police and officers involved had to justify their actions.

Perhaps you misread the claim in the comment.

"They're trained to properly identify targets before shooting, knowing that they will be required to justify their actions in court."

Obviously, they neither properly identified their target nor did they have to justify their actions in court.

There was a very long coroners inquiry on this shooting. In this coroners court the shooters had to explain in details. Yes, they got the identifications wrong, but this was not after some random telephone call, but after four suicide bomber had filled dozens of people.

I think the balance is about right and nothing like the USA. More importantly the jury of peers, in the coroners court, thought the Met Police failed on Health and Safety grounds but not the individual shooters.

There are long inquiries and court cases in the US as well. Jury of peers, the whole lot. I'm not sure how the 'balance is about right and nothing like the USA'. When called upon in a moment of crisis, these people got onto a train and shot an innocent person in the the head half a dozen times, from close range.

The big difference is, there are fewer opportunities for armed police to screw this up. There are far fewer of them (heavily armed police are the exception, rather than the default) and they are not nearly needed as often (the citizenry is not as heavily armed). The policy that largely prevents the mistakes is what really helps, rather than having better armed police or better post-cockup inquiries (both of which, to me, seem fairly debatable).

American SWAT teams are also trained to "properly identify targets before shooting", and officers are held accountable through a variety of systems (even though we may not always agree with the conclusion).

We're not going to get anywhere with such silly caricatures, and they are dangerous in themselves -- just ask Dallas. May be something to keep in mind while we're on the subject of indirect culpability.

> nationalism makes some people emotional,

I'm not sure where you thought I was being nationalistic. I stated my nationality to make the context clearer. My country is an odious cesspool in many ways. We're just lucky not to have a fully militarised police force.

  The *use* of lethal force was the mistake here, but the *presence* of force was justifiable.

That is very well put.

> the threshold for the use of lethal force

That isn't the problem (at least primarily). Claiming that there is a serious hostage situation with the possibility of serious violence (perhaps even a potential murder) seriously escalates the risk and hostility of the situation. I didn't say potential hostility; the claim itself directly increases the perceived threat level of the situation, even if it isn't credible. A team of people responding en masse with weapons[1] at the ready further escalates the tension of the situation and the hostility of the room, even if their weapons are never used.

The end result is a very tense situation with everyone - on all sides - ready to jump at anything that might be a threat. Fortunately there is at least some evidence[2] that in "most" swattings, cooler heads eventually prevail and nobody gets shot. However, evaluating potential threats is always going to use the faster but less accurate "System 1"[3][4]. The higher the tension level, the greater chance that someone's mind will make a serious mistake, which can easily result in a cascade of everyone recursively responding in ways that probably compound the mistake, which is when people tend to get shot/stabbed/beaten/whatever.

The solution is that there needs to respond to situations that are less likely to escalate the situation to greater levels of hostility. Once it turns into a "charlie foxtrot"[5], it's too late. However, if a streamer's prior notification to the police that, should any threat be called in regarding their address, if the police pound on the door, they can expect the stream to walk outside peacefully to talk, maybe the dangerous escalation where they breaking down the door and pointing guns at everyone can be avoided. They can always fall back to that strategy if nobody comes out to talk.

edit: added [2]'s missing footnote and URL

[1] of any type - a bunch of people storming a room armed only with batons is still an escalation of violence.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiW-BVPCbZk

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow#Two_sy...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVV8pch1dM

[5] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Charlie_Foxtrot

> someone has murdered several people and is armed and has taken hostages

Should this not be responded to with lethal force available? You're going to get a lot more people killed that way. Obviously the error rate should be reduced as much as possible, but a naive approach of ignoring calls without a lot of validation would be a disaster.

I imagine it would be really easy to fake some verification anyways, and coordinate a SWAT with two callers.

It would be negligent to respond with anything less than armed force to a threat like this. The police can and should be better trained, but that's different than failing to send an armed response. I would be surprised if a similar threat would be brushed off in the U.K.

You can't really think like this, seriously.

The way your police acts is retarded. No other country would respond with such backwards way to a simple single call.

  calling this homicide

"Homicide" simply means that a person died from an action of another, whether or not a criminal act was committed.

That fatal police shootings, regardless of justification, are homicide is uncontroversial. It's somewhat more controversial to characterized a false report leading to a fatal shooting as a homicide by the reporting party, because of the necessary intervening acts in the chain of causality.

OTOH, some codes specifically address false reports of emergencies producing death, avoiding any need to address indirect homicide.

Assuming that the SWAT call itself was a felony, there could be justification for charging the guy who made the SWAT call with felony murder. I'll leave it to actual lawyers to determine the actual facts of this case, I'm just trying to point out that committing a felony due to which people get killed can, in some cases, lead to felony murder charges.

There's a pretty good description of how that works here - http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1320

The judge and the jury care for the circumstances and the intent.

This case, a repeated offender (he did many calls like that) who made highly specific buggy claims (armed hostage taking with already dead hostages) with the intend to arm or kill the target (see his message) and a trace of everything (see twitter messages and recordings).

It's a perfect school case. It makes perfect sense to charge him for murder. Everything is the worst it could possibly be with the worst possibly aggravating circumstances.

Can't wait to see the proceedings. Won't be surprised if they make an example out of him.

> That fatal police shootings, regardless of justification, are homicide is uncontroversial

Justified police shootings are not homicide by any definition.

> Justified police shootings are not homicide by any definition.

Yes, they are; they are pretty much the textbook example of justifiable homicide.

They aren't criminal homicides, but not all homicides are criminal.

The first dozen or so dictionaries I checked disagree with you.

Which dictionaries are those? Here's the Google result:

> the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another; murder.

Try Websters, Oxfords, or just dictionary.com

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homicide https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/homicide http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homicide

"Homicide is the killing of a human being due to the act or failure to act of another. Criminal homicides include murder and manslaughter. Non-criminal homicides include killing in self-defense, a misadventure like a hunting accident or automobile wreck without a violation of law like reckless driving, or legal (government) execution. Suicide is a homicide, but is rarely prosecuted."

from definitions.uslegal.com

Actually, homicide can even be accidental. It sounds like you’re describing manslaughter or murder.

Yes, I think I misused the terminology.