We are into semantics now.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
The experts are saying there is almost zero chance that this police officer is going to face any sort of criminal consequence. It doesn’t seem likely the other consequences are going to be worthwhile. An unarmed man is dead, in his home, the family doesn’t have his body, they don’t have his front-door and they took a bunch of stuff. The problem is granular and not just some cop shot an unarmed guy.
Why are they doing all this? There is not enough transparency, and the police have not given the public any reason to give them leeway with this. We can’t trust them to police themselves.
I agree. For ages, both the courts and internal affairs divisions have been supposedly doing this, but there seem to be “accountability gaps” popping up all over the place. Whether this is todays version of “stranger danger” or not (explanation for the younger crowd: back in the 70’s, child abduction became a national crisis because of news coverage despite the actual number of incidents dropping over time) frankly doesn’t matter; it’s happening, and it needs to stop.
I just don’t know what the solution is.
I don’t think this is confined to the 1970’s. Certainly I had more freedom to run around unsupervised in the early 1980’s than most middle-class kids today.
True enough. I remember with my son, it was considered bad parenting to not drive your kid to school matter how close you lived. Of course, I used to walk a half mile to school since kindergarten (albeit I went with a sister who is 2 years older), an then a mile+ starting in 4th grade all on my own.
Uphill both ways into driving snow storms? :)
Darn straight!!
I think parents today are so… like short-leash. I’ve seen them not go one or two hours without checking on their kids. Hell in the summer, my parents might not hear from me until dinner time or if i couldn’t get lunch somewhere else.
Also stranger danger… big mistake. Usually it’s someone you knew, and in my neighborhood, the one girl i remember being murdered was by a local fireman she knew. (no, I don’t hold this against firemen)
This thread, like most of them just makes you lose hope in humanity and vow to never go to Baltimore.
Another instance of murder-by-swatting, this time in Georgia:
“Shoot first, duck questions later.”
Well, now that regular folks know about it, it’s basically a free call to a hitman for everyone.
Yep. Heck, if your neighbor’s dog barks too much, you can probably get the cops to kill it. Hopefully, they stop at the dog.
I mean if you want to kill a dog, calling the cops most places basically assures it will happen.
I am thinking if the definition of swatting is actually any time someone calls the police with the intent of a heavily armed presence will show-up, and it has nothing to do with video games or social media… then the questionable 400 number provided earlier is likely to be grossly underestimated.
Probably. Most people don’t realize you can make calls anonymously. They got used to *69 and caller IDs.
I mean a burner phone costs what? $30 or so? Pretty cheap for a hit, however unreliable.
http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192846389.html
And this quote from the police chief…
Asked why Finch was shot on the porch while apparently not holding a phone while the hoax caller was talking to a 911 dispatcher, Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay said Tuesday evening that was a difficult question to answer.
“Unfortunately we don’t have telepathy yet,” he added.
Well if we didn’t already know NYPD needs to clean house, we do now.
That is the union suing. The union, not the NYPD. The unions are as big a roadblock to police transparency as the police departments are.