Response to the parent's edit: These are supposedly trained officers who acted with absolute incompetence leading to a completely needless death. How is one supposed to empathise with this? It's a complete and utter fuck-up.
I ended up yelling at my radio, “PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DYING!”
What the rep meant was cops dying. But the statement, as worded, makes it sound like cops don’t consider the rest of us to be people. Which is exactly the thing a lot of Americans are terrified is actually true.
In the end I expect he made the case for the people arguing for bigger penalties.
Granted, combat troops probably have superior training to police.
Speaking as someone in Fire/EMS who has friends who are on SWAT teams, and as someone who has personally trained with SWAT teams for active shooter situations, going into unsecured scenes to remove patients while under the cover of law enforcement... I'm still going to disagree with you, and with the assertion of wilful ignorance. Speaking of which,
> when it is clear there is immediate danger
It evidently wasn't that clear. Even when I go to a structure fire, one of the confirming criteria is "multiple callers". To be clear, "one of", not deciding, or otherwise.
My hunch here is that, just like you are suggesting, Swat teams are used incorrectly as first response in unconfirmed situations. No investigation by anyone has confirmed the threat.
At the end of the day, police officers just can’t shoot unarmed people, no matter how stressful the situation.
Here's an idea -- fly a drone around the house and look in some windows. Knock on a neighbors door and ask if they heard a gunshot. Establish the identity of the reporter - how does the reporter know what is happening? Is the reporter physically proximate to the area?
No one is arguing that.
> Here's an idea -- fly a drone around the house and look in some windows. Knock on a neighbors door and ask if they heard a gunshot.
That sounds great. Until there is an actual hostage situation, and police waste their time doing this and a hostage is killed, at which point people will be asking why they didn't kick the doors down if they knew someone was being held in there.
> Establish the identity of the reporter - how does the reporter know what is happening? Is the reporter physically proximate to the area?
The reporter claimed to be the person who killed his father and was holding other people hostage. How would you confirm if the reporter was physically in the area? E911 includes location reporting, but this can be spoofed(I don't know if it was in the situation)
Assuming it is zero, would you in whatever field you are in accept advice from someone who has zero experience in the field?
With the right training, American officers can behave in exactly the same manner.
Knocking on doors of the neighbors sounds great, but does it give you any useful information if no one heard a gun shot? What if he shot his dad in the basement, or the walls of the house are thick enough to block the sound. You still need to go in and check even if every neighbor said they didn't hear anything. Also, knocking on doors wastes what may be valuable time in a real hostage situation.
If the person who answers tells you that nothing is wrong, and that no one called the cops, then swat team can be a bit more careful about keeping their safeties on.
This phone call could’ve occurred while SWAT was deploying to the scene.
They only could’ve gained by doing this.
Sure, you want to get police into position as quickly as possible, but you can also direct other people to investigate at the same time. And instead of just yelling directions at the guy from a distance when he came to the door, they could have tried asking questions when he appeared.
I mean, you can just as easily imagine other non-threatening factors. What if it was real, but the person at the door was actually one of the hostages who had been released but was scared and disoriented? What if it was an innocent person who was deaf? Police in Oklahoma shot a deaf guy 3 months ago even though people were yelling at the officers to tell them he was deaf. Police know what swatting is, and it's a common enough term that newscasters can use it in a sentence these days, so why didn't they consider that possibility?
I realize you're trying to be objective, but almost every one of your posts on this subject actually depends on a logical fallacy.
When it comes to police shooting people, I have little sympathy. They are the only class of people in society who can kill and under most circumstances, face no real consequence for their actions unlike the rest of their citizen compatriots. With that privilege comes a greater responsibility in my assessment.
I have absolutely zero sympathy for post-shooting employment difficulties police face who have, unlike nearly the rest of society, union protections and can not be terminated at will. When my employment circumstances are equal to a police officer, either by at-will provisions being extended to that class of citizen, or by me having access to a union of equal effectiveness, will I have one iota of sympathy for cops who find scrutiny too hard to bear.
Police officers are free to do like the rest of us and find a new job.
That is demonstrably false.
For reference, start with this case.
What happened to the civilian is a tragedy. He should not have been killed. But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.
It completely mystifies me how people can think that people with guns were justified in fatally shooting someone with no guns. That kind of thing should just never happen, either subdue them or let them get away, why are you shooting them? What could they possibly have done, short of ran to the kitchen to get a knife and then ran back and tried to stab someone? How can you mistake anything someone unarmed does for a deadly threat?
Yeah, but I don't think that's reasonable to do. If you live in the U.S. you know this is a problem, choosing to still do it is more damning.
I'm not arguing that they should. I'm saying that they are, and having knowledge that they are makes the one calling in the threat seriously in the wrong. I can't stress enough, the caller's twitter handle is SWauTistic. They know full well what they're doing.
A person's bare hands can represent a deadly threat if he is close enough. Not that that was the case in this situation.
So yeah, I would say they should wait until a suspect starts shooting because they have an overwhelming tactical advantage. Yes, that's a risk because the guy on the porch might be John Wick or Jason Bourne or the Terminator, but most people, even most professional criminals, are not expert marksmen under any circumstances, let alone ones where they're at a large tactical disadvantage.
Next time you meet a cop socially, ask them if criminals are smart or supervillains 'like in the movies' The cop will laugh and regale you with stories of how dumb and inept most criminals are. Police know perfectly well that most people don't have a clue, are easily intimidated by police, and not super-skilled. Sure, they have to consider the small number of dangerous exceptions, but overstating the risk factors is also a really convenient way to get off the hook for their own poor firing discipline.
What do you think will happen if a shirtless man on a porch a pulls a pistol, while you have your high powered rifle's scope locked on their chest while you are wearing body armor, positioned behind a police car, a few hundred feet away?
> But the person most at fault here is the one who lied and called in SWAT in the first place.
This I absolutely agree with.
We're talking about literally a life or death situation here. Why on earth would you assume anything, rather than being cautious and trying to confirm for sure what the situation actually is?
How about not assuming anything until you have more information to go on? The fake caller is definitely at fault here, and so are the police.
I disagree.
I should add that being a police officer is not a particularly dangerous job. A telephone lineman has a dangerous job. A garbage man has a dangerous job.
Spend a night doing a police ride along in a major city, then report back on just how “not dangerous” the job is.
To be clear, I am not defending the cops in this situation, merely disputing the ridiculous claim that being a cop isn’t particularly dangerous.
How many garbage men have been killed on the job by their customers or targeted specifically because of their job? Any snipers taking out garbage men? Any garbage men getting routinely assaulted on the job?
> How many garbage men have been killed on the job by their customers or targeted specifically because of their job?
Why does this matter? Dead is dead. If you're more likely to be killed or injured doing that job, why does it matter how it comes about?
Shouldn't they at least verify for themselves whether there is actual danger?
This was a bad shoot, but the tactics were sound. Don’t correctly they would have called him out of the house from a distance with lethal cover from multiple angles and then cleared the house.
You cant send people up to the door, as you have to assume the person is telling the truth and has the means to shoot through the door at them. When someone has a gun, distance and cover are your friend.
You then get everyone you can out of the house so you can clear it and assist the victims. That is what any police force in the civilized world would do if they had what they thought was credible information about a murder / hostage situation.
Obviously pulling the trigger in this case was a mistake, but what do you do differently? Everyone is criticizing training in this thread but no one seems to have any real solutions.
It seems not to have occurred to you (and a lot of other people) that yelling commands at people is not an effective way to handle many common situations.
And that makes sense. There are certainly situations where it's neccessary to subdue everyone in the room and ask questions later.
The problem is here
> when it's clear
The whole subgenre of "SWATing" works, because SWAT teams are being deployed based on dramatic, but unsubstantiated information, on the suspicion of a dangerous situation.
This does not help protect officers saftey. It endangers them, and it makes police officers into the tools of criminals.
That can't be a good system.
Apparently they just killed a totally innocent man, entirely avoidably.
In this case, they are the bad guys.
If you think the venom around this case is about this case then you’re going to be confused.
(probably) dangerous
Pick one, because, those two situations are actually quite different.
willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering
Or maybe some of us are fully aware of that and simply don't agree with your point of view.
Seems pretty simple, just stand outside the house with the megaphone and say “hey what’s going on in there”?
Or, someone walks out and defuses the police, then their compatriots wipe all the police out unopposed.
Too bad the owners of mines, oil rigs, logging operations, etc. don't share a similar concern for their employees' lives.
Cops are far more likely to die of heart-attacks, cancer, and a dozen other causes than to be killed in the line of duty.
Being a cop isn't much more dangerous than the average jobs.
Mining, logging, etc. certainly make trade-offs, but at least the trade-off is between safety and the viability of the business. The trade-offs that cops have made are between safety and indefensible political goals.
If you are genuinely trying to deescalate a situation, you need to talk to the people involved. If we're genuinely that worried about people getting shot, why aren't we rolling "Officer Robot" up to the front door to say hello?
Even if there IS a hostage situation, these SWAT events demonstrate that the hostage is probably in more danger from the SWAT team than the hostage taker.
"Element of surprise" implies shoot first, ask questions later. And that NEEDS to change.
Also, who are these multiple individuals and 'compatriots'? I thought this was about a guy who claimed to have shot a family member and was holding others hostage while threatening to burn the house down. When did this one guy turn into a foreign invasion force?
Edit: The amount of willful ignorance displayed on HN regarding law enforcement is staggering. It's sad to see how many people here view police as the bad guys, and refuse to take a balanced view by empathizing with them and the danger they encounter on a daily basis.