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How is "someone called" enough evidence to enter peoples homes and arrest them?
These officers should lose their job,So (not so) fun fact: Keffals, who was targeted by KiwiFarms for being trans (yes that's all) and got Swatted. She then went to stay with another streamer (EllenFromNowOn) in Northern Ireland. Just for information sake, Northern Ireland is still a bit rocky security wise, Police there still carry guns on the regular. So when she went there, Ellen called up the police and explained the situation to them (they had never heard of Swatting weirdly enough).
Sure enough, someone found her flat, posted her address (with a message referencing a Unionist Slogan, Ellen was from the Catholic Community), and sure enough, the police came. Instead of raiding her all guns blasing (which they normally would) they saw the warning, knocked on the door, saw nothing was wrong, called off the squaddies, and came in to basically make sure everything was okay.
Bare in mind, this was in Northern Ireland, a place where the Police still drive Armored cars and have regular riots, and they handled this better than the Police in London, Ontario.
Yeah the cops on this side of the pond are crazy, and their leadership staff tend to fall a lot further into the “complete psycho” side of the human spectrum.
Thanks for sharing that story though - the dichotomy is absolutely fucking wild, especially considering we’re talking about Northern Ireland.
How often are police tipped off before hand that someone is anticipating being SWATed though?
That situation is practically unheard of so it's impossible to know how police in the US would respond.
Yeah, that’s definitely a quandary. But in the case of people who know they might be (or have been previously) targeted with that sort of bullshit, it’s a prudent precaution in the US (and Canada too, evidently)
How on earth are these psychos able to find streamers' actual addresses?
Oh there's several ways, especially if you have poor opsec. People used to raid people's twitch accounts and bring down their internet connections by looking for their username on Skype which had a vulnerability which they could use to find a person's IP.
For swatters on the otherhand, they tend to either know the streamer themselves or they tend to be groups like KiwiFarms who are a lot more organised and do a lot of research and detective work, like looking at the video, looking for usernames elsewhere, looking for emails, and looking for location clues. It's really fucked up. They found Keffels's Motel by the sheets in her room. It's bad enough if you do not think about these things and just have sloppy OpSec, but even if you do, they can still find you.
The sheets in the motel room, that's insane. A while back I read something like a stalker caught a reflection in someone's eye at a train station, that's horrific enough. But I would have thought being indoors is relatively safe. It is like impossible to put out video content at all without being vulnerable.
Regular riots in Northern Ireland. ?
I mean, there were riots last month and then the last time I recall riots before then was 2019 when the journalist was shot. There might be more inbetween I've forgotten but a cadence of 5 years is more than the ~10 year cadence for mainland UK (which is culturally very similar). Sectarian tensions have died down in the past 20 years - my sister is currently in Belfast and loving it - but they still exist and have deep roots.
A lot more regularly that they do in the rest of the UK.
In Northern Ireland?
Where did you hear that then ?
Keffals has a bit of a bad stink around her online presence. I think she claimed to be posting sex hormones to underage people at one point, without any kind of medical license. One of the ecelebs on the weirder side of the terminally online subculture.
Obviously no one should ever be swatted. Wanted to mention that she is somewhat controversial though as opposed to a regular activist.
what's underage for hrt? like.. 12?
Regardless of the drug, someone who isn't a medical professional shouldn't be mailing it to children.
Well, I guess if someone calls and says you have kidnapped a little girl and that they have seen you with a gun, the police can't take a chance that it's hoax. All phone numbers that call the police should be logged and if it turns out to be a hoax, traced, so people who make hoax calls can be arrested and prosecuted.
If they enter his home, and there is no evidence of a crime, then what is the basis for the arrest?
One thing is to investigate the truth of a call, another is to act on it as if it's verbatim truth.Usually swat teams break a lot of your shit, maybe kill a baby, and then leave without arresting you.
Don’t need to arrest the suspect if they’re dead taps forehead
Oh AND leave you with the bill
Or toss a flash bang in the crib.
After breaking down the wrong door
Was he arrested? I don't see follow up. It only says he was handcuffed which would be standard until they know what's going on.
OK, here it's the other way around, you don't normally handcuff somebody unless they are arrested.
You get handcuffed as a precaution. You do not have to be arrested. You can het handcuffed on a traffic stop if the officer decides they have cause to search your car. Etc.
Some cops will go a step further and shoot you first; as a precaution, of course.
Or your dog. Safety first!
Just because handcuffung is normal in the USA, that doesnt make it normal or sensible. No one gets cuffed in a normal traffic stop or house visit in the UK for example.
Being detained while an investigation is conducted is not being arrested.
Factually inaccurate.
There was no arrest.
They are logged, but swatting people get around it. They are suspicious “looking” calls, but so are bomb threats.
Swatting is pretty much always a blocked number to a non-emergency line. If they are traced it is typically one of those free online voip services. It takes work and access to really get from A to B, which is why it only happens when there are awful results.
In the US at least, 911 gets special access and calling it will always get you to your local dispatch (unless you have voip with the wrong account address). Non-emergency is just a normal phone number. If someone wants to call from out of the area or hide their number, non-emergency is how they have to do it. This is suspicious because in a real situation like “I just shot my dad” or whatever they say, nobody is taking time to look up non-emergency.
Someone calls an emergency number and says "My husband has a knife and he's threatening to kill me!"
Should the operator say "nothing we can do until you provide provide me with some evidence, ma'am" ?
Lmao the cops take four hours to send someone then say she was just being dramatic in that scenario
Pics or it didn't happen, would be what I'd say...
Well the cops might be taking pics of a dead body the next day. So then they could say "yeah we probably should've responded to that one last night, but we just couldn't risk that it might've been one of the 0.01% of these calls where it turns out it's an internet swatting thing."
Yep. I guess there are no other possible methods of conducting a police investigation than your suggested method. Pack it in, boys. Space Cowboy's got it all figured out for us!
You're not offering any alternatives.
Here's an extremely easy one. When in doubt, just knock on the goddamned door and talk with someone instead of kicking the door in, tossing flash-bangs and jamming rifles in people's faces. Knock... and talk. SWAT shouldn't be entering unless there's a barricaded suspect.
The first thing is what they did. They knocked on the door, they spoke. At one point he was detained when they had a look about and then they apologised and left.
There was no SWAT (this is Germany so technically it would be a SEK team I guess), there was no flashbangs (why would police even have those?), there were no rifles in faces.
If someone's in imminent danger sending police capable of protecting them from said danger seems like a reasonable idea
This is a bad faith straw-man argument that pretends there are no other options than what you've presented. Weak.
That's how swatting works though. They don't just call 911 and say "send police to this place" lol.
If this is legal then it's a giant gaping loophole in the system. Not just because it's easy to harass someone but because it sounds incredibly easy for a cop to call in an "anonymous tip" on someone they suspected of wrongdoing but had no evidence to support it. I'm almost positive the Supreme Court has even held that evidence that was gathered in the course of raiding the wrong building is legal as it's an "honest mistake".
In the comments the victim said that the police said it were two emails they got. Not even a call.
I knew these Knowbe4 trainings would end badly! /s
How often does it end up saving peoples lives though?
I don't know - but I'm willing to get the instances where people were saved weren't calls from anonymous voip numbers.
Not sure why your intuition would go there, I can imagine situations where the caller would feel/be threatened if they didn't remain anonymous. After hearing about people suing for helping them in emergency situations and police abusing people's rights to get evidence then if I felt I had to report something I'd want to remain anonymous.
If there is a serious situation like human trafficking then it makes more sense. Also if they might blow down the door in a drug bust
@possiblylinux127 @tabular , well, regarding a married couple I know, the wife was away taking care of her granddaughter for a bit, came back to her husband having sketchy people in their home while she was gone. The wife wanted the police to sweep the house for drugs and alleged these people probably brought drugs in their home. The police said there was nothing they can do. Lovely double standards.
Edit: Also, you could smell the pot off the people easily. They were definitely stoned.
He probably wasn't arrested. It sounds like the police handcuffed him while checking whether he was indeed alone and then asked about what he was doing at his computer. After he explained, they asked him to turn off the stream, at which point I would assume he was freed again.
I assume they went on to explain the situation and then questioned him. If there is no evidence of any crime, they will just take his personals so they can contact him on any development. He is the victim of a crime after all.
Man the audacity of that though, they came into his house, interrupted his evening and then asked him to turn off the stream that he's doing. All while he didn't actually do anything wrong.
The entitlement is insane.
Did he state he was arrested? Title just says cuffed.
I thought it was the same. Maybe just a language barrier.
Cuffed would be more like detained. Not free to leave, because they're actively investigating, but no charges are being presented. Literally just placed in cuffs while the police do their snooping.
This is such an obviously dumb take its unbelievabe anyone would come up with it. Ofcourse the cops need to respond to a call of someone claiming to be assaulted/abused/murdered. There is no issue with this at all. The issue that CAN arise is that bad police training might lead to someone getting actually hurt in a raid like this. But thats an entirely different issue.
Ofcourse the cops need to respond
Yes, but then there's the matter of HOW they respond.
Which is what i adressed in the comment...
If you have reason to believe someone is in mortal danger, your response shouldn't be to mail a letter giving them 30 days to respond.
You send police to the scene where they secure the potential suspect and make sure there's nothing going on.
To make more money for the weapons manufacturers.
SWAT teams didn't always exist. Many would argued they should not exist. But if they no longer exited, police would spend less money in military style equipment.
Police don't care if SWATing is harming people. They just need to keep their expenses high, and SWAT teams are great for that.
I strongly disagree with this. Police should be given permission to do these things. Very rapidly with little evidence so long as they're handled right.
In fact, this is one of those cases where it looks like it was handled right. He went to the door, came in, and it sounds like they were invited in. He was not arrested immediately and thrown to the ground. Yes it sucks, But there are very much very many cases where it is absolutely necessary.
Rather than them not being able to do it, I absolutely believe they should be allowed to do it. Just be more strict on how it's handled.
Maybe this was done properly, but I was thrown off by the handcuff bit, here it's not normal to handcuff somebody who cooperates.
To be clear, handcuffing does not mean you're being arrested, it means you're being detained. It's not about them getting you ready to take you away. It's about them verifying that you're not a threat.
Whatever the claim was, whatever the claim was. Being bogus obviously, but it was bad enough that the police felt they had the need to break in and clear before proceeding any further, which means they were probably told he was a threat.
I always felt like people put too much stock into being handcuffed or not, yet it sucks. I've been handcuffed before, In a similar but not nearly as severe circumstance.
It's not meant as a punishment. It is just protecting the officers who arrive on scene because yes, people do cooperate and then they pull out of knife or gun and try to kill the first responders.
I always felt like people put too much stock into being handcuffed or not
Too much stock? Your bodily autonomy is being removed, under overt threat of further violence if you resist. It's humiliating if seen in that condition because of assumptions people make. For someone who has done nothing wrong why the fuck wouldn't they be indignant?
I’ve been handcuffed before, In a similar but not nearly as severe circumstance.
Me too, and I knew that they at least had a reason to think I was up to no good (I was not), it's not the same as literally minding your own business in your own home and having them barge in. Not really apples to apples to this situation here.
Too much stock? Your bodily autonomy is being removed, under overt threat of further violence if you resist. It’s humiliating if seen in that condition because of assumptions people make. For someone who has done nothing wrong why the fuck wouldn’t they be indignant?
Perhaps if you don't understand what police officers go through, I could see it. People do make assumptions yes, but those assumptions go away pretty damn quickly when people see you being uncuffed too.
Me too, and I knew that they at least had a reason to think I was up to no good (I was not), it’s not the same as literally minding your own business in your own home and having them barge in. Not really apples to apples to this situation here.
Perhaps I'm guilty of omission, if you were cuffed and thrown to the floor for no reason, I could understand being angry, however if you are explained why you are being detained which as I said, I think this case was handled right, can't say I understand german so perhaps i am mistaken, there is no reason why you should feel humiliated.
every time I have witnessed, or was handcuffed myself, the reasons were always explained, specifically in my case, I was told I was being detained and restrained for the safety of the first responders.
I don't disagree with you about this specific case, I was reacting to your "people put too much stock in being cuffed." Removing another person's bodily autonomy under direct threat of violence is just another day for police, but for the rest of us it's a pretty fucking traumatic thing to be on the other end of.
Perhaps if you don’t understand what police officers go through, I could see it.
I understand they can pick a different job if it's too much for them, and that they knew what the job entailed when they picked the career in the first place.
Removing another person’s bodily autonomy under direct threat of violence is just another day for police, but for the rest of us it’s a pretty fucking traumatic thing to be on the other end of.
I don't think it's traumatic at all if the police handle it right, as I predicated earlier. Police in most cases don't need to throw you to the ground, don't need to scream at you etc. It does happen yes, and it absolutely shouldn't happen unless there is an extremely good reason for it. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm specifically saying, if the police handle it right, it's not traumatizing nor humiliating
And I'm saying, even if they are polite, they are polite because I comply. If I don't really want to be in handcuffs right then - doesn't matter. If I've got an important appointment or was about to leave to pick up my child from school before police arrived to "make sure I'm not a threat" - doesn't matter.
Your options at that point, even as someone who has done nothing wrong are comply, or expect violence. THAT is inherently traumatic.
I'm not sure whether that being traumatic is a good thing or a bad thing, but if something like that is the extent to which someone could get trauma, I can only suspect they have lived quite the good life I suppose.
Wow what a dodge. It doesn't matter the extent of the trauma or whether it's the worst trauma they have had. You are minding your own business, have done nothing wrong, then the cops show up with a random accusation and "need" to put you in cuffs while they determine if you are a threat. Comply or violence. It's not right.
Yes, but I still don't believe an anonymous caller should have this kind of weight. If it's not anonymous however it should.
But then there should also be a possibility of the caller facing charges on an obviously false accusation.
So the caller needs to be verified before going to extremes.There are lots of times when you need to act on anonymity. For one, many people who report crimes that happen to others they witness, if it has happened to them, will absolutely refuse to give out any identifiable information, especially if those crimes are... sexual in nature.
Are you saying that if someone like this reports said crime, the police should not act on it? I strongly disagree, I do think officers need to be more forth coming about why something is happening, and why someone is being treated X way, but I still believe 100% that officers should act on it.