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Comment by conanbatt | Hacker News Reader

Low burden of proof isn't it.

That's not how that works. If you are a police officer in the United States and you've been told you are going into a situation where your opposition is armed and has already killed at least one person you will be very nervous.

"Barriss allegedly then called the emergency 911 operators in Wichita and said he was at the address provided by Viner, that he’d just shot his father in the head, was holding his mom and sister at gunpoint, and was thinking about burning down the home with everyone inside."

That's a situation where if it is true somebody is likely going to end up hurt and I suspect the police officers tried very hard to make sure that wasn't them.

And so innocent people paid the price for a bunch of idiots duking it out over a $1.50 bet.

The part that makes no sense to me is that swatting is even possible, there are enough indicators that the call is not originating from the location indicated by the caller.

I still think this should not have happened but there is at least a little bit of leeway on seeing how this could have happened. Keep in mind that the swatters had a lot of experience in tuning their story for maximum effect on LE. This or something like it was their intention all along.

And "somehow", only people that are swatted in the US wind up dead...

even though 'gamer culture' is larger in Europe and Asia. ( and in many countries in both, swatting has been attempted ).

The number of guns floating around in the US has a whole pile of effects that are active in this case: more guns increases the chance of a gun really being present, it increases the number of dead LE officers the ones in the SWAT team are familiar with and it increases the chance of the officer not making it home. Add poor training, the SWAT team already being only called in into situations that are supposedly dangers and you're a stupid mistake away from one or more people being killed.

USA police always struck me as super insecure in the few interactions I had with them compared to Canadian and European police. Even in Latin America the police in general was a lot more relaxed.

Incidentally, in the military there were similar issues with something called 'force protection'.

> That's a situation where if it is true somebody is likely going to end up hurt and I suspect the police officers tried very hard to make sure that wasn't them.

They also try very hard to make sure it isn't the mom and sister.

> They also try very hard to make sure it isn't the mom and sister.

did they all come out together?

I don't know, and I wasn't specifically referring to this incident. I was replying to jaquesm's point, which I took to be saying that officers are worried about self-preservation going into a situation where they believe there is an armed hostage-taker. They almost certainly are worried about their own life, but that's not all they're worried about. They also are worried about the lives of the (alleged) hostages. The life of the (alleged) hostage-taker? That's a lower priority.

>The part that makes no sense to me is that swatting is even possible, there are enough indicators that the call is not originating from the location indicated by the caller.

Google search SS7.

https://securityintelligence.com/ss7-vulnerability-isnt-a-fl...

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/fix-ss7-two-factor-authenticat...

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/03/hackers_fire_up_ss7...

TLDR; the SS7 protocol (which cell phones operate on) is extremely unsafe and vulnerable.

It seems to be accurate enough for McDonalds to tell cell phone owners in front of their stores that they have this great offer.

That's not the same system, and if you're McDonalds and fuck it up, you've just accidentally offered someone discounted fries.

Things are a little different when a location error might mean 911 doesn't send emergency responders to you.

Sure, but that would be one more input into your system. And if enough of those inputs are conflicting then that would be a very good reason to dig a little deeper while the squad is en-route, or to alert them to a possible hoax. If all the bits of evidence align then that can be taken as confirmation that it is not a hoax.

> If you are a police officer in the United States and you've been told you are going into a situation where your opposition is armed and has already killed at least one person you will be very nervous.

If your trigger finger is itching because you're nervous, then you have absolutely zero business being a police officer in the field - much less a SWAT member.

By that standard you could disqualify all of the human race. Going into an active shooter situation would definitely cause almost anybody except for those that are totally apathetic to experience some degree of nervousness.

It's not ideal but it's human nature. I agree that the degree to which US police is 'trigger happy' is super problematic but in the case of a SWAT team called in on someone that has (1) already killed and (2) indicated he wants to kill more people in his environment some degree of apprehension is understandable.

If you're so ice-cold that you would not be nervous under those circumstances then maybe you should join a SWAT team?

given that the person who died had nothing to do with anything, it's almost certainly the case that there was ZERO corroborating on-site evidence that a highly dangerous situation was actually unfolding.

Yes, this is absolutely true, right up to the point where the SWAT team showed up and then it was a highly dangerous situation anyway.

> By that standard you could disqualify all of the human race.

This obviously isn't the case given that most of these incidents don't result in gunfire.

> Going into an active shooter situation would definitely cause almost anybody except for those that are totally apathetic to experience some degree of nervousness.

But you've just equivocated on "an active shooter situation" and "a reported active shooter situation." Swatting has been well-known for long enough that there needs to be more evidence than an anonymous untracked phone call before police approach a home under the assumption that there is in fact an active shooter on the premises.

In this case it was an irresponsible prank, but it seems perfectly possible that someone could mistakenly give an incorrect address for a real situation, or the 911 operator could copy it down wrong, or whatever. There are simply too many possibilities that could lead to a false alarm that shooting first and asking questions later when showing up at a house without in any way ascertaining whether there is a real threat is, in my mind, a completely unreasonable procedure.

I don't think this was a prank. This was a calculated effort to cause someone bodily harm by weaponizing the police services.

I thought it was a calculated effort to scare the shit out of someone, not actually getting people shot. (I'm admittedly not very experienced in this art, but my assumption would not be that if I called the cops on someone they would just gun them down.)

Read the article and how the situation is described. They are not asking for 'the cops' they know the result of the call is that a heavily armed SWAT team is going to go in with the intent of disabling the hostage taker.

That's way beyond just scaring someone.

>"Barriss allegedly then called the emergency 911 operators in Wichita and said he was at the address provided by Viner, that he’d just shot his father in

Ok, and there was no skepticism on the part of the officer taking the call?

Shouldn't you ask for some confirming information? Come on.

> That's not how that works. If you are a police officer in the United States and you've been told you are going into a situation where your opposition is armed and has already killed at least one person you will be very nervous.

I have been told many times that police officers are very likely to shoot unarmed innocent people. Should I shoot police officers with the same levity?

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