The suspect in custody is 25. Still young but way past old enough to know better. A 25 year old man didn't know better than to use a swat team as a prank. He was arrested once before for calling in a bomb scare.
I may be wrong. I read there was a telephone interview with someone claiming to be the perpetrator in which they took responsibility for the call and stated it was over a $1.50 bet. I haven't seen it confirmed or debunked if it was the actual perpetrator or just someone seeking 5 minutes of fame. From what I read though some of the details provided in the interview match events corroborated by the suspect in custody, and some were very close to describing previous criminal charges against the current suspect but were slightly distorted from what is on record for the current suspect.
It's not just that one bomb threat he called in, apparently they've connected him to something like 20 instances of swatting, bomb threats, and other fake terrorist threats. That dude deserves life.
Wow. That's insane. I hadn't read that. 25 years old and if he hasn't ruined his entire life he's ruined a huge part of it and brought grief to it, along with the lives of the victims and those connected- not to mention the ripples to be felt by many now and possibly with what develops from this. It's sad for everyone. There's no way to make this right, but I hope they are able to apply justice in such a way to ease and cause as little suffering as possible while helping secure public safety and healing for those effected.
The call was made to sound like a distraught person who'd just shot and killed a member of their family and were contemplating to shoot or burn the rest of them.
Who are you to say what a real hostage taker would do anyways? Especially one who wasn't anywhere near a sensible state of mind?
The cops did their job to the best of their ability, blame the miscreant piece of shit who caused the situation in the first place.
Here's the rub- police shouldn't kill innocent people, no one should. People shouldn't make fake phone calls to 911, if you ever are talking to someone with a gun you shouldn't show disrespect, make sudden moves, or really move or speak at all unless slowly and instructed to do so. So these are all truisms. Without knowing it was a crank call- they could have done some recon. Spent half an hour to a couple hours checking facts and setting up a perimeter, planning an assault. But if it WAS a hostage situation, and now picture your family being held hostage, would you be ok with that? Would you still be ok with it if in that time the gunman killed one or all of them? Or if (like happens) they did all that and raided the home and a frightened home owner startled by unknown armed figures busting into their home started a shootout and people died? It's never perfect, any op is judged on the outcome over the actual operation. They could have done more but I doubt they were properly prepared.
To be clear I'm not defending this as right, I'm saying the blame game doesn't help here. Humans get scared and they had every reason to be scared. If we want to blame then blame the guy who placed the call, blame the system that let him go after a prior prank bomb call instead of having some way of monitoring and councikin people for behavioral issues. Don't blame the victims- and if you think the cop who shot an innocent man because of a prank call isn't a victim- that he won't live with that and be judged on it in life- suffer consequences- you're wrong. Nothing will bring that man back to life though. But if you have ideas to prevent it we are all ears.
So why did they shoot him as he opened the door? If it was a hostage situation why would he have just answered the door normally? Bullshit in there somewhere.
People keep downvoting your comments famous. Wth? But yes- the report is either he refused to comply or conflictingly that he made a sudden movement with his hands towards his waist. As the officers were called to what they believed to be a hostage situation with an armed gunman who had already used force, they assumed he was reaching for a weapon and shot him.
Not only blam the person who did the prank, but also blam the fucking swatt team who shoot at the tiniest move of someone!! Never heard anything about nonlethal ways to stop a person?
If you haven't experienced it in person I recommend YouTube videos you can see people continuing to successfully assault officers while being hit by LTL weapons. There's no "non lethal" but less than lethal weapons are generally tazers, chemical sprays, and rubber bullets. All these can injure or kill, but they also are often ineffective at neutralizing and immediate threat, or completely innefective depending on the person. There are weapons like gas, but those are area effect weapons. In Russia police killed the hostages they were trying to rescue when the gas sent in to incapacitate the hostage takers ended up causing many to die. Chemical agents rely on a proper dose, age, weight, health, and other factors effect how people react. Too little and your panicked attackers are still up and now hostile. Too much and people die. If small children are in the home or old people they are at high risk live isn't a movie. That's why we hope things like this don't happen.
Well, that would be nice. I was referring to the hope that hostages aren't taken, not the hope that civillians don't get killed, if that's what you are referring to. By default one doesn't just hope collateral damage doesn't occur unless they are a maniac, an idiot, or completely desperate and bereft of tactical choices. As prevention in that context, the holy grail is crime prevention. Hostage situations and situations where in innocent lives or safety are at risk are particularly unwanted, so while it would be great to prevent such situations, preventing any crime would really be the goal. As is relevant here if we could prevent fake 911 calls that would be another good one. Steps have been taken in crime prevention and campaigns to educate against fake emergency calls, but crime is still a problem we face. I too would someday love to live in a world free of crime though.
Who are you to say what a real hostage taker would do anyways? Especially one who wasn't anywhere near a sensible state of mind?
The cops did their job to the best of their ability, blame the miscreant piece of shit who caused the situation in the first place.