Mother of man shot to death by Wichita Police in alleged swatting incident
courtesy Wichita Eagle

Gee, we thought gaming was supposed to be, you know, fun . . . Call of Duty gaming community points to ‘swatting’ in deadly Wichita police shooting

Online gamers have said in multiple Twitter posts that the shooting of a man Thursday night by Wichita police was the result of a “swatting” prank involving two gamers.

Swatting is an internet prank where someone makes a call to a police department with a false story of an ongoing crime – often with killing or hostages involved – in an attempt to draw a large number of police officers to a particular address.

Yes, and needless to say, it’s incredibly dangerous. In this case, it may have resulted in the death of Andrew Finch of Wichita.

Deputy Wichita Police Chief Troy Livingston said Thursday night that police were looking into whether the call that led to the shooting was a prank.

Livingston said the department received a call that someone had an argument with their mother, that the father had been shot in the head and the shooter was holding his mother, brother and sister hostage.

“That was the information we were working off of,” he said.

Judging solely from the media reports of the incident, Finch apparently wasn’t armed at the time he was shot. That may have been due to the fact that he wasn’t involved in the dispute to begin with. The police were likely responding to a phony address given by one of the gamers involved in the online pissing match.

According to posts on Twitter, two gamers were arguing when one threatened to target the other with a swatting prank. The person who was the target of the swatting gave the other gamer a false address, which sent police to a nearby home instead of his own, according to Twitter posts. …

“A male came to the front door,” Livingston said. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.”

Livingston didn’t say if the man, who was 28, had a weapon when he came to the door, or what caused the officer to shoot the man. Police don’t think the man fired at officers, but the incident is still under investigation, he said. The man, who has not been identified by police, died at a local hospital.

Sounds like a SWAT officer with an itchy trigger finger.

One of the gamers allegedly ID’d as being involved in the dispute tweeted this non-denial denial via Twitter:

Call of Duty gaming community points to ‘swatting’ in deadly Wichita police shooting

So an innocent man’s death appears to have been the result of a cascade of epic douchebaggery, unfathomable irresponsibility and a jumpy cop.

That seems more than a little too dismissive of the culpability of the useless mass of protoplasm who phoned in the phony police report, resulting in the SWAT team’s deployment. It all starts there. And that’s where any prosecutions should be focused first.

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105 COMMENTS

  1. If I’m committing a crime with my friends and one of them gets killed during the act, I can be charged in his death. Hopefully this gamer who called the swatting will face the same jurisprudence?

    • There are many state laws for that I know. Since this is presumably across state lines and would likely be federal charges, is there a federal equivalent to that?

    • It needs to be done. It would set a fantastic example to these loser gamers who have no lives who think it’s funny to pull shit like this. Swat someone you get the chair, full stop.

    • Most states have these laws

      CALIFORNIA PENAL CODE 148.3

      “(b) Any individual who reports, or causes any report to be made, to any city, county, city and county, or state department, district, agency, division, commission, or board, that an “emergency” exists, who knows that the report is false, and who knows or should know that the response to the report is likely to cause death or great bodily injury, and great bodily injury or death is sustained by any person as a result of the false report, is guilty of a felony…”

      • Sounded like that to begin with. Making a false report is a crime, but very minor. A swat team should be able to go out a thousand times without any manner of shit like this happening. This is the officer’s fault, although the losers are still losers.

        • “Regardless of what brought the SWAT team, a man who did nothing wrong was shot and killed in his own home.”
          I have to agree. The SWATting asswipe should get couple of years for crying wolf. But he is not the one who killed the guy.

  2. uhhh how about we take these little swatters out and let the SWAT teams and soldiers utilize them as meat shields? Sorry but these assholes are ruining gaming and lives with these retarded antics! I see no better value for them than to be meat shields. Seriously, you get your ass kicked on a game and calling in a fake high risk crime to the other player’s local PD seems the best course of action? How bout you drag your scraggly ass out and perhaps attempt to get good? Maybe you get your ass handed to you because you suck and not because some dood is haxor on your game. This shit right here is the very height of what the fuck is wrong with the world today! On top of that the lil bastard has the gall to say it ain’t his fault an innocent guy got shot by the SWAT team he got called out. No guy it is your damn fault! The police would’ve never known that kid existed had you not called in your little bullshit story and gotten them dispatched to the address in the first place so yeah that guy’s blood is on your hands!

    • Let’s keep it within the provisions of the Eight Amendment, lest we entirely lose the Second.

      But just barely within those provisions.

      • Okay so a no on the meat shield idea….. how about as reactive targets for A-10 strafing runs, suspension test media for m1a3 Abrams, and an effective pedestrian protection device for the front of large police vehicles such as box trucks and SUVs? If you can’t agree to those then how about utilizing them as training aids for military and police attack dogs?

        • Or here’s a really radical idea: why don’t we insist that SWAT teams behave professionally?

    • And using meat as a shield, even a slab as large as that, probably isn’t as effective as something from AR500…
      🤠

        • Chest bumps? How about we have them drop and give us 500 instead? They are SWAT tough guys after all, right?

  3. Regardless of what happens to the cop, the gamer who called this in should be charged with premeditated murder.

    Unless we start hitting the people doing the SWATting with real consequences, it won’t stop.

  4. Something is rotten in Denmark. Why did the officer shoot as soon as the man opened his door? What if he was one of the hostages? I’m not blaming the police for responding to what they believed was a very serious situation, but that officer probably shouldn’t be carrying a firearm anymore. He sounds like the kind of guy who ends up shooting the victim of a crime because he got scared.

    • Yep,… too many departments hire people who look good on paper and aren’t properly vetted and tested. Most people can’t/shouldn’t be cops for one reason or an other. Pleanty of people will be hired as cops, go through cop training, evetually dress up like cops, and come to our houses with guns when we call 911. Most pretenders get weeded out, but some always make it through. And for you cops out there who say, “spend a day in a cop’s shoes before you judge,” maybe you should ask yourself what you plan on doing about that guy (you know the one) who you don’t want behind you in a stack while doing a building search. If you don’t trust that guy with a gun, then why should we?

  5. You know that police shoot innocent unarmed people all the time, mostly during early morning raids or service of search warrants. The more marginal the people who are shot are, the less likely there will be any public recriminations.

  6. That a cop is so easily weaponized by a moron kid is disturbing. It sounds like they should share this kill.

  7. Arrest the gamer. Swatting is not a joke, and his actions caused a nervous SWAT team to be deployed which he knew or should have known would result in some kind of harm, whether that was merely property damage from the police break-in, or included assault and battery and infliction of emotional distress while a person or family are held at gun point and handcuffed until the police could “sort things out,” and including physical injuries or death. Then the deceased’s family should sue the piss out of him.
    Arrest the cop. By no means can someone spin this to be a justified shooting of an innocent person. At best it was a negligent homicide, at worst it was second degree murder. This guy has no business being a cop.

    • “Then the deceased’s family should sue the piss out of him.” (Him being the gamer who made the call to the cops.)

      Could the family of the dead guy sue the gamer who gave a bogus address to the gamer that swatted him?

      It was that address that the cops responded to.

      Does he have any culpability in this?

      • IANAL so this is just a guess but perhaps reckless endangerment? He reasonably knew or should have know that their was a legitimate danger to SWATing and put someone else in harms way.

        If I were on a jury I would believe that.

  9. What sort of behavior do you expect from people who spend their free time (and then some) engaged in mass virtual killing, often of their online peers, with zero consequences?

    Now before any of you “Call of Duty” fans jump down my throat, I’m not talking about someone who occasionally passes the hours with a game or two. I’m talking about people who’s major reason for living is gaming. They tend to blur the line between the virtual world and the real one, to the point that reprehensible behavior in the real world does not bother them.

    I have no use for them.

    • Well there are some actual, sponsored, professional gamers now, but I doubt they’re the problem. I’m not blaming the video game for the same reason you shouldn’t blame the gun, it has no free will. The fucktard that called in the swat is clearly psychologically unfit to be a part of society, and for that I blame his parents for allowing or ENCOURAGING mindlessly playing video games for hours on end. At the very least enabled it.

      I love to play video games (much less in recent years) but I never play anything that involves voice chat, unless I personally know the people I’m playing with specifically because of the toxic online environment. Hearing a 12 year old tell you that he’s gonna fuck your mother is not ok.

      • This is why I stick to non standard online games like World of Warships, World of Tanks, and others like them. Seems 12 year olds don’t dig those as much as they love them some C.O.D. Never had anyone cuss me online since I quit playing C.O.D online seems it attracts some pretty unbalanced folks.

        • Then set up your own TS3/Mumble/whatever server and regulate who’s on it.

          If you can’t/won’t do that there’s always the mute button for each person in the channel.

      • I think we agree. I’m not blaming the video game either, nor am I blaming the entire gaming community.

        I am blaming people who have traded social graces for a fantasy world where they can hide behind avatars and act like dicks.

        • act like dicks? Dude check out the comment sections on any of the major news sites that still have those…. Guarantee if this story has a comments section on a national news site there are already troll wars blaming Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Trump, or Obama for this.

        • I never said I was thrilled with those folks either.

          But those comments are filtered by algorithms that look for nastiness, and other participants can flag things as inappropriate, so there is an element of supervision and filtering in that world that is missing from the gaming community. Even comments posted to TTAG are supervised by Farago et. al., and rightfully so.

          Also, I don’t equate deluded blaming of politicians with open hostility towards fellow online community members. There will always be somebody who has hated some politician for something. But I guarantee that if somebody “SWAT’s” 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the penalties will be very stiff indeed.

        • I know and actually in the gaming world you used to be able to report problem gamers like the intellectually challenged sack of defecate referenced in the article and they would be removed or banned, but it seems that anymore that is not the case in COD land at least. Then again I don’t play COD anymore like I said I stick to World of Warships, World of tanks, or sometimes Command and Conquer for my online gaming fix. Those communities seem to get the balance right while Halo and COD seem to be breeding grounds for trolls and cursing pre teens. Then again Halo and COD pretty much started the whole pro gamer revolution we saw back in the early 2000’s when every idiot kid with a fridge full of Mt. Dew and a lap full of Doritos thought they were Pr0 L33t and the games I play just attract a different breed of gamer.

  10. Yeah come knocking at a door after and don’t expect the person inside to be armed? Sorry bud you came here… I don’t care if the guy coming to the door had a battle axe. I understand you want to go home and all, but you came to the house ready to shoot and maybe that’s setting yourself up for a shoot and not something less permanent.

      • Sounds to me like he’s finding fault with anybody who would murder a citizen based on the fact that the citizen was armed in the privacy of his own home.

        But in this case, it seems he was murdered simply for answering the door when the Death Squad came knocking.

  11. The actions of the police officer not withstanding; the gamer who made the false 911 call is guilty of either negligent homicide or 2nd degree murder based upon the elements of the local criminal code. A reasonable person would believe that “swatting” has the potential to result in deadly force. The fact that they specifically stated that “that the father had been shot in the head and the shooter was holding his mother, brother and sister hostage” increased the chance that deadly force would be used. The gamer who made the call should be prosecuted criminally and civilly. It would be up to the DA and a grand jury to decide if the gamer who provided a false address was also guilty under conspiracy laws.

    • forthe “Swatter” to be considered culpable in a death resulting from a police shooting it would have to be proven that the police are consistently irresponsible to the point where one can regularly expect an encounter with law enforcement to cause some harm. so everyone saying that the gamers should be charged for this are also by default saying police cannot be trusted.

  12. its so funny to read the comments sections for articles like this. its like some of these readers ACTUALLY think their suggestion is going to be heard in court or they are somehow going to influence the case by posting “lock’em up/arrest him”. thank you for your well thought out, paralegal advice.

    • I said, “I know. Everybody funny. Now you funny too.”

      As in “funny peculiar”, not “funny ha-ha”.

    • Well, even if their opinion isn’t directly cited in court, people saying the little bastard should be locked up are highly likely to end up being correct in the matter. You, meanwhile, thought that your weak, needlessly obnoxious attempt at snark would be taken as an insightful and witty observation, which clearly didn’t happen and isn’t going to.

    • What’s even funnier is the jackass posting a comment on the board mocking other people for commenting on the board. You just pissed into the wind.

  13. The cops are now considered deadly weapons, and aiming a police death squad at somebody is equivalent to murder?

    Unfortunately, that sounds functionally true.

    • You paint with a very broad brush. I think a sense of perspective is in order.

      SWAT teams are not Third World Death Squads, meting out extrajudicial killing in an unregulated manner. They are for the most part good folks who are dispatched to emergency situations, often to do terrible things.

      However, in this particular case, we seem to have a trigger happy SWAT team member. If all information we are currently receiving is correct, then this cop needs to pay a stiff penalty, and never wear a badge again.

      But only this individual, and only after a fair trial.

      • No, after the Mesa shooting in the hotel, it’s safe to assume all SWAT officers are death squads and executioners. Honestly, how often are police screened for mental health issues? How often are they drug tested? What’s the background check into a cop these days? It’s too easy for the wrong sorts to become a cop and it needs to be addressed. In fact, I think it’s time all police are disarmed, they’re a clear and present danger to the general public.

        If a cop doesn’t want to be disarmed, he can go work security at the local pharmacy for $10/hr and chasing away shoplifters.

        • I saw the video, even though the jury did not. Idiocy all around.

          The cop is an idiot, and deserved to be fired, or worse. Once both people were on the ground, with their hands behind their heads and their legs overlapping, the officers could have quickly resolved the situation, instead of repeatedly insisting on total compliance from obviously impaired suspects that were in no condition to deliver it.

          Unfortunately, the guy got shot for reaching behind himself, which looked like a grab for a weapon from a waistband. So he’s an idiot too. I’m sure the guy was just trying to pull up his trousers, or scratch an itch, but that’s not how it looked to the officer.

          But again, the officer should have quickly resolved the situation, instead of dragging it out.

        • The background checks, including psych stuff, are extensive and far beyond what you would get in other professions including the military.

          But there are problems. First of all, the psych evaluations are largely bullshit filled with psuedoscientific multiple choice tests and subjective interviews. If a department (like Baltimore) suddenly really needs cops, all of the sudden the psych tests start weeding out less people. Convenient, right? The most important ‘screening’ for cops is the one that is least used- the field training. The problem there is that by the time a cop is being field-trained, he or she has already been invested. The department has generally put a lot of funding into them and doesn’t want them to fail. So… they won’t fail. At best they’ll get thrown into a clerical position and be known as a ‘house mouse’- a secretary that carries a gun (maybe). At worst, they’ll get thrown into a bad neighborhood because the department needs warm bodies there.

        • Yeah, I read the full details of that incident and I hope someone gets ahold of that fucking pig and horrifically assaults him. It’s so sickening to hear things like that. The most disgusting part of that incident, besides the cop being acquitted, is that the cop said he would repeat what he did.

        • It turns out the ‘reaching to pull up his shorts’ is just BS to deflect blame from the culprits to the victim. At the time of the shooting, all he was doing was negotiating his way around an obstacle, IIRC a purse on the floor, in order to obey orders from a man who had already threatened to murder him if he didn’t follow orders to the letter. IMO, that man earned at least half of the prison sentence Brailsford should have gotten.

      • Police Death Squad knocks on door.
        You open door.
        They murder you.

        Sounds like typical death squad activity in any other police state to me.

        My perception may be colored by the fact that one out of one Death Squad members I know personally are flaming douchebags.

        In more legal terms: If making a false report to police is a felony, then what happened here is felony murder by the false reporter.

        • Two out of two of the posters here are paranoids who think all SWAT teams are death squads.

          By your logic, all of the posters here should be paranoids who think all SWAT teams are death squads. Somehow, I don’t think so.

          But I do agree with you that the false reporter is gravely responsible, and if possible, should be charged with felony murder, or the fullest extent of the law if felony murder is not possible.

        • you owe the death squads an apology. unlike American cops, most third world death squads actually have a clue what they are doing and tend to only kill their intended targets. our cops are nowhere near that level of competence.

        • +bobcat Which is why they need to be stopped, disarmed, and possibly held in Gitmo for domestic terrorism. God knows how many of these psycho cops are out there colluding on how to murder people using their authority and getting away with it. They’ll have to be waterboarded to get information out of them on who the sleeper cops are.

          ALL PIGS IN GITMO NOW BEFORE ANOTHER KILLS AGAIN!!!

        • Chalk me up as another person who thinks the SWAT teams are more death squads than life squads.

          I’m a life long conservative and engineering professional.
          When LEO community loses a supporter like me they have serious problems.
          They really need to clean up their house.

        • +FedUp
          You don’t because all those who become police chose to do so. I don’t trust anyone who seeks power because power corrupts.

          Police cannot protect the people because police cannot be everywhere and nor should they with the authority they wield. It’s up to the individual to protect themselves, to band with others who believe the same. The time for government enforcers is over, they’re a greater threat to the people than the criminal elements are. You cannot stop a cop who is out to spill blood because he’s part of a larger organized force who have unlimited resources. You can stop a group of bandits because they are unorganized and have limited resources.

          The police are a greater threat to your freedoms than any drug dealer or hooligan could ever be.

          You have to throw all the cops out, pigs and peace officers, because if we have no justice, we have no peace.

      • “They are for the most part good folks who are dispatched to emergency situations, often to do terrible things.” The key word here being “often”.

      • They are for the most part good folks who are dispatched to emergency situations, often to do terrible things.

        I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea of a good person who often does terrible things, and it ain’t working.

  14. Jsyk, the drug addict, child rapist cop acted according to training and protocol. He’s not to blame at all here, even though as a SWAT officer he should be held to a high standard and informed about the possibility of swatting calls.

    Nice to know that when you answer a door now when police announce themselves, you can still get shot. Better off to strip naked and hide in a closet even if you’re innocent if you wanna live.

    • Please cite your sources that indicate the officer in question is either a drug addict or child rapist.

      Also, please cite your sources that indicate the officer in question acted according to training and protocol. Are you an expert in the training and protocol of SWAT team members?

      Even more importantly, were you there during the raid? Do you have some sort of information that the rest of us do not have? If so, please contact the prosecution immediately. I’m sure they are waiting to hear from you.

      • I don’t need to cite sources to know this pig was a drug using jackboot, his actions speak to that alone. No sober person shoots someone in a doorway without identifying who the target is unless you’re a drugged up zombie.

        The child rapist part is well known about our lore officers. Where do you think all those faces on milk cartons go without a trace? I know where they go, but I’m smart enough to not talk about it or I’ll be the next body to wind up floating in a lake.

    • You do not shoot people in their own home for simply answering the door period. It was cold blooded murder. The cop who pulled the trigger murdered a citizen. There is no excuse whatsoever. He should be arrested and tried. It could have been you innocently answering your door. None of this BS about paying a penalty or being fired, the cop murdered an innocent man without any just cause.

  15. I understand ‘swatting’ has been going on for awhile, and not just involving gamers.
    It’s little different than falsely shouting ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded space, resulting in panic and death. Based on what I’ve read here so far, I believe a ‘felony-murder’ charge for the instigator, and a ‘negligent-homicide’ charge for the officer would be appropriate.

    Happy Motoring, Mark

    • Negligent homicide?
      Theodore Wafer got Murder in the 2nd Degree for 17-32 years, and there’s evidence that the person he shot was rather desperate to get inside his house when he mistook her for a home invader and shot her.

      • From what I’ve read so far, it’s not clear whether or not the victim was holding something that could have been mistaken for a weapon. And the police WERE falsely warned of a hostage/homicide situation.
        As for poor Theodore, if the trespasser had not broken through yet, deadly force may have been premature. Most places frown on shooting someone through a closed door or window. I would have called this negligent homicide. But maybe Theodore also lived in an anti-gun jurisdiction where prosecutors will gleefully throw the book at anyone discharging a firearm.

        Happy Motoring, Mark

        • Swatting is something that the police should be aware of. If they are not, why not? We’re all aware of it! Officers are never, dispatched to a hostage situation. It is always a possible hostage situation.

        • “From what I’ve read so far, it’s not clear whether or not the victim was holding something that could have been mistaken for a weapon. ”

          Re-read what the Police Chief said:
          “A male came to the front door,” Livingston said. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.”

          Re-read it again carefully.

          “As he came to the front door…” – The cop could not have possibly seen anything the person was holding. The cop shot through the door at someone answering the door. The cop could not have made any determination of that person holding anything.

          The cop shot through the door at a person answering their knock on the door.

          Unless the police dept is using some hitherto unreported form DARPA project Xray surveillance, that cop that shot through the door is guilty of some degree of homicide. Period.

        • Nah, you can’t say that. My front doors (2) are mostly glass, no problem seeing what I (or he) is carrying.

  16. I’ve had police point guns at me quite a few times in my life. Why? Well it wasn’t because I stayed in Holiday Inn Express’
    I’ve got some interesting stories but probably the most unsettling was being chased by a cop car that NEVER did turn on it’s overhead lights through North Idaho at night. I WAS NOT GOING TO STOP along some some deserted road and end up dead, that was for sure and most people won’t chase you at 130 MPH and I know how exactly how fast I was driving that 69 Dodge Polara with a 383 V8. I would have stopped but no cop lights and I don’t know who it is? I’m not stopping PERIOD and whoever it is can eat sh— He chased me across the state border into Washington where when I turned again and looked behind me and he had turned on his lights. It’s an Idaho cop in Washington now and I’m not trying to elude, so I stopped.
    The cop had us kneeling beside the car with our legs crossed and fingers interlocked behind my head and when I looked over my shoulder, I saw his gun pointed at my head, finger on the trigger and he was shaking like a leaf in a wind storm. NOT COOL. It was amateur hour for that idiot. Long story short, there wasn’t diddly squat they could do to me and they were rather unhappy about that. WSP showed up and essentially told Idaho to kick rocks.
    It occurs to me decades later that I could have easily been killed by that idiot all because he wanted to chase someone really fast and not turn on emergency lights.

    • Eight years ago, I was being tailgated on a moonless winter night by a mysterious car at 65 miles an hour in North Idaho just outside of Grangeville. I slowed down to let him pass on a straight stretch, but he did not pass. He just kept tailgating. Then I sped up. He matched my speed, and stayed on my bumper. Then I pulled into a turnout so he could go by. He followed me into the turnout. At that point, I was thoroughly freaked out, and I put pedal to the metal. Then the red and blue lights came on.

      When the officer walked up to my window, I asked him why he was tailgating me, and why he didn’t use his lights or sirens. He said he was trying to read my license tags, and he wanted to make sure they were expired before he pulled me over. I told him that I had new tags in my jockey box (glove compartment to the rest of you) and he helped me put them on.

      But that’s not the best story. Back in 1987, I was returning from a whitewater kayaking trip, headed into Moscow, Idaho, when a cop pulled me over. I wasn’t speeding and my vehicle was new that year, so I didn’t think I could have any lights burned out. When I asked the officer why he pulled me over, he said that he noticed my kayak on top of my car, and he just wanted to talk to be about kayaking.

      I found his honesty refreshing, and I really like recruiting new people to the sport, so we talked about kayaking. I never reported him, but I did gently hint that pulling people over for small talk might not work so well with the next person he pulls over.

      • Sometimes I see stories about cops who pulled people over as part of a program to thank them for not speeding and give them a gift certificate or something and I shake my head… just wait until you happen to try and pull over a drug mule who wasn’t speeding and he decides to fight.

        Closest I came to that was pulling someone over because they left their mcdonalds on their roof.

  18. Eight years ago, I was being tailgated on a moonless winter night by a mysterious car at 65 miles an hour in North Idaho just outside of Grangeville. I slowed down to let him pass on a straight stretch, but he did not pass. He just kept tailgating. Then I sped up. He matched my speed, and stayed on my bumper. Then I pulled into a turnout so he could go by. He followed me into the turnout. At that point, I was thoroughly freaked out, and I put pedal to the metal. Then the red and blue lights came on.

    When the officer walked up to my window, I asked him why he was tailgating me, and why he didn’t use his lights or sirens. He said he was trying to read my license tags, and he wanted to make sure they were expired before he pulled me over. I told him that I had new tags in my jockey box (glove compartment to the rest of you) and he helped me put them on.

    But that’s not the best story. Back in 1987, I was returning from a whitewater kayaking trip, headed into Moscow, Idaho, when a cop pulled me over. I wasn’t speeding and my vehicle was new that year, so I didn’t think I could have any lights burned out. When I asked the officer why he pulled me over, he said that he noticed my kayak on top of my car, and he just wanted to talk to be about kayaking.

    I found his honesty refreshing, and I really like recruiting new people to the sport, so we talked about kayaking. I never reported him, but I did gently hint that pulling people over for small talk might not work so well with the next guy.

  19. FYI Just because they call it “Swatting” doesn’t mean it was necessarily an actual “swat” team involved.

    • True. Especially since there are very few real SWAT teams, and they’re mostly in large cities. All other “SWAT” guys are just beat cops dressed in full battle gear

  20. I’d say manslaughter charges are in order for the Swatter and probably the SWAT officer who pulled the trigger.

    • Lock em up together. Along with the chief of that department. An innocent man is dead. Shot down in his home, probably in front of family.

  21. why are cops violently responding to an uncorroborated phone call?

    the cop who shot the man in his own home is the murderer. the prankster is clearly guilty of something, but swat calls shouldn’t result in cops blowing inocents away.

  23. That seems more than a little too dismissive of the culpability of the useless mass of protoplasm who phoned in the phony police report…

    Protoplasm is insulted by the comparison.

  24. Ten to twenty in prison being passed around as a bitch should help serve as a deterrent for swatting. There are technical fixes for this kind of call, including back traces to locate the origin of the call to help the cops locate the source of the call to verify legitimacy and arrest swatter in real time.

  25. Does anyone else remember some anti-gun nuts that was trying to get their peps to swat gun owners.
    I think they thought it was a game too

  26. They have bodycam video up now on the local Kansas site. Looks like the guy walked out on his porch and waved his hands shouting what the hell is going on. Of course a waved hand is a deadly weapon so one cop shot him from 100 feet plus from behind his car.

    It’s murder guys.

  27. Stuff like this is why I don’t allow armed police on my property.

    And don’t even get me started on departments that let Internet kiddies utilize them as death squads.

    And then paid leave, after executing someone. That’s a good gig right there. I wish I could execute people on a whim and get paid vacation for it.

  28. Connect a billion people personally online in a violent game an bad things will happen.

    Another question is how did we end up with thousands of private police armies all over the country?

  29. ““That was the information we were working off of,” he said.”

    So if we called 911 and told them that a Tyrannosaurus Rex was attacking a Unicorn at 1504 Smith St., how many people would end up getting shot at 1504 Smith St. because of that?

    The police need to get smarter. Period.

  30. I’m a local to Wichita, KS where this happened. Local news said someone in LA has been arrested in relation to the case. Pretty messed up. And my brothers wonder why I don’t participate in group chats on online games.

  31. Forget the gamer, the real question is who deploys an entire armed SWAT team to a random address from an anonymous phone call? People do dumb stuff, it doesn’t mean the police need to respond with the same amount of retardation.

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