A Grandfather Died in 'Swatting' Over His Twitter Handle, Officials Say (nytimes.com) 141
Mark Herring had a fatal heart attack after the police swarmed his house after a fake emergency call. A Tennessee man was sentenced to five years in prison in connection with the episode. From a report: Mark Herring was at home in Bethpage, Tenn., one night in April 2020 when the police swarmed his house. Someone with a British accent had called emergency services in Sumner County and reported having shot a woman in the back of the head at Mr. Herring's address. The caller had threatened to set off pipe bombs at the front and back doors if officers came, according to federal court records. When the police arrived, they drew their guns and told Mr. Herring, a 60-year-old computer programmer and grandfather of six, to come out and keep his hands visible. As he walked out, he lost his balance and fell. He was pronounced dead that same night at a nearby hospital. The cause of death was a heart attack, according to court records.
Mr. Herring had been a victim of "swatting," the act of reporting a fake crime in order to provoke a heavily armed response from the police. The caller was a minor living in the United Kingdom, according to federal prosecutors. But the caller knew Mr. Herring's address because Shane Sonderman, 20, of Lauderdale County, Tenn., had posted the information online, prosecutors said. On Wednesday, Mr. Sonderman was sentenced to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy. "The defendant was part of a chain of events," federal prosecutors said in court documents. The police "arrived prepared to take on a life and death situation," prosecutors said. "Mr. Herring died of a heart attack at gunpoint." Mr. Sonderman's lawyer, Bryan R. Huffman, said he had argued for a lesser sentence but believed five years "was fair in light of Shane's culpability."
"Mr. Sonderman has expressed his remorse on multiple occasions. He has expressed his regret regarding Mr. Herring's death," Mr. Huffman said in an email on Saturday. "Mr. Sonderman's family had also expressed their remorse. There are many families affected by Shane's actions, including his own family." Mr. Herring was targeted because he refused to sell his Twitter handle, @Tennessee, according to his family and prosecutors. Smart, blunt and plain-spoken, Mr. Herring had loved computers since he was a teenager and joined Twitter in March 2007, less than a year after it started, his family said. He knew people wanted his handle, which he chose because of his love for the state, where he had been born and raised, and had rebuffed offers of $3,000 to $4,000 to sell it, his daughter Corinna Fitch, 37, said in an interview.
Mr. Herring had been a victim of "swatting," the act of reporting a fake crime in order to provoke a heavily armed response from the police. The caller was a minor living in the United Kingdom, according to federal prosecutors. But the caller knew Mr. Herring's address because Shane Sonderman, 20, of Lauderdale County, Tenn., had posted the information online, prosecutors said. On Wednesday, Mr. Sonderman was sentenced to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy. "The defendant was part of a chain of events," federal prosecutors said in court documents. The police "arrived prepared to take on a life and death situation," prosecutors said. "Mr. Herring died of a heart attack at gunpoint." Mr. Sonderman's lawyer, Bryan R. Huffman, said he had argued for a lesser sentence but believed five years "was fair in light of Shane's culpability."
"Mr. Sonderman has expressed his remorse on multiple occasions. He has expressed his regret regarding Mr. Herring's death," Mr. Huffman said in an email on Saturday. "Mr. Sonderman's family had also expressed their remorse. There are many families affected by Shane's actions, including his own family." Mr. Herring was targeted because he refused to sell his Twitter handle, @Tennessee, according to his family and prosecutors. Smart, blunt and plain-spoken, Mr. Herring had loved computers since he was a teenager and joined Twitter in March 2007, less than a year after it started, his family said. He knew people wanted his handle, which he chose because of his love for the state, where he had been born and raised, and had rebuffed offers of $3,000 to $4,000 to sell it, his daughter Corinna Fitch, 37, said in an interview.
Jordan had it right (Score:4, Interesting)
He has regret... at getting caught. (Score:5, Informative)
""Mr. Sonderman has expressed his remorse on multiple occasions. He has expressed his regret regarding Mr. Herring's death,"
Bullshit.
The only "regret" he expressed is regret at being caught.
While he was out on bail, "Sonderman was promptly re-arrested for violating the terms of his release, and prosecutors played for the court today a recording of a phone call Sonderman made from jail in which he brags to a female acquaintance that he wiped his mobile phone two days before investigators served another search warrant on his home. [source: https://krebsonsecurity.com/20... [krebsonsecurity.com] ]
And while out on bond, he continued to harrass targets to take their twitter handles. [source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com] ]
Re: He has regret... at getting caught. (Score:2)
Well, you could phone in a tip about him having an island full of women and the dirt on some politicians.
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To easy. Go through everything and find other crimes committed against other people and hall it from jail and add it to the sentence. Every crime against every person is an individual crime and any missed they can still be prosecuted for. So get people to come forward and see if they can dump more charges on them and get them back in court, to add another sentence.
Swatting is not a joke. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Swatting is not a joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is hard to assign responsibility for a heart attack (given it was a likely unknown pre-existing medical condition), swatting is never OK, as it is well known people can die, and those involved in the conspiracy knew that, or reasonably should have known that, given all the previous reports.
Swatting can (often) be deadly. You're right, this is known to all parties at this point, including instigators.
Therefore, charges and sentences should be appropriate to further create a real deterrent. IANAL, but I'm thinking some degree of murder short of 1st. Hard to argue anything less than that.
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I don't know if this should be treated as a rational crime. I think this guy is just insane and should be locked up. Perhaps a rubber room with really stinky rubber? For at least two or three times as many years as he took away from the victim. (And such a nut probably has lots of other victims, too. I'm okay with adding more time because I don't think there's any chance this sociopathic nut can be cured.)
However, I've long suspected that too much computer use is bad for mental health.
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However, I've long suspected that too much computer use is bad for mental health.
Sadly, this growing and rather serious problem, will be dismissed.
Kind of hard to convince the psychologist that there's a problem with internet addiction when the fucking psychologist is addicted.
When everyone is an addict, no one is.
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Sad ACK. But it could be the resolution of the Fermi Paradox. The negative resolution.
Re: Swatting is not a joke. (Score:2)
think this guy is just insane and should be locked up.
From a certain angle, one might argue that someone isn't quite right in their headbrain for any major crime. I mean, the average J[oe][ane][hey] isn't going around murdering/raping/carjacking/etc people. IANAL, but I think the standard for courts is not just run-of-the-mill crazy, but a literal inability to tell "right" from "wrong". E.g. If this Shane fellow literally did not know and was incapable of comprehending that swatting was less okay/legal than, say, playing a game of checkers.
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Lately I've been wondering if it's actually a sort of mechanical problem in their brains. Broken or missing mirror neurons? There are some parts of our brain that actually help us to understand other people, but they don't work well for some people. When it's sufficiently obvious, they may get labeled as sociopaths.
But one of my strange new theories is that the same motor neurons might be related to our self-awareness. In some sense they may determine our soul as a kind of recursive reflection of other part
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It's called "empathy" and it's the ability that normal people have to put themselves into other's shoes; to see how it feels to be them for a moment. Sociopaths and Psychopaths have a damaged or nonexistent sense of empathy, usually.
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I think this guy is just insane and should be locked up.
It's a shame he didn't claim mental illness. Not guilty by reason of insanity, on average, results in twice as long in a mental hospital as the jail sentence that was avoided.
However, I've long suspected that too much computer use is bad for mental health.
I suspect you might have cause and effect reversed. That people who are mentally fragile to being with are more likely to spend long hours on the internet, where the consequences of their bad behavior are being encouraged to display more bad behavior, rather than being stuffed in a trash can.
Re:Swatting is not a joke. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I've long suspected that too much computer use is bad for mental health.
Speaking as someone who's been using computers since December 1979, and has spent the last 25+ years as a system administrator, that's about the worst case of loose thinking I've seen today.
You might as well claim, since all crazy people breathe oxygen, that extended oxygen consumption is bad for mental health-- or health in general, since everyone who breathes oxygen will eventually die.
A society which refuses to hold anyone responsible, and allows someone to claim depression from eating junk food as a mitigating factor in a murder trial, and treats people with mental health issues by throwing random medications at them, THAT contributes to poor mental health.
But in this case, we have someone who callously risks other people dying in pursuit of cold hard cash-- that's just a sociopath, and "blaming computers" (an overly broad term anyway) for their greed is nonsensical at best, and just downright idiotic at worst.
Re:Swatting is not a joke. (Score:5, Informative)
While it is hard to assign responsibility for a heart attack ...
from https://krebsonsecurity.com/20... [krebsonsecurity.com] :
"When Mr. Herring stepped out on the back porch to investigate, police told him to put his hands up and to come to the street.
Unable to disengage a lock on his back fence, Herring was instructed to somehow climb over the fence with his hands up.
“He was starting to get more upset,” Billings recalled. “He said, ‘I’m a 60-year-old fat man and I can’t do that.'”
Billings said Mr. Herring then offered to crawl under a gap in the fence, but when he did so and stood up, he collapsed of a heart attack. Herring died at a nearby hospital soon after."
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No, it's not hard to assign responsibility for the heart attack. The responsibility belongs to Mr. Sonderman. He made the call and someone died for it. end of discussion.
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> The responsibility belongs to Mr. Sonderman. He made the call [...]
No he didn't.
Re: Swatting is not a joke. (Score:3, Insightful)
We get a call. Lets check the local police records, no other issues reported for that house. Being that there was no issues for that home before, perhaps before you go crazy and do the full Swat, you may want to politely knock on the door show your warrant, have the SWAT people in the back in case it goes bad quickly.
Warrant? You don't get warrants for an active shooter incident. (I think you are trying to treat this like a drug bust, which in this case it isn't)
You left out the "and the cop that politely knocked on the door" was shot by the gunman in the house.
It happens.
People calm in false reports to target police officers for various reasons.
How can the police rule out an active shooter by seeing if there's a history of 'problems' at the address? For example, Daly Plaza in Dallas was a well-known safe area, until it
Re:Swatting is not a joke. (Score:5, Informative)
In the 1989 landmark case of DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the failure by government workers to protect someone (even 4-year-old Joshua DeShaney) from physical violence or harm from another person (his father) did not breach any substantive constitutional duty.
The police are there to arrest people after crimes and to collect fees to prop up local governments. It is important to remember they are not there to help you during times of crisis. That is not their job.
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In the 1989 landmark case of DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the failure by government workers to protect someone (even 4-year-old Joshua DeShaney) from physical violence or harm from another person (his father) did not breach any substantive constitutional duty.
This more or less just reinforced case law that had already been established years before by the D.C. Court of Appeals in Warren v. D.C.. Not only are the police relatively useless in si
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But magically the police officers are not at fault?
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Police are at fault in many many cases these days. All documented on body cams and dash cams (which you should buy and wear and use in your car-- because police *regularly* falsely accuse people of felony driving offenses and *regularly* lie on their crime reports and *regularly* get caught planting evidence).
That said, the police officers were told this was a shooting incident. I don't expect police officers to politely walk up without protection and knock on the door. I expect them not to go in guns
Dupe? (Score:2, Informative)
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
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"Posted by msmash", so... of course it's a dupe.
Re:Dupe? (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but this story has more about the victim; the earlier one seemed more focused on the perpetrator (like how he ended up being arrested again after failing to adhere to his release conditions)
paywalled (Score:3, Insightful)
stop posting articles where the primary link is paywalled.
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You’re reading a site for tech minded people and can’t figure out how to bypass a paywall?
https://archive.is/TzZYv [archive.is]
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If the person posting can't be bothered to do the work, why should I? I just assume paywalled links are not worth reading, and so far I've been right every time.
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I just assume paywalled links are not worth reading, and so far I've been right every time.
How would you know, without having read them?
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You’re reading a site for tech minded people and can’t figure out how to bypass a paywall?
We can do all sorts of things. But we shouldn't fucking have to.
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Ah yes the whole "why can't you post everything in metric" debate. Why can't you post in GMT, etc etc?
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Ah yes the whole "why can't you post everything in metric" debate. Why can't you post in GMT, etc etc?
Your slippery slope fallacies aren't welcome here. There's good reason to not post things here in metric with the predominantly American site. There's ZERO fucking good reasons for a news aggregator to publish news articles a portion of the people are unable to read. This isn't a case of not understanding TFS or being able to divide miles by 1.6, this is FAILING AT YOUR ONE JOB.
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News for Nerds [merriam-webster.com]. Aka people who didn't take "no" for an answer; as in "no you can't go faster than sound", "no you can't figure out Pi", or "no you can't access that web site". This is no longer a site for those who can deal with a challenge. It's "please take all the challenge out of things and do everything for me" site. Especially since it's already been demonstrated multiple times how. So no slippy slope needed, when we're already at the bottom waiting for someone to take up the challenge of "no there's
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This is no longer a site for those who can deal with a challenge.
I don't read news for a challenge. I do engineer, I physically exert myself through sport. If you feel like the need to exert yourself mentally catching up with news why not quit Slashdot... you know the site which is a news aggregator... as in someone who collates news you may find interesting simply because you're not up to the challenge of finding it yourself. How slack of you.
Maybe a geek will come along and help.
Maybe they can help you understand the stupidity of your comment.
A shaggy story. (Score:2)
"Mr. Sonderman has expressed his remorse on multiple occasions. He has expressed his regret regarding Mr. Herring's death," Mr. Huffman said in an email on Saturday. "Mr. Sonderman's family had also expressed their remorse. There are many families affected by Shane's actions, including his own family."
Mr Sonderman also regrets being caught and blames it on those meddlesome kids.
Retire the twitter handle? (Score:2)
Almost feel like they should retire the twitter handle in memoriam, or reserve it for official use after this.
Need to start holding police accountable (Score:5, Insightful)
By all means, punish the swatters to the maximum extent (and pass new laws increasing the punishment), but it's unacceptable that police aren't being held to some account for this as well. A largely non-credible 911 call with questionable caller-ID (e.g., out of area) at a residence with no history of police interaction should not result in a massive response that sends a startled innocent person out of their front door to die on the porch. This isn't the first time.
When Ofc Justin Rapp shot and killed Andrew Shaver due to a swatting in Kansas, he was not held accountable. And these cops won't be either.
Police will claim that they respond based on "possibilities" not "probabilities," but that's BS. They are supposed to know their communities. And they shouldn't be letting a game of telephone between false 911 callers, 911 dispatchers, police dispatchers, and fellow police result in an escalation of the perceived situation.
Among other things, during police academy, every recruit should be woken up in the middle of the night unannounced, and while startled and held at gunpoint with a light in their face be made to follow precise instructions (hands above your head, step this way, face that way, don't pull up your pajama pants that are drooping, etc). Human response reflexes are not aligned with what these cops seem to expect, especially for innocent people who have no history of hostile interaction with police.
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Among other things, during police academy, every recruit should be woken up in the middle of the night unannounced, and while startled and held at gunpoint with a light in their face be made to follow precise instructions (hands above your head, step this way, face that way, don't pull up your pajama pants that are drooping, etc). Human response reflexes are not aligned with what these cops seem to expect, especially for innocent people who have no history of hostile interaction with police.
Damn, that is an excellent idea.
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If the cops lose their civil immunity things will change. Guaranteed the bad apples will quit en masse. And why not? Paramedic EMT's lost their immunity decades ago here in NY. If an EMT breaks your ribs while doing CPR on you, your ambulance chaser can hold them liable now.
Re:Need to start holding police accountable (Score:5, Interesting)
Precise instructions?
I've been held at gunpoint in this kind of situation. I have a common name and the US government has apparently decided to make the screen say "OMG PANIC SHIT SHIT SHIT" in giant red letters whenever someone with that name crosses the border.
They don't yell precise instructions. You've got a dozen hyped up dudes yelling a bunch of different things at the same time. You just put your hands up as high as you can and pray you don't sneeze until they calm down enough to start yelling instructions one at a time.
Don't stop praying you don't sneeze though.
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This.
I've been on the other side of a door with someone shouting on the other side. Had NO idea it was police. Had NO idea what they wanted. (Turns out it was an office alarm that brought them.) Was completely unintelligible, even worse than the Peanuts adult voice you get over bullhorns/PA systems.
Oh! Reminds me of police using a PA system in their car on the road. No idea what they were talking about, I pulled into a rest stop, they did their Peanuts adult voice noises for a bit then drove off. The
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Among other things, during police academy, every recruit should be woken up in the middle of the night unannounced, and while startled and held at gunpoint with a light in their face be made to follow precise instructions (hands above your head, step this way, face that way, don't pull up your pajama pants that are drooping, etc). Human response reflexes are not aligned with what these cops seem to expect, especially for innocent people who have no history of hostile interaction with police.
There is a huge need for better training for the police.
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Police will claim that they respond based on "possibilities" not "probabilities," but that's BS. They are supposed to know their communities.
How are they supposed to "know" their communities to this extent while respecting things like the 4th Amendment and privacy? Especially when we demand the cops remove their surveillance systems (rightfully) citing privacy concerns?
Re:Need to start holding police accountable (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy. Three simple steps:
1) Require the police to actually live in the community they serve. This is basic common sense for other reasons too. They're supposed to be "first responders" along with firefighters and paramedics. They can't respond to shit in the case of an earthquake, for example, if they're not actual members of the community; but mere mercenaries brought in from out of town on the other side of the bridges and/or BART tunnel, all of which could closed due to either damage or an abundance of caution.
2) Get them out of their cars and onto foot patrol. Have them drop in... individually, not in force... into the local businesses to get to know the owners and their needs and concerns. Have them spend time at the bus and train stops getting to know the commuters. Have them ride the busses and trains to get to and from work themselves. As with #1 above, make them be PART of the community they serve; and squash with extreme prejudice any notion they develop that they might be ABOVE the community.
3) Get them out of their fortress-like precincts and disperse them in small numbers into miniature police stations like Japan's Koban [wikipedia.org] police boxes. Make them be visible, but in small non-threatening numbers. Some of those Kobans are manned solo, and they usually top out at 10. Put them at major intersections, at train stations, in the parks, at shopping centers, and bus/train transfer stops. Stock them with first-aid kits, extra COVID masks, snacks and candy for the kids, and dog treats. Make them get up and out and help the public, giving directions, helping seniors cross the street, getting the proverbial cats out of trees, et cetera. As with #1 and #2 above, make then KNOW their communities, by BEING PART OF the communities.
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Absolutely
Remorse and reget ... when? (Score:5, Informative)
"Mr. Sonderman has expressed his remorse on multiple occasions. He has expressed his regret regarding Mr. Herring's death," Mr. Huffman said in an email on Saturday.
From this NYT article [nytimes.com]
After he pleaded guilty on March 22, Mr. Sonderman continued to “conspire with others to harass people online in order to obtain control of their social media handles,” federal prosecutors said in court records.
So he's expressed "remorse" and "regret", but does he actually feel it? And when was this, after he was convicted? Because it doesn't seem like it was after he was arrested *and* pled guilty if he kept doing it.
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Does not matter. The victim is still dead and it's still his culpability. It matters not one whit what he feels.
I agree, just point out some possible hypocrisy and/or disingenuousness by the defendant and/or his lawyer.
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And I think he should be charged for activities after he was arrested for the first one, because there's no "I didn't know it could go that badly" defense. Sociopaths gonna sociopath, but once detected, it's not like we just have to let them.
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Well we can't really know what is in a man's head/heart now can we. However yeah based on his actions and the timeline we might infer that he is a little less than remorseful.
However its also true that sometimes people don't really understand the consequences until that human face gets put on it and they are confronted. It might have been 'the person on the other side of the screen' is a abstract concept for some until they are made plainly real to them in person. If we don't entertain at least the possibi
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So he's expressed "remorse" and "regret", but does he actually feel it?
A punishment should fit the crime. All this kid did was call the cops. ... Knowing the guy could get killed. ... Because of a twitter nickname.
I propose removing his testicle through use of hammer and anvil, just so this fucking filth doesn't accidentally breed.
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So he's expressed "remorse" and "regret", but does he actually feel it?
A punishment should fit the crime. All this kid did was call the cops. ... Knowing the guy could get killed. ... Because of a twitter nickname.
I propose removing his testicle through use of hammer and anvil, just so this fucking filth doesn't accidentally breed.
Actually this kid posted the victim's info online and a kid in the UK made the call. From TFS/A:
The caller was a minor living in the United Kingdom, according to federal prosecutors. But the caller knew Mr. Herring's address because Shane Sonderman, 20, of Lauderdale County, Tenn., had posted the information online, prosecutors said.
Still, I don't disagree that his punishment should be harsh. Not sure about the testicle thing, but certainly hope he's popular in prison gen-pop.
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He read the script his lawyer gave him. Of course he did. If he didn't, the judge would find a way to make him wish he had, maximum sentence already or not.
A few thoughts (Score:2)
This won't be rehabilitative, it will be sheer retaliation. Which means he won't learn any respect for life and those he has hrmed (directly or indirectly) will lose what respect they have. That's probably not good. I don't advise lighter sentances, indeed, I'd insist on a minimum tariff where he stays in prison that long no matter what but if it takes longer to get him to truly understand and have empathy, then he should stay in until the job is done.
An old BBS guy (Score:5, Informative)
A new gun rule. (Score:2)
Everyone knows the rules "Guns are always loaded" and "Don't aim at what you don't want to shoot" and so on, this rule should simply be common sense.
"Directing a gun held by someone else is no different from aiming it yourself."
Felony murder? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Calling the police to a black mans house (Score:2)
Just call it incitement for murder. Problem solved!
Handle? (Score:2)
So... I take it his twitter handle is now available?
We should do a Zelaznog Naile on him. (Score:2)
Gently push him out to sea towards Cuba, and shoot him if he tries to come back to shore.
I can't image what this person's contribution is that would tip the balance in favour of the country being better off with him in it.
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Pipe bombs do have a tendency to scream, HERE I AM! Just follow the cartoon fuse back into the house.
Re:Police should face some consequnces. (Score:4, Funny)
Pipe bombs do have a tendency to scream, HERE I AM! Just follow the cartoon fuse back into the house.
And charging in guns blazing means they can outrun the cartoon fuse...
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Making policy is not easy.
When people die as a result of the policy change you just recommended, should you go to jail?
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It just seems like police feel they have to protect themselves from any possible risk these days, but that isn't their job. Their job is to protect the public, which means the police takes risks (including risk of death) in order to protect the public. This includes avoiding escalating a situation, that may be a non-existent situation, but also risks the officers getting caught off guard. I feel like this has been forgotten by many officers.
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Re:Police should face some consequnces. (Score:4, Interesting)
> Their job is to protect the public
Not really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
However, they are at fault if they kill someone. In this case, say "well we got a call" does not make them innocent.
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I thought the first police departments in US (British colonies at the time) were created to capture and return slaves
In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina c
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This isn't quite a legal analysis, but it's pretty close:
The actual job of the police is to protect the government. To do this they act in ways that makes those important to the government happy. If you aren't powerful enough to inconvenience the government, then they try to act in a way that makes the government look good to those who are powerful.
This goes back to the Magna Charta, which was when a bunch of powerful people got mad at the government, and collected supporters to attack it. The resolution
Re:Police should face some consequnces. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right you couple police being ridiculously armed with civil immunity and you have a stupidly dangerous situation ripe for abuse.
Ordinary police should ABSOLUTELY not be allowed any weapons or equipment an ordinary citizen can't purchase. All but the largest municipals should be discouraged from forming special-weapons-and-tactics teams.
No I am not some hippy that thinks the police should be defended, or that they should not carry, or that they should be expected to allow suspects to put them in excessive endanger; but I DO think they should be accountable. I also think its not 'ordinary crime' if the situation require anything like a 'SWAT team' that is something more like a rebellion. In which case local police should focus on keeping eyes on the suspects from a safe distance, and getting other people and property out of harms way. Let the governors office and the national guard handle it. They are actually a trained military force and at least the governors office is very directly accountable to voters. Finally it would add little time element. Sometimes that might hurt but I suspect most of the time it will help. This is a perfect example - authorities believed a woman had been shot in the back of the head - she almost certainly dead already if true. If you have eyes on the hose and you know the suspected perp is therefore not out hurting anyone else there is zero need go into the situation guns blazing (which isnt exactly what they did) but they could have just easily blocked off the street with a few cars and given the guy call to see whats up and let him know they needed to come look around.
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In general the reason cops go over-the-top like that is because they feel like they need to take immediate and absolute control of the situation at all costs in order to protect their own safety; otherwise they fear getting shot/stabbed/whatever.
Whether or not that feeling is valid (and IMO most of the time it isn't), there's a simple way to avoid having to make that calculation in the first place -- send in an unarmed bot/drone first, to reconnoiter and/or speak to the people inside. The bot can document
Re: Police should face some consequnces. (Score:2)
One doesnâ(TM)t need to defund to improve the situation, just rework the budget. Most police officers donâ(TM)t need to be armed, and the same money could go to training them in different deescalation techniques, as is normal for law enforcement in every other country that doesnâ(TM)t have a disproportionate number of its citizens shot by police. Reducing funding or the number of police officers to weed out a few bad apples is overly simplistic and does nothing to address the root cause.
Didn't read even the summary, did you (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe if I post it in response to you, you'll read it.
They both only didn't go into the house "with guns blazing", they didn't enter the house at all, and nobody fired a single shot.
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called emergency services in Sumner County and reported having shot a woman in the back of the head at Mr. Herring's address.
The caller had threatened to set off pipe bombs at the front and back doors if officers came, according to federal court records. When the police arrived, they drew their guns and *told Mr. Herring, a 60-year-old computer programmer and grandfather of six, to come out* and keep his hands visible. As he walked out [ he had a heart attack]
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The police didn't go into the house *at all*, much less "with guns blazing*.
You're suggesting that "given the size of the house, they could use their eyes and ears to know" that nobody had actually been shot inside the house - without even approaching the house? You think they have X-ray vision that sees through walls? From miles away, apparently?
You said "From what I've read". You might reconsider "reading" things that come completely out of your ass.
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Re:Didn't read even the summary, did you (Score:5, Informative)
I was agreeing with you completely until I read the rest of the article - and I only read that to see if the man had family home which - if the police saw - would mean there was still an open danger.
But then I read this
When the police responded to the false report, they ordered Mr. Herring to climb over the tall cattle gate around his property, according to his family. He offered to open the gate door, but they refused to let him do so, likely because they feared a bomb would go off, said Mr. Herring’s son-in-law Greg Hooge.
Too big to climb over, Mr. Herring struggled to squeeze his large frame under the fence, which had an opening of about one foot above the ground, Mr. Hooge said.
He collapsed soon after he stood back up, Mr. Hooge said. Mr. Herring’s relatives said they had asked for copies of police reports and any body camera footage taken by the authorities on the night of April 27. They said those requests had been denied.
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Last story about a SWATing (a few days ago) I was assured that going in hot is the only safe option. Cops can't be expected to take risks or delay long enough to figure out what is going on.
Apparently suggesting otherwise is trolling.
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You're wrong. The cops did not go in hot. They didn't go in at all.
But they should still be held accountable
When the police responded to the false report, they ordered Mr. Herring to climb over the tall cattle gate around his property, according to his family. He offered to open the gate door, but they refused to let him do so, likely because they feared a bomb would go off, said Mr. Herring’s son-in-law Greg Hooge.
Too big to climb over, Mr. Herring struggled to squeeze his large frame under the fence, which had an opening of about one foot above the ground, Mr. Hooge said.
He collapsed soon after he stood back up, Mr. Hooge said. Mr. Herring’s relatives said they had asked for copies of police reports and any body camera footage taken by the authorities on the night of April 27. They said those requests had been denied.
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This doesn't seem an unreasonable response based on available information. Nor is it something that one would normally consider high risk. A heart attack is not going to be top of the list on a risk analyisis
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There's lots of blame to go around. Everyone involved in the "chain of events" except the actual victim acted like a twit.
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an Felony Murder change may make him do hardtime (Score:2)
an Felony Murder change may make him do hardtime
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Call him an accessory. Charge the cop with murder. Too bad that’s a career killer for any prosecutor. The cops really get their panties in a bunch when responsibility comes knocking. They cry and threaten to stop doing their jobs, from the “fuck your feelings” crowd no less.
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Given that you have thought so insightfully and deeply about how the justice system should work in this case, which cop should be charged with murder?
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Given that you have thought so insightfully and deeply about how the justice system should work in this case, which cop should be charged with murder?
Well, the one who tripped him, obviously.
#DeepThoughts
Re:privilege (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody pulled any trigger during the raid. As TFS explains, the victim died of a heart attack, probably caused by some combination of the stress of being swatted or falling over or being told to (as an obese 60-year-old) to climb over or under his fence.
Re:privilege (Score:4, Insightful)
If you pull a gun on someone during a robbery and the clerk dies of a heart attack you can be charged with murder.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
when an offender kills (regardless of intent to kill) in the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime (called a felony in some jurisdictions), the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.
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Sure, champ. Now which offender killed the victim?
In Tennessee [findlaw.com], the felony murder statute has that kind of enumerated listed of violent felonies. The killing was not committed by use of a bomb, so do you think the criminal was committing or attempting to commit: first degree murder, terrorism, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, theft, kidnapping, aggravated child abuse or neglect, or airplane piracy?
I'll give you a hint this time: No court has ever even suggested that swatting is either first degree murder o
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Not murder. Maybe not even felony murder. The guy sentenced to five years only provided the victim's name and address in a chat room; one of his buddies (in the UK) was the one who actually called the police with the false report. The sentence has nothing to do with race, you race-baiting troll.
This was all hashed out in the recent Slashdot thread on the guy's conviction.
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only provided the victim's name and address in a chat room
... as he was soliciting a swatting. What you are attempting to do makes a difference.
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Yes, that is why he got 60 months in prison, and why the judge wrote that the statutory maximum "may seem inadequate". Yet the person who actually made the phone call has greater culpability, and should be eligible for harsher penalties -- they could certainly be charged with more serious crimes than this criminal was charged with.
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I don't see the justification for saying he had less culpability than the person actually making the call; either way the person took an action which knowingly exposed the victim to danger, without which the victim would still be alive now. Sure , legal technicalities may cause the person who placed the call in greater jeopardy, but the person who solicited the call is equally culpable morally. Both probably *should* be treated as equivalent to felony murder.
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Sonderman didn't actually make the call. He provided the info online.
Instead of race baiting, you might want to ask why nothing happened to the person that actually made the call to the police, at least, according to the article.
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Instead of race baiting, you might want to ask why nothing happened to the person that actually made the call to the police, at least, according to the article.
Because the person who made the call was in the UK?
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I'm assuming that there are extradition issues, given that he was a minor.
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