By calling the swatter a murderer, you're only bringing into sharper focus the grotesque failure of American police to respond to allegations in a lawful and proportionate way. If a swatter is a murderer, then by definition the swat team has ceased to be part of a police department and has become an extrajudicial death squad. A functioning police department is not expected to kill law-abiding citizens on a regular basis.
The law says "innocent until proven guilty", not "innocent until proven guilty, unless the police get nervous, in which case we'll kill you on sight".
Charles Kinsey, a mental health therapist from Miami, was shot by police in 2016. He was lying on his back with his hands raised, begging the police not to shoot the autistic man he was caring for. After he was shot, he was handcuffed and given no first aid until an ambulance arrived 20 minutes later. There is clear evidence that the swat team knew that neither Kinsey nor his patient were armed prior to the shooting. Through pure luck, Kinsey survived the incident.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Kinsey
We are beyond the point of rationalization, we are beyond excuses. Whether by accident or design, we have created a system where police officers can kill with impunity, where law-abiding citizens live in real fear of killed by the police simply because they live in the wrong neighbourhood, have the wrong skin color or stream video games online. The only humane and rational response is root-and-branch reform of police training, supervision and accountability.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-s...
The correct response here is to prosecute the SWATter for murder, and carry out the police reforms you mention. I don't object to the second in any way, I merely object to the diminishment of responsibility for the guy who made the call.
Are you talking about Andrew Finch?
In that case, sure, the police officer who shot him is very much in the wrong. Is that what you're wanting hear?
I also think in a such militarized environment, that police officers who might never have imagined themselves murdering anyone are now, yes, murderers. And that's a shame.
We don't really need SWAT teams in the USA at all, and certainly not thousands of deployments of them every year.
The officer who actually fired the weapon probably deserves the label too.
Well, yeah, I don't that the person who made the call, while culpable for involvement in homicide is guilty of murder in the traditional sense.
Something more like involuntary manslaughter. The murderer is unambiguously the person who killed.
1. Intent to kill,
2. Intent to inflict grievous bodily harm short of death,
3. Reckless indifference to an unjustifiably high risk to human life (sometimes described as an "abandoned and malignant heart"), or
4. Intent to commit a dangerous felony (the "felony murder" doctrine).
It looks to me like at least #3 would be the case here, and likely #2 or #1.
I have no problem saying that the SWATter killed this person. Convincing the police to go and kill someone for you is little different from convincing a gun to send a bullet into their heart. The difference, of course, is that the police are living creatures with their own thoughts and culpability, but that just means their responsibility is added, not that the SWATter's responsibility is somehow diminished.
While I don't view assisted suicide as any sort of crime, I think that the relationship of the caller to the death is pretty much the same: they set up some conditions, but the police officer is the one who caused the death.
As I said from the beginning, I don't really see the societal benefit to even talking about this person.
The police need to stop killing people so that we can move on with the important matter of having a free society. That's the only story here.