Well, I guess if you‘re in the US it is perfectly reasonable to expect police (even „special tactics“ teams) to just immediately shoot people on the sole base of a phone call and thus all of the responsibility lies on the caller.

Remember kids: Don‘t use emergency services, they might get someone killed.

I think it's reasonable anywhere to expect an emergency call to result in prejudice, whether that's police being apprehensive with regard to a suspected dangerous person, or firefighters being willing to break into a building they believe someone to be unconscious in. Treating all emergency calls as false until proven otherwise would put lives in danger, be it emergency responders or the public.

The danger that hoaxes inherently present, and that ignoring potential hoaxes also presents, means that hoaxers must be deterred.

Your comment is of course much more reasonable than mine. I too would expect police to show up or SWAT kick in a door if a terrorism threat was called on someone. Blaming the murder of an innocent person on the hoaxer however seems perverse.

This guy is sentenced to 20 years in prison for what he probably perceived as a 'prank call' at the time. That's insane!

Death is a known possible outcome in most SWATers' minds, and they often make jokes to that effect, or jokes about killing people's dogs (and dogs have indeed been killed due to SWATings). They'll often make false claims like "someone is being held at gunpoint, it looks like an automatic weapon". They're knowingly gambling with people's lives when they claim there's an active hostage situation in someone's house. This is not just a prank or hoax.

The SWATer absolutely shares responsibility for their death, even if they don't hold sole responsibility. 20 years seems like an appropriate sentence to me.

As noted in another comment of mine, they didn't blame murder on him, but instead prosecuted more technical, less interpretable crimes.

I agree that murder may be an excessive charge given lack of intent, yet in the United States murder is often broadened to include committing a serious crime (felony) where there is a clear danger of killing someone, and it resulted in death. Then again, I would argue that this goes well beyond just a 'prank call' in that there is intent to specifically victimise someone by deceiving armed agents.

If his idea of a harmless prank involves subjecting someone to that kind of danger then I’m not so sure. Another fun prank: kidnap someone and hang them on a cliff over a lethal fall, with a 80% chance they’ll survive.

Repeatedly threatening someone with death falls under torture.

I rather doubt even 0.1% of swattings result in deaths, how can you compare that to a 80% chance of survival?

Citation needed. Without going any further SWAT--of what I've read, this was back in 2011--shoots all dogs on sight, as soon as it enters the building, as standard operating procedure.

Number doesn’t matter so much, I just personally don’t want to be swatted. It sounds horrible and traumatizing.

You're right, it should have been life in prison.

I had "an incident" with someone who was having a psychological break. He had a phone, but didn't know how to use it, didn't really know where he was. Other folks wanted to immediately call the cops. The cops were the last thing on the list that would have helped anyone and could have in high likelihood made this guys life 100x worse if not over.

Weird, are you the same poster as in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19607028, or did they copy paste your comment?

Looks like he copy-pasted it. I was confused too.

So who do you call when you’re dying?

Of course you call emergency services.

In a country with 300 million privately owned firearms, if the police receive a call ostensibly from a hostage-taker threatening to murder several people, they're going to respond in a much different manner than if you call for medical assistance.

This is why SWATing is so pernicious. We let basically anyone buy seriously dangerous weapons up to and including assault/battle rifles, let all of our police match firepower, and then dramatically underfund mental health services such that murder and hostage-taking is a regular occurrence. Just a stellar combination for internet 'pranksters' to exploit.

> He also pleaded guilty to charges brought in the District of Columbia and California’s Central District related to hoax bomb threats. Those charges allege Barriss placed bomb calls to headquarters of the FBI and Federal Communications Commission, and to high schools, universities, shopping malls and TV stations to emergency numbers in 16 other states and Canada. In the California case, Barriss pleaded guilty to 46 counts.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/15/18096749/call-of-duty-swa...

"Barriss pleaded guilty to 46 counts" and who knows how many others not presented in court. Surprised he wasn't banned access to electronic devices and phones.

It's interesting that the charge was not simply first degree murder. Although there may not have been an intention to kill, the victim was killed as the result of an inherently dangerous crime, which may invoke the felony murder rule.

The fact that he pleaded guilty suggests to me that the collection of lesser charges were part of a plea bargain, with prosecutors not confident about pioneering swatting as a murder case.

> It's interesting that the charge was not simply first degree murder

Murder (including felony murder) itself (except in special contexts and locations that don't apply here) is not a federal crime. This was a federal prosecution.

Murder is a federal crime: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111#a Federal murder may be prosecuted separately and in addition to state murder, without double jeopardy applying. The same is true for military jurisdiction.

The only issue is whether there is federal jurisdiction over the murder. As the crime resulting in the killing was deemed to be within federal jurisdiction, that would seem to imply such a murder was within federal jurisdiction.

You need to reread your own citation. Murder is defined in subsection (a) of your cite, but the actual federally prosecutable crime is in subsection (b), and is only when a murder is committed “Within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States”, itself defined at 18 USC § 7 [0]. The offense here did not occur in the special maritime and territorial jursidiction of the United States.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/7

My understanding is that (b) only defines punishment for where federal jurisdiction uniquely applies, and does not limit the jurisdiction to specific locations. Particularly federal murder is applied to the murder of federal officials everywhere.

https://www.wklaw.com/10-ways-murder-becomes-a-federal-crime... Item 5 of this list states that the federal crime of bank robbery can be promoted to federal murder under the same section I listed. This would suggest to me that this killing could also be federal murder.

> Particularly federal murder is applied to the murder of federal officials everywhere.

Yes, kind of; there is a separate provision for that, 18 USC § 1114, which applies the punishments in 18 USC § 1111 (for murder), 18 USC § 1112 (for manslaughter), and 18 USC § 1113 (for attempts at either murder or manslaughter) to such acts committee against federal officials independent of the jursidictional limitations in those statutes.

> Item 5 of this list states that the federal crime of bank robbery can be promoted to federal murder under the same section I listed.

Insofar as robbery is a qualifying offense under 18 USC 1111(a), that would appear to be technically correct if the jurisdictional requirements in 18 USC 1111(b) were met, but is not actually the general felony murder rule, which does not exist in federal law, but an analog covering only enumerated offenses written directly into the 18 USC 1111(a) definition of murder and still only applicable where 18 USC 1111(b) or some other statute provides a federal punishment for murder. More importantly, for killings in the course of bank robbery more generally, there is a separate provisions making that a capital offense without reference to 18 USC § 1111, within the bank robbery law (18 USC § 2113), the killing (and hostage taking) provision is subsection (e); that's mostly how felony-murder like rules are applied in federal criminal law, by specific punishment for killing accompanying the predicate offense.

And the peace officer that shot an unarmed man on his front porch... What of him? Having seen the video of the incident, it's pretty damning. I've conducted very basic house clearing training (Marine Combat Training, 1 month long), and I still wouldn't have fired until I saw a clear hostile intent. Why are our police using harsher escalation of force protocols than our military uses? Can any LE who have seen the video chime in?

In other news, Man pulling a trigger gets promotion.

Do you have a source to support that claim?

It's obviously facetious by the original poster, but the sentiment stands. Anyone not recognizing the shift (or "externalization") of responsibility from the police is purposefully blind to it.