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.
As an American, I read this, and it made me me want to cry
As an American reading this, I kept wondering when the mayhem and death would occur.
As an American I wondered when the police would be made the victims and the actual victim would either get shot or arrested and blamed.
As an American I got shot while reading this in my Home.
As an American, this line short circuited my brain:
Police there still carry guns on the regular
I live in a quiet but growing suburban town that’s closer to rural areas than the nearest city. When I walk my kid to elementary school (how European of us, lol) the police officer working as a crossing guard for the kids still has their gun, taser, bulletproof vest, and all their other gear on.
And it’s not a school-specific thing. You just never see cops without their weapons here. Armed and armored is just part of the uniform, essentially.
The bullet proof vests really get me. They are so heavy and unlikely to be nessesary but some cops wear them ever day just to LARP.
One could argue the vests are like seat belts in a car. You don’t need them 99.9% of the time.
Ironic because it’s not unusual for cops to not wear seatbelts but they are more likely to die in a single vehicle accident then a gun fight.
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?
In the US, property records are public records. Easy to find someone’s address online if you know their full name and the county they own property in.
Go try it!
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.
In the US, the cops need RAS to handcuff you. The standard was never and is not “until they know what’s going on”. And RAS depends on the current cop knowledge. Even if they had legal grounds to break into your place, what they see in the next ten seconds is still relevant. For example, if someone said you attacked them with a knife, when the cops see no victim, knife, or blood, their legal authority ceases.
Of course it’s all highly dependent on specific details.
(On traffic stops, often they already have RAS. That’s why they pulled you over. So don’t be fooled by other comments about that topic.)
“Law enforcement officers typically have fairly broad leeway to place someone in handcuffs during an interaction if they believe that it’s necessary to protect themselves from harm. In those cases, they can do so even if the person being handcuffed hasn’t been arrested.”
“When a search warrant is being executed”
Handcuffs do not mean an arrest.
This is in Germany, idk what laws in the US have to do with this
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.
It’s not technically an arrest. In a high-stakes call, the police will typically detain everybody until they can figure out what’s going on. That means potential victims as well as potential attackers. It’s a safety measure.
In the US, the 4th Amendment says that’s unconstitutional. Fortunately. Too many dirty pigs out there.
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
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.
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.
The legal standard in the U.S. is if there’s exigent circumstances. Detailed 911 calls are typically sufficient to meet that standard. Not always.
Right now, we cannot tell if the officers did anything unlawful. Need the call recording or call logs, plus the body cameras.
(I think the exigent circumstances standard is BS, easily abused, but that is the current law of the land.)
This happened in germany though
I know. And many of the comments are coming from the US, so I’m trying to help American readers see what US law would dictate in a similar situation, because they might have instincts that are inconsistent with US law.
The police also knocked and only entered after he answered it sounded like. While certainly armed and probably prepared for something wild, they didn’t force entry with guns at the ready.
Once again, mostly comparing to videos of US police interactions, which is kind of weird as a non-USian commenting on a German police interrogation. Would be curious to see an “audit the audit” type review of this.
Even if a streamer is a big target, and the police is aware, they will still go and check it out. It’s an inconvenience for everybody involved, but it’s still the best way to go about it. The only thing that can really be done is to track the people making the calls, or I think in this case an email? Anyways, in Germany you can get jail time for doing this, and they do try and track them down.
“check it out” does not involve handcuffs.
Sure it does. I hate the police and thousands of their stupid rules, but them temporary cuffing you when they are assessing whether or not there is actual danger is just how it goes. If you watch the video, you can see he was only cuffed for 2 minutes.
in my opinion you are taking a serious breach of personal freedom far too lightly.
The cops didn’t take that away.
The person who swatted him did.
Why not both?
I don’t understand why you’d prefer the possibility of danger over somebody being cuffed for 2 minutes.
Who put the person in handcuffs exactly?
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.
It is a punishment in the form of public humiliation, taking your autonomy, and dehumanizing you. People will automatically assume you’ve done something wrong if you’re in handcuffs.
If you feel humiliated because you have been placed in handcuffs, That’s really just a personal issue. How is it a form of public humiliation? It’s a safety precaution. Anyone who doesn’t understand that safety comes first should be the ones feeling humiliated.
I myself have never once felt dehumanized, nor humiliated being placed in handcuffs. Yeah people will assume you have done wrong, that sucks, but people will really quickly change their minds when you aren’t put head first into the back of a cop car. Personally I would feel 100% more humiliated if an officer looked at me, and thought he didn’t need to cuff me :/
Sounds like bootlicker talk to me.
These people don’t understand that they are arguing against their own self interest.
The state is justified for acting on fake calls… Sucks to suck peasants.
Sure buddy, there is no way this system would be abused 🤡
I don’t mind being called a bootlicker. Police have saved my life before, and they’ve saved the lives of people I deeply care about. I have also seen policemen, who have helped peoplle out get attacked. I genuinely hope you are never put in a poosition where police have to save your life, But if they do one day, I hope you’ll change your mind.
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
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.
If someone starting swatting the extended family of local police chiefs I’d be willing to bet that even the police unions would be calling for an end to these types of raids, regardless of how they were handled.
What do estimate the percentage of these calls are some internet loser swatting someone rather than it being a legitimate report of domestic violence? You may be underestimating the number of actual domestic violence situations where the police need to intervene be a few orders of magnitude.
That’s quite possible, probably even quite likely. It doesn’t make it right.
Some people take tabs vs spaces too seriously.
If your front door gets kicked in, this is why.
That’s right kids. To avoid this situation be sure to use tabs for indentation.
The only indentation method that the viewer has control on how big they want it.
please just use spaces, it makes everything easier
How?
same width for all setups
So I have to use the same width as you? What if I want 3 spaces for a tab?
That makes it worse imo
I use tabs for indentation then spaces after that if I need to offset a line by a specific amount of chars, such as a multi-line output or something.
Edit: to be specific: https://pastebin.com/un6iUmEp . Notice how line 3 has one tab, then several spaces before the first non-whitespace character.
I like to use asterisk spacing.
void main() { /****/for (int i=0; i <10; ++I) { /********/printf("hello world\n"); /********/printf("%d\n", i); /****/} }Respect. Only through destruction can we be purified.
That’s spaces but worse? Why do you do this?
I guess Microsoft is stepping up their campaign against OSS.
/s I know it’s a bad joke. MS contributes a lot to OSS. It would have worked better in the Ballmer era.
Buy 'em out, boys!
You don’t think I got this rich by writing checks, do you?
Microsoft really is getting worse.
Really hope they find the caller and bring him to court. I mean both streamer and police are the victims here.
At least it hasn’t been a actual SEK unit (SWAT in Germany) they look more like normal patrol officers. But nevertheless it’s unacceptable.
Narrator voice: they didn’t
Germany does try and track these people down and throws them in jail: https://www.vice.com/de/article/erstes-deutsches-swatting-hohe-freiheitsstrafe-fuer-drachenlord-hater/
Swatting in Europe isn’t really virulent as police agencies have safeguards against false calls. There was a case of high-profile swatting in the UK, cops softly banged the door and didn’t brandish the guns so fast unlike in America.
Fucking hell
Google en peasant
En passant you mean? Also what does that have to do with anything?
No :)
Well, I at least chuckled.
I think this is more than just two pawns flirting, this is the queen torpedoing in from an angle to take down a castle, bulldozing any innocent pawns she hits along the way.
PIPI brick 🪱🧱
Are you kidding ??? What the **** are you talking about man ? You are a biggest looser i ever seen in my life ! You was doing PIPI in your pampers when i was beating players much more stronger then you! You are not proffesional, because proffesionals knew how to lose and congratulate opponents, you are like a girl crying after i beat you! Be brave, be honest to yourself and stop this trush talkings!!! Everybody know that i am very good blitz player, i can win anyone in the world in single game! And "w"esley "s"o is nobody for me, just a player who are crying every single time when loosing, ( remember what you say about Firouzja ) !!! Stop playing with my name, i deserve to have a good name during whole my chess carrier, I am Officially inviting you to OTB blitz match with the Prize fund! Both of us will invest 5000$ and winner takes it all! I suggest all other people who’s intrested in this situation, just take a look at my results in 2016 and 2017 Blitz World championships, and that should be enough… No need to listen for every crying babe, Tigran Petrosyan is always play Fair ! And if someone will continue Officially talk about me like that, we will meet in Court! God bless with true! True will never die ! Liers will kicked off…
fmhall | github
rust Vs c drama getting out of hand
Isn’t it amazing how you can “SWAT” (from the looks of it that weren’t special forces btw.) someone by knocking on the door, instead of blasting through it and charging in, ready to shoot anything that moves?
That’s something you can do if you don’t have to be afraid of shotguns and full-auto rifles when going into random people’s houses.
If they don’t have to worry about guns, then why do they have guns drawn?
Because they worry about any other weapon? Or the extremely rare case that someone actually has a highly dangerous fire arm? My point is that they can have much less drastic standard procedures (and equipment), because the standard scenario of operation is significantly less threatening.
There are special forces that get involved with the real shit. But the bar for real shit here is someone has any gun.
Guns aren’t the only thing that can cause bodily harm.
Probably helps add a certain gravitas.
Ah yes the solution is more guns
It works for me
Well he did say it wasn’t a good website. You really think they’re just going to take the criticism?
Microsoft CodeCop does not mess about but in fairness he was using identical names for local and global variables.
This was truly a wtf moment of the month.
Last time I spent time watching him was when he freaking fixed the kexec syscall for IBM PowerPCs. for free
Only because he had no windows
Wtf. Anyone have the back story on this?
Allegedly, someone (likely a hater of this dev) reported that this dev was going to kill his partner then himself. Armed police turned up.
Wow that’s crazy. Hope they find the guy.
But still, why would someone swat over something like this? Seems insane
Because he streamed. Streaming turns to swatting nearly every time if you don’t protect your location information.
Developing Linux is so punk rock 🤘
This entire thread is just memes instead of discussion. This feels like peak reddit shittery.
