Yes they should, and they are in the rest of the world. Being a competent police officer is not supposed to be an easy job, and not everyone has what it takes to be trusted amid civilians with deadly weapons.

> Pranks [...] should be labelled serious crimes and prosecuted accordingly.

That is also true, but not the #1 priority. Most unnecessary uses of deadly force by police aren't triggered by pranks. I sure expect Tyler to rot in jail for quite some time, I'd be mad if he weren't. Ditto for the wannabe Dirty Harry who killed a civilian he swore to serve and protect. The thing is, I'm confident the former will happen, and I fear the latter won't.

> I get rather tired of blow hard Europeans imagining they know what is best for internal matters of the US

What baffles me is that even when a problem is solved in all of the non-US developed world, looking at how it's solved by everyone else isn't considered worth debating in the US. Or as the Onion puts it every few months, when a US mass shooting occurs:

https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na...

America Uncovered (same crew as China Uncensored) made a pretty-balanced video on the topic https://youtube.com/watch?v=hAtLnTyimT0

There is a very big difference between that and some blowhard European acting like they know what is best for the US. I am all for good discussion on such subjects.

Long as it does not happen to you. Now, imagine someone sends a SWAT team to your house, and the SWAT shoots your kids because... they moved?

Would you, then, show up on HN telling us that is OK? "Yeah they shot my kids, but... it is A-OK because... "SWAT teams cannot be expected to be fully prepared..."?

I cannot fathom why that isn't obvious on the face of it. Setting people up to fail is a thing. How can so many people apparently not see that?

Are you OK with your kids and your spouse and your parents being murdered by police because... some random POS made a phone call, and "set them to fail"?

The point you misinterpret as "pro-Tyler" is that the police officer is probably co-responsible of the manslaughter, and should be charged in addition to (not instead of) Tyler. And this seems infuriatingly unlikely.

By primarily blaming Tyler (who's a super-nasty piece of shit, but that's another issue

Maybe you should reread more carefully. A lot of the replies to me have assumed things I did not actually say.

I am more concerned with... killing people.

How about... instead of military rifles, we use... tazers, rubber bullets, stun grenades and other non-lethal weapons?

That way, we all live, and whoever is accused of crime, can be dealt with judge and jury and so on. In this case, the guy that was murdered by police would be not dead... he may be sore, and also pissed, but that surely beats being dead.

If there is an active shooter and who is a competent marksman and has a perfectly ordinary hunting rifle, approaching them with non-lethal weapons is just giving them more opportunities to kill while they police try to incapacitate them.

Note the "pranker" didn't call in an event that would have resulted in normal police being dispatched (say, a domestic disturbance, or somesuch). They specifically called in a situation that demanded immediate application of potentially lethal force against an already active shooter.

but you SHOULD hold this guy responsible for misusing these resources. Just not for the murder.

>SWAT teams cannot be expected to be fully prepared for both a hostage situation and a so-called prank.

Yes they can. What the fuck? Isn't it American to say "hope for the best, prepare for the worst?".

Train shooting, teach restraint.

A kinder, gentler SWAT team is one not actually prepared for the serious situations they are intended to be called in for. If you think that works, you just have no idea whatsoever what it takes to be both psychologically and logistically prepared for surviving and triumphing when facing genuine deadly force.

Police, including SWAT, should always assume people are innocent. And they should always strive to minimize violence, if you can avoid pulling your gun out it's a lot safer for everybody, cops and criminals alike.

Let's not pretend that there are many elaborate well armed hostage situations like you see on TV. Mostly it's drunk deranged desperate people who needs to be talked out of a bad situation. Few hostage situations are organized, most of them are just sad cases...

No, the police are trained (correctly) that any shooting is shooting to kill. There have been various people arguing that the US military rules of engagement are actually stricter than the police ones, e.g. http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/03/deadly_f... - because the military operating in Afghanistan are dependent on the fragile support of the local population.

Edit: the rules of engagement used by the British Army in the occupation policing of Northern Ireland: http://mikeb302000.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/rules-of-engagemen... - these required at least one of positive identification of a weapon, incoming fire, or a verbal warning.

One reason swatting is not done so much in Europe is that cops react in much different way.

And somehow in your mind this makes the caller less guilty of the death that results.

In the few worse cases, it will mean some lost time, because the first responder cops will have to wait for assault teams. But in the 95% cases were a SWAT team wasn't need, it prevents unnecessarily violence escalation. And there are many more lives saved by non-escalation than lives lost to intervention delays.

Also, SWAT teams are considered elite forces (almost?) everywhere; but in some countries, elitism is based on sharpshooting abilities, in some others it's based on good judgement, clear-headedness and restrain.

One reason swatting is not done so much in Europe

Swatting is the act of making the prank call. It has nothing to do with how the SWAT team handles it. Nowhere have I argued that European police wouldn't have handled it better. That is a completely separate question from the question of how often these calls get made and why.

That's pretty anti-climatic, as a prank, and that's why nobody will bother making it.

General police violence in the US is not a justification for saying the caller should not be held responsible for their part in this.

I don't see people saying he should not be punished. They say that cops needs to change.

Focusing on his punishment is like adding yet another hack into badly engineered system - it makes people feel good and makes one bug go away, but it does nothing to address root cause which is bad system.

Me asserting that it isn't okay to let him off the hook is not the same as me saying the system as a whole is fine and does not need reform.

Arguing with me from that angle amounts to putting words in my mouth.

Police should be trained not to rely on firearms. The gun is a last-ditch option to protect the cop's life, not a way to neutralise citizens.

When a police officer shoots, he ought to shoot to kill, because there are very few and extreme situations that grant him the legitimacy to shoot. Very few officers experience such situations, not even once in their career.

Policing has very little in common with soldiering, and vice-versa (although we wrongfully use our soldiers as cops in foreign countries, with unsurprisingly poor results).

And you do? Based on which expertise.

> A kinder, gentler SWAT team is one not actually prepared for the serious situations

This is false dichotomy , nobody is asking for 'kinder,gentler' swat team, we are asking for professional who can professionally appraised the situation before using lethal force. It's about precision not about kindness whatever that means in this context.

We've been tired of blow hard Americans imagining they know what is best for Europe for some time, but that doesn't seem to have stopped anyone.

Seeing how often these "pranks" happen, I would say they absolutely have to be prepared that the entire situation is fabricated. I agree with OP - the officers should be charged with murder of an innocent person, the responsibility to identify the situation is 100% on them.

That is a good argument for "We clearly aren't adequately discouraging this bullshit and need to do more to convince civilians this is not acceptable."

Given how they try to hide the origin of the call, it isn't like they don't know this is bad behavior. They just seem to think it won't really be that big of a deal if they are caught.

I guess we could try to hide our empathy, after all if it's only Americans killing other Americans, who cares? I don't get the impression that Americans do.

Note that this isn't counting the Europeans killed by wars between countries, only those killed by their own government or quasi-government entities.

About 400 Americans are killed by cops every year. At that rate, we'll surpass the European 20th century toll for being murdered by one's own government in about 200,000 years.

Thank you.

It isn't like I don't want these problems resolved. I don't believe I go around announcing what is best for other countries. Such behavior does not foster good discussion.

But I do something wonder if you just don't want the problems solved? The solutions seems obvious, and yet you keep getting side tracked, like blaming the prankster.

Other than police training and changes in behavior, what real solutions do you see?

The fact that the US has a general problem with police shootings is absolutely not a reason to let the caller off the hook. If anything, it is a reason to argue that he reasonably knew this could result in someone's death, so the charge should be more serious than manslaughter.

This means proving that it is foreseeable that the police would arbitrarily shoot people, when called to an incident.

I guess it would be poetic Justice if the prosecutor used this case to prove why the police should be disbanded. If indiscriminate killing is an expected outcome from calling the police, what purpose do they serve?

I have had a class in conflict management. It never helps to increasingly vilify one side and say that anything goes for the other because of it.

That seems to be the gist of the argument most people here are making. It doesn't work, so that isn't how you gradually create less conflict in the US.

But rationality is seemingly not welcome here. Everyone wants to just crucify the police.

So I think I need to just bow out here.

At any rate I believe the parent to your comment is misinformed, in the European countries I'm familiar with if your funny prank leads to a death, especially a foreseeable death, you're probably going to have a bad time in court explaining why you don't have any responsibility.