And what would that make the US police forces look like? To me, as an European, it makes them look like a weapon, which you can conjure by a simple phone-call. It doesn't have to be like this.

It is a weapon effectively. Psychopaths and criminals will not hesitate to use it. During Communist times in Soviet Union same thing could happen if a neighbor denounced you for spreading anti-government propaganda, while say in reality they just didn't like your sheep grazing too close to the fence. Families ended up disappearing overnight because of it.

It is basically using the irrationality of a power structure as leverage.

(As another European) it's hard to see any alternative for regular people whose profession just happens to put their life at almost permanent risk, thanks to the attitude toward guns over there.

I'm not sure if in Europe we'd react any different -- if you called the police to report an in-progress shooting, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar trigger-happy result emerged

As a guy originally from Ukraine that as you can imagine has a fairly big problem with availability of weapons at the moment that police officer would go to jail. Having much stricter rules on when and how weapons can be used looks like a good thing.

The risk of gun violence against police is completely blown out of proportion. Of the reported police gun deaths each year, the overwhelming majority are suicides. The biggest real risk to police in the US is vehicle accidents from driving recklessly. Being a police officer isn’t even in the top 10 most dangerous professions. On the other hand, over a thousand people are killed by police in the US each year without due process.

Lack of surprise should not mean resignation.

It doesn't, but while it is, at least some safeguards could be put in place.

Doctrine of WTF is wrong with the Police should apply here.

> ...WTF is wrong with the Police...

WTF is wrong with a full-grown 25-year-old man, who thinks it's funny to waste scarce taxpayer funded resources for his own amusement, because he had a petty argument with a virtual stranger when playing an online game?

Of course I'm not defending excessive use of police force, and the officer who fired the shot should be investigated too, but we need harsher penalties for swatting. The fact we have 400 cases per year [1] is unacceptable, and I hope these criminals go to jail for a long time.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/23/4253014/swatting-911-pran...

He should got to jail but if any random idiot can get any random person killed by the police that is a Police problem as we can have different training and screening procedures for police officers but we sure as hell can not guarantee that there are no idiots with access to phones.

My point is: idiots with access to phones that do idiotic things should pay for the consequences of their acts -- regardless of how good or bad the police force is. In this case, an idiot caused the murder of an innocent man, and should pay for it, full stop. There's no ifs or buts.

Of course this doesn't precludes police from making honest mistakes - or also doing idiotic things - but hopefully will remove the incentives from idiots-with-phones and their 400 potentially-deadly pranks per year.

One thing does not exclude the other. But we can sure as hell eliminate the root cause by making an example of cases like this.

That's not the root cause. The root cause is that if the police show up they might open fire and kill someone. There are always going to be reasons for the police (or SWAT) to show up, especially with the war on drugs. And with the current environment, that means people dying. Of course, since most of the time it wasn't a SWAT call, and the person in question probably did have drugs, it's easier to totally blame the victim.

> The root cause is that if the police show up they might open fire and kill someone.

So how do you reduce the number of times the police shows up randomly at your doorstep? Four hundred times per year, more precisely?

That's the definition of "root cause".

I get it, this is HN after all, and most here feel outraged by police brutality, particularly in the US - myself included. But instead of putting the blame on police officers - who are trying to decide in a fraction of a second if their lives is at risk or it's just another stupid case of CoD gamers pranking each other - to me the blame should go squarely to the idiots causing it.

Why do you think blame has to be singular? both the Swatter and the officer who fired can be criminally liable. You can't 'pay' for something like this because you can't buy someone's life back after they're dead. You can make the Swatter suffer as a disincentive to others, but that won't eliminate the behavior any more than harsh penalties for other crimes can be shown to substantially lower crime. Many countries have far less severe penal regimens than the US and also lower levels of crime.

Swatting is easier and more popular in the US because police in this country are much more willing to rush into things.

As I said above: one thing does not exclude the other. They're BOTH liable for their acts.

Folks claiming "cops are murderers" without equally blaming the 400 idiots who did this intentionally to harm someone are letting their political bias cloud their judgement.

For context, here's the guy that (allegedly) caused it all [1]:

"Swautistic soon changed his Twitter handle to @GoredTutor36, but KrebsOnSecurity managed to obtain several weeks’ worth of tweets from Swautistic before his account was renamed. Those tweets indicate that Swautistic is a serial swatter — meaning he has claimed responsibility for a number of other recent false reports to the police."

"Among the recent hoaxes he’s taken credit for include a false report of a bomb threat at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that disrupted a high-profile public meeting on the net neutrality debate. Swautistic also has claimed responsibility for a hoax bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the Dallas Convention Center, and another bomb threat at a high school in Panama City, Fla, among others."

"Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that,” he wrote. “But I began making $ doing some swat requests.”

--

Lovely, isn't it?

Btw, Krebs' article [1] is excellent; wish it had being linked in the OP, instead of the local newspaper.

[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swa...

None is questioning that idiots have to be punished. But the problem is Idiots can be a) mentally ill b) From countries outside of US reach e.g. Russia, Iran etc. So having tough laws will have 0 deterrence in those cases. Considering we are on HN the current system is basically similar to having a website with no authentication that has a kill button that will result in death of any US person when pressed. Would you consider that an acceptable system?

He caused government to waste resourecs, not a murder, jesus. Are you so biased that you cant blame the police?

Lets say for the sake of argument he is conviced for ordering a murder. Who was the murderer in this case? This person should not be able to be convicted of murder unless the shooting cop is convicted of murder.

Literally nobody is saying the swatter is in any way justified so I don't know who you think you're arguing with. Harsher penalties for swatting aren't going to make the behavior go away because it's not that hard to do, or conceal, and the people who think it's fun aren't likely to be impressed by the rational incentives.

Those two are not mutually exclusive.

You can not change the world to get rid of idiots you sure as hell can screen police officers for psychological fitness and train them to apply force in much more reserved fashion.

Can't you read? They found the real fall guy. I mean guy.