Ship of Fools: Swatting

Thread: Swatting Board: Hell / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

I could have put this in the guns thread, but thought it had enough different features to make it worthy of its own discussion.

So here's the story. In the online video game "community" there is apparently a practice known as "swatting" - calling in a false report about some kind of hostage situation at some other game player's home, in the hope that a police SWAT team will be sent out. I gather that some people video themselves playing online video games and stream the video of that online, and in those cases it's such an amusing joke to have a SWAT team burst in to Mom's basement on video and hold the guy at gunpoint.

So, to the present case. Two video game players get in to some kind of dispute. Player A says "here's my address - come and show me how hard you are" or something. Player B gets in touch with a third player - 25-year-old Tyler Barriss - who phones in a false police report claiming to be a male resident of player A's address who has killed someone, is holding the rest of his family at gunpoint, and might just burn the whole house down. Player A didn't give his own address, but the address of some unrelated third party, apparently chosen at random.

A SWAT team shows up at the house, and in what is pretty much standard practice for US cops (see "Fucking Guns" passim), randomly shoots and kills the man who answers the door because "they thought he was going for his waistband".

There's lots of things wrong with this story, but can anyone give me a good reason why Tyler Barris isn't guilty of felony murder?

[ 31. December 2017, 17:04: Message edited by: Doc Tor ]

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Different enough to generate Two threads.
This happening was only a matter of time, sadly.
If he is charged with murder, it will likely put off jurers. The most they are likely to get is manslaughter. Since this fucker has a history of calling in fake threats, I do hope he revived an extra long sentence. If only one could also prosecute the community that enables this.

Posted by Doublethink. (# 1984) on :

Also, the guy giving the address in the first place.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

There are two threads on the same subject. This one has fewer replies, so it gets canned and the replies copied across.

Happy New Year, Hellions!

DT
HH

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