Employee of The Creatures was "swatted"

Think about the exposure this streamer is getting though. I've seen this story on many gaming websites.

And without the NSA monitoring the phone call which started it all, the actual perpetrator may never be brought to justice.

Feel super bad for the cops here. They get called in, go through the stress of walking into an unknown situation, react the best they can while keeping as many people safe as possible, and still get shit on for doing their job. When a cop gets a call about a shooting that is happening, would y'all rather he walks up and knocks on the door politely and asks of someone is getting murdered? These dudes walk willingly into a potential firefight for us and all we do is bitch about it. Come on guys.

Go look at the CATO SWAT Raidmap.

Pay particular attention to all the little pins in the map. Look at all the pink ones, which are raids on innocent suspects. The blue pins, which resulted in deaths of innocent people. The green pins,w hich indicate deaths of non-violent offenders. The yellow ones which are unnecessary raids on doctors and the sick.

All of them happened in the last 25 years. Almost all of them happened just in the last fourteen.

@somberowl: Really? That's the angle you're going with?

How the hell would that have helped? The police obviously recorded the phone call that came into them making the fake crime report. The NSA having a recording of it wouldn't change anything.

My favourite bit is when the cop is like "Streaming? What the fuck is that you fuckin nerd"

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people who are supposed to be experts at handling these situations to remain calm and do what is necessary, rather than flipping out on someone who is already 100% compliant the moment they enter the room (and then continuing to disrespect him when he's already cuffed and kneeling on the ground). There is a middle ground between "knocking on the door politely" and getting over-the-top aggro like these guys.

I'm not saying it's a good thing, or worth going through. Obviously. I'm just saying he's getting a lot of exposure.

I guess...? The issue isn't that the police shouldn't take the reports seriously but that "seriously" shouldn't be: Go into 5 star GTA mode.

What keeps happening is that we have people charging in without "intelligence". It wouldn't have taken much investigating to discover the report wasn't that accurate so this charging in is expensive and risky when another approach would have been more appropriate.

They also get off on the power they hold over us.

You trollin', right?

It's the reason they get the job. In an ideal country we would demand the same level of experience for law enforcement as we do with doctors (we'd pay 'em more, of course), so these kinds of idiots would never step foot in the department, except when they were brought in on domestic disturbance charges.

I would personally find this to be an excellent birthday gift, but that said, this is a super shitty thing to do and I hope those involved are being charged or at least fined. Wasting the time of elite peace keeping forces is a really shitty, dumb idea. It's not funny. What the fuck would you do if while they were busy dealing with a prank, they ended up being unable to respond in a timely manner to a real situation where SWAT would be needed and someone got killed?

Parents in this world are fucking idiots and need to smack some sense into kids so they don't grow up to do this.

Ehhh... You'd have to be a rookie cop to believe even a pair of speakers kicking out gun shots from a video game. Not loud enough, and they rarely sound accurate. And they have to see the guy to shoot him so you'd have to be a complete retard to open fire in that situation. A guy sitting in a chair facing a computer is not a target.

@brodehouse: How is the person that made the fake call to the police not the person responsible? How do you expect the police to respond to this? Show up to the front door with flowers, knock, and nicely ask the resident "Do you have any illegal explosives in your home?"?

Essentially what your entire post seems down to, Get rid of the Police and institute a State of Anarchy. Let's arm everyone with an AR-15, and if someone's home is invaded it's up to them and anyone who's willing to help to deal with it. There will be no emergency response. Since no police will be sent, paramedics and firefighters will most likely not be willing to enter the property either.

Instead of sending in people that train over, and over, and over for these situations let's just let any idiot with a gun go running in! Even if this person does have a level head, how is he now supposed to tell the difference between hostile and bystander at this point? How is the victim in this situation supposed to know that this guy is here to help and not backup for the intruding party?

If this isn't what you're suggesting then your entire post was just poorly worded.

I would personally find this to be an excellent birthday gift, but that said, this is a super shitty thing to do and I hope those involved are being charged or at least fined. Wasting the time of elite peace keeping forces is a really shitty, dumb idea. It's not funny. What the fuck would you do if while they were busy dealing with a prank, they ended up being unable to respond in a timely manner to a real situation where SWAT would be needed and someone got killed?

What? So because some kid is a dumbass, we need to change the way police behave. That is nonsense. These are SWAT guys. They need to get the situation under control in as little time as possible and it is not their job to be nice. We need to work on the problem not a dumb not really that bad symptom. Really, you are concerned that someone's cursing at a guy?

Also, SWAT do a lot of what they do to keep people safe. If you have a hysterical person freaking out who is clearly a victim but does not need aid, what do you think is better for that person, to be yelled at or to be handed a coffee and asked about his feelings? If an element isn't controlled, that element can both cause harm to other elements and cause harm to itself. If it's controlled, damage caused is minimalized.

That's SWAT's job, to go in and defuse a situation and minimize damages to innocent parties. These aren't regular police. They don't respond to "my cat is stuck in a tree." Blaming the police for doing their job when some piece of crap on the internet took advantage of Police having to respond to any and all situations no matter how fake they are is just plain naive if you ask me.

Trust me when I say this, it's best for everyone if SWAT continues using tactics that they have proven time and time again to be effective.

It's fine to not understand these things, it's another to clearly not understand them, admit ignorance (which is fine, again, not everyone needs to know how or why the police do things, especially SWAT), and then continue declaring their methods improper.

I don't understand why people are so upset about rough handling when lives are believed to be at stake. Think of it this way, if you had to shove your grandmother over to get her out of the way of a car, you'd do it even if you knew she'd probably break her hip, right? So why is it that when police do the same thing, it's suddenly horrible?

Don't get me wrong, police shouldn't always be "violent" but this was a relatively tame example of that and it was in an instance when it was pretty much to be expected. Luckily the guy knew he hadn't done anything wrong, cooperated, and the situation was defused within about 60 seconds.

The only part that has anything to do with adrenaline alone is the cursing. And honestly? Who. Gives. A. Rats. Ass. Swear all you want. No one is harmed by an officer yelling another word along with the words he's supposed to say. Least of all "fuck."

Sorry if I'm being an ass or condescending or whatever but as someone who interacts with various public servants, most of them of the more violent persuasions, I really don't like when civilians whine about little things while there are actually shitty police out there doing things they shouldn't be doing in a million years. Hopefully you don't take this too personally. I just think it's really unfair to harp on the police not really being that violent (no one got slammed around or hit) when the actual issue is their time being wasted.

Ehhh... You'd have to be a rookie cop to believe even a pair of speakers kicking out gun shots from a video game. Not loud enough, and they rarely sound accurate. And they have to see the guy to shoot him so you'd have to be a complete retard to open fire in that situation. A guy sitting in a chair facing a computer is not a target.

Some do, some don't. This can be said of anyone in any situation where they are in control. The guy making your burger at mcdonalds could just decide he's going to take 30minutes to do so. And since you already paid, you're at his mercy.

Damming an entire profession because the shitty ones are getting a lot of publicity is pretty goddamn stupid.

No. SWAT has no choice but to take every threat very seriously until they can be certain citizens are not in harms way. They didn't randomly bust down his door, someone reported a serious crime in progress. These guys rushed into what for all they knew would be a firefight because as far as they knew, citizens were in harms way.

And "berrate" is the wrong word. They were issuing commands, and repeating themselves until the individual complied, which he did (smart move). About a minute later and he's sitting relaxed in his chair without any harm done.

They acted very much how they should have in the situation they were in. They are not regular police and their tactics are very different. They were addressing a threat, and they were NOT that bad. For about 60 seconds the guy was somewhat roughly handled. After that he was just questioned. Police do things for a reason. If you'd ever been in a situation where they really needed to be involved, you'd maybe understand why the way these guys operated isn't so bad.

You clearly have NO IDEA the kind of threats these guys are trained to deal with. And intelligence is never to be trusted until you see it with your own eyes. They cannot choose not to take it seriously, and they do not have time to ask if the threat is real. They need to respond in as little time as possible to avoid causalities. These guys are, as far as they know, putting themselves in danger to keep civilians like you safe.

And note, this guy is perfectly fine. I doubt he had so much as a light bruise on him by the end of it. He probably got enough publicity from the situation that he benefited more than not. He was not abused, he was not struck or anything like that.

Police have shot people because they mistook a garden hose for a gun.

Police infamously shot Amadou Diallo for reaching for his wallet.

We are no longer in a position where these situations can be ignored as completely isolated accidents. Aggressive hyper-vigilance and racial, gender, and socioeconomic suspicions have to be considered as causes for these constant symptoms of police violence.

The manner in which the police treat suspects and unarmed suspects in particular is absolutely, 100% the responsibility of the police. When the police act dangerously and thuggish because they got bad information from a third party, the third party is not responsible for the dangerous, thuggish behavior of the police. If a third party accused me of selling cigarettes on the street, it still would not justify police putting me in a chokehold until I stop breathing and die.

How do you expect the police to respond to this?

In a manner that does not put innocent people inside the building in a greater amount of real, tangible, threat than they were in before the police showed up. Regular citizens find panic to be a very reasonable response to suddenly looking down the barrel of a gun (sonofagun, sonofabitch, gettin paid, getting rich). Your solution of 'treat everyone as hostile' puts innocent people in greater threat than if the police had not shown up at all. The way the police handle these situations has directly led to more deaths than handling it another way. This is not acceptable, and there is nothing about a man surrendering that requires the kind of callous physical treatment and dire escalation of force that you are attempting to justify.

This behavior causes problems for the people who suffer it. If you believed you would be subjected to it, you would be more concerned about what happens to unarmed citizens than to armored, gun-wielding police officers.

Show up to the front door with flowers, knock, and nicely ask the resident "Do you have any illegal explosives in your home?"?

Essentially what your entire post seems down to, Get rid of the Police and institute a State of Anarchy. Let's arm everyone with an AR-15, and if someone's home is invaded it's up to them and anyone who's willing to help to deal with it. There will be no emergency response. Since no police will be sent, paramedics and firefighters will most likely not be willing to enter the property either.

Instead of sending in people that train over, and over, and over for these situations let's just let any idiot with a gun go running in! Even if this person does have a level head, how is he now supposed to tell the difference between hostile and bystander at this point? How is the victim in this situation supposed to know that this guy is here to help and not backup for the intruding party?

If this isn't what you're suggesting then your entire post was just poorly worded.

Hahaha.... My post is poorly worded because you invented an absolutely hyperbolic strawman argument in place of anything my post said. Any criticism of the police's aggressive breach-first behavior is a call for anarcho-syndicalism. Yeesh.

Here's a link to the news story: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/call7-investigators/littleton-swatting-case-just-the-latest-in-a-long-history-of-similar-pranks-in-colorado08272014

I know 'swatting' is a real thing that happens but being the skeptic that I am I was initially inclined to believe that in this instance it was just the streamer playing a prank on his audience. However, it seems it was legit and I'm glad the guy was unharmed.

@jarmahead said:

You're right, they're not regular police, they're SWAT. They're members of an elite unit of highly-trained officers that, supposedly, should be ready for extraordinary and risky situations, and also supposedly passed psychological tests during the selection process. I would hold their conduct to a much higher standard than regular police, even considering the difference in tactics.

Yeah, they didn't punch him, they didn't tase him, they didn't blow up the building, but they certainly did not seem calm, orderly or disciplined, which is the best way to respond to any dangerous situation last I checked. If this is how they deal with a passive dude at a computer, I wonder what would happen if he had a gun and hostages?

First time I heard of this "swatting" practice. I'm not even a fan of pranks to begin with, so something like this seems just really unnecessary. I'd certainly be pretty fucking unimpressed if some twat decided to call the cops on me as a hilarious "joke". More so if I'd get busted with weed for no good reason. Not to mention how irresponsible and dangerous shit like that is should the situation escalate.

In that video the cops seemed aggressive and annoying as hell but not totally out of line to me. The dude didn't resist at all but in what mood are they supposed to be while possibly going into a firefight?

@brodehouse: Fine, let's dissect your post as you do since you're incapable of keeping hold of the big picture.

@brodehouse said:

As opposed to what response can you recommend? That we just leave it alone and let these people deal with the problem themselves? We just launch a missile at the building and let God sort it out?

Yet another comment that suggest forgoing emergency response all together in lieu of trusting in the victims to stand up for themselves.

And again.

Plenty of complaints about how things are done here without any suggestions, whatsoever, for corrections to be made other than the allusion to ending emergency response altogether. This leads to the conclusion that I mentioned above.

Proper training of police officers would be good. More policing and less military tactics and toys maybe. Maybe, just maybe, and I realize this sounds fucking crazy, hold police officers accountable for their actions when they break the law, at least some of the time.

Also people on the internet should stop being dicks and calling the cops on people. It's dangerous and expensive and no where near funny enough to be worth it.

@amafi: Mostly agreed, and thank you. :)

Though I don't understand the need for less military tactics. And yes, cops should definitely be held accountable. Especially that damn HiPo that raced to catch me the other day, when I was doing 89 in a 75, with his lights off! I thought he was just someone in a hurry and got over to let him go by. How is it OK for him to do over 100, but not for me to do 89? Seriously considering putting four GoPros on my car.

Just so we're both aware, most discourse requires a certain amount of mutual respect, and often does not feature the beginning of an argument stating that the other person is incapable of understanding anything.

As opposed to what response can you recommend?

To what, in particular? You're now demanding that if I don't have a concrete strategy for effectively dealing with all instances of public safety then I'm incapable of criticizing a specific event?

In this specific situation, less volume, less aggression, less callous treatment of other people's bodies, and for Chrissakes, stop entering rooms that may contain innocents with your guns drawn. Soldiers do not draw their guns on anything they don't plan on killing. If current police tactics create situations where reasonable reactions by innocents will lead to their own deaths then we need to reconsider current police tactics. You are more concerned with maintaining the 'big picture' than you are with actually adjudicating the facts of situations.

That we just leave it alone and let these people deal with the problem themselves? We just launch a missile at the building and let God sort it out?

Hyperbolic strawmen only make you look foolish.

Yet another comment that suggest forgoing emergency response all together in lieu of trusting in the victims to stand up for themselves. [..] And again.

No, in fact this is just you denying there is any sort of middle ground between hyper-aggressive behavior that is dangerous to innocents involved and ending all public safety enforcement altogether.

In revealing that this specific police action or that specific police behavior puts innocents in greater threat than if nothing was done is not advocacy for nothing to be done, it's a criticism of the current paradigm. Effective public safety means that the actions police take cannot put people in greater danger than if they had not been taken. The reason police do not blow up buildings to kill criminals inside is because it puts people in greater danger than if they had not blown up the building. The reason police shouldn't be tactically breaching places in this manner with that level of intelligence is because it's unsafe for everyone involved.

The last I had a gun pointed at my face and was told to NOT FUCKING MOVE, it was a man in a mask with another man in a mask and they were robbing me. It's a good thing that the SWAT and police gear is somewhat recognizable considering nobody said the word 'police' in the entire time that man was being forced on the ground and cuffed. Unless that "BORAH" grunt at the beginning was supposed to be the word 'police'. Considering how many police are now wearing masks themselves, I feel as if it's even more difficult for citizens to identify them.

Also, yeah, I'm as concerned about cops telling people "DON'T YOU FUCKIN MOVE, BOY" as I am about them yelling "I'LL FUCKIN KILL YOU" and calling people "FUCKING ANIMALS". That kind of behavior does nothing positive for the communities they protect, and does nothing to protect police safety. It's entirely emotional, adrenaline-inspired macho bullshit. That you feel threatening and intimidating behavior is completely de rigueur for what the public should expect from their own public servants shows an incredible bias, considering I doubt you'd be as ready to handwave threatening and intimidating behavior from members of the public. Homeless people and low-income minorities are routinely targeted, arrested and fined into debt for uttering threats, specifically threats or intimidation of police officers. In Saskatchewan, for instance, 15% of all violent crimes reported were uttering threats.

The way the police treat the public has a lot to do with the way the public thinks about the police.

Also, SWAT do a lot of what they do to keep people safe.

What is 'a lot'? Everything they do should be to keep people safe.

If you have a hysterical person freaking out who is clearly a victim but does not need aid, what do you think is better for that person, to be yelled at or to be handed a coffee and asked about his feelings?

Clearly if someone is hysterical, the best reaction is to point semi-automatic longarms at their face and shout unintelligible threats at them while advancing menacingly. That's clearly what's best for that person and in no way will result in violence.

Trust me when I say this, it's best for everyone if SWAT continues using tactics that they have proven time and time again to be effective.

I can imagine your tone changing provided you were in a social group that actually experiences SWAT's 'peace-keeping' tactics. I can imagine your human body still reacts to physical pain, and that you'd be less willing to accept physical pain in exchange for soothing the nerves of an agitated, screaming man in full armor who is loaded with adrenaline and acting on suspicion rather than hard intelligence.

I don't understand why people are so upset about rough handling when lives are believed to be at stake. Think of it this way, if you had to shove your grandmother over to get her out of the way of a car, you'd do it even if you knew she'd probably break her hip, right? So why is it that when police do the same thing, it's suddenly horrible?

Because I feel like your defense of 'rough handling' would immediately change if you were ever in a position where you could see yourself being potentially subject to it. I don't believe being in the area of a public safety hazard means that a person should expect themselves to be lawfully forced to the ground by a group of armed men.

Don't get me wrong, police shouldn't always be "violent" but this was a relatively tame example of that and it was in an instance when it was pretty much to be expected. Luckily the guy knew he hadn't done anything wrong, cooperated, and the situation was defused within about 60 seconds.

"Luckily" he cooperated? He has no other legal behavior in that situation besides accept that he's going to have knees in his spine, and to be lifted around by large men. There is absolutely nothing else he is legally allowed to do in that situation, and they still found it necessary to drive knees into his spine. It is not a matter of luck, it is a matter of that man having to choose between either complete submission or criminal charges. If not death.

Even when he chose complete submission it was not sufficient for those armored police officers to feel safe. Consider that.

The only part that has anything to do with adrenaline alone is the cursing. And honestly? Who. Gives. A. Rats. Ass. Swear all you want. No one is harmed by an officer yelling another word along with the words he's supposed to say. Least of all "fuck."

Hah. Hah. I won't even argue. Certainly no one was upset when the justification for stopping this kid was that he's "a fucking mutt".

"Why'd you push me like that?"

"SHUT YOUR FUCKIN MOUTH!"

Or how about

"Why do you have an fucking empty bookbag?"

"Cause I had my hoodie in there."

"You have your hoodie on your body. Are you a fucking wiseass?"

"It was cold."

"You want me to smack you? You're being a wiseass. Why are you being a fucking wiseass? Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"

That's a police officer speaking to a citizen. I know it sounds more like a bully pushing the weak kids up against lockers.

If I wouldn't tolerate that kind of language and interpersonal treatment between an unarmed politician and an unarmed citizen, why am I suddenly going to tolerate that kind of interpersonal treatment between an aggressive armed law enforcement officer and an unarmed citizen of which they know nothing about?

Sorry if I'm being an ass or condescending or whatever but as someone who interacts with various public servants, most of them of the more violent persuasions, I really don't like when civilians whine about little things while there are actually shitty police out there doing things they shouldn't be doing in a million years. Hopefully you don't take this too personally.

Just as a tip moving forward, for you and anyone else, using the term 'civilian' as a pejorative only makes the sense of cruel authoritarianism worse.

That's not even dealing with the assumption that I, a grown-ass adult, have never 'interacted with various public servants'. I have also interacted with various public servants, I have various public servants in my family, several of my friends are various public servants, and I'd like to be a public servant myself. And guess how I still feel regardless? Public servants should be above callous physical treatment and intimidating behavior.

I just think it's really unfair to harp on the police not really being that violent (no one got slammed around or hit) when the actual issue is their time being wasted.

This is a problem. You are callous to what happens to other people. It does not matter to you, because you are concerned about what happens to you. You are more concerned that the police will be too busy threatening someone to deal with a crime that happens to you than you are about what happens to the person the police are actually acting on.

If trained professionals can't act more calm then this then how the fuck are normal people supposed to be calm if people are kicking down their door, screaming and waving weapons? I live in a country where you can't have guns laying around in your house, but if I woke up by that in the middle of the night and had a gun next to my bed I would probably try to reach for the gun to protect myself in that extremely terrifying situation.

But you clearly do or are implying something else? My dad who retired as a cop in even a small town bemoaned how poor information was responding to help. Addresses where wrong. The number of people in the incident was wrong. What was actually the problem was often wrong. To suggest that everytime they get a call THEY CHARGE IN LOCKED AND LOADED because of "unknown knowns and unknown unknowns" is preposterous. My dad would recount to us stories where bad information would lead to over actions lead in which money and time were valiantly wasted while scaring the hell out of people who didn't really mean too. He specifically says that police are pressured too much to jump into high tension and dangerous situations too quickly making sometimes simple problems much worse. Skip forward to today and a large city and I can see how unfunny and dangerous this is. And go figure, we have a situation where a simple problem made much worse.

And again to be clear, did I write "Oh the police should not bother"? No I did not write that. Did I write "Oh the police shouldn't protect themselves?" No I did not write that either. There are simple steps and protocols that can be taken to help eliminate false calls. I was suggesting we do those before going "5 Star GTA Mode".

This is pretty much all that is needed for many of us to realize that you are suggesting improvement for, and commenting on, something that you know nothing about. Every single person in the Army goes through MOUT training and if they didn't then their Drill Sergeants were lazy inadequate bastards. Soldiers are NOT trained to enter an unknown room with their weapon down, that would just give the enemy, who is potentially waiting on the other side of that door with his weapon already up, the chance he needs to blow your ass away.

Resorting to sarcasm, especially on the internet, only hurts your case not help it.

Actually I'd be perfectly fine with it as long as I don't have any permanent or debilitating damage. Those guys are just doing their job, cooperate and let them get it over with. They don't want to be in the situation any more than anyone else. Feel free to tell us how we'll feel about it though, since you apparently know us better than we do ourselves.

I don't know, some of those guys seem really enthusiastic about beating on people, shooting people, etc. I mean, I guess it's good to enjoy your job, but in some instances I feel like it's just not appropriate.

It's things like this swatting bs, that have made me start to hate the internet and social media in the last 3 years or so.

For a website that seems to hate Reddit you guys sure do share a lot of the same sentiments, also lol at sweeping generalizations.

I know it's fun to jump on the 'Fuck Police' bandwagon, but I think they did the right thing here. They got a call that someone was murdering people, so they reacted accordingly. Taking time to research the call could potentially lead to a much worse situation, so they had to act fast. Yeah they were rough, but it's not like they were beating the shit out of the kid, they were just doing what they were trained to do.

The one who should receive the blame is this sub-human kid who made the call.

No kidding, because I love Reddit! I couldn't find how Destiny is handling the requirement for PS+ anywhere else.

It only requires it for matchmaking game modes, btw. The multiplayer portions of the campaign are fine on free-mode.

@budwyzer: Lol, yeah I find Reddit helpful for individual games. Just bigger subs that have to deal with practically any form of politics (or god forbid the police) get notably toxic.

You can't do Strikes without PS+ either, which are the equivalent to a Raid.

@jarmahead: Have you seen the news regarding the US police force recently?

That they busted into the room yelling and pointing guns at the guy is disgusting. Jordan heard them coming and had his hands up before they entered. They exhibited a severe lack of both tactics and tact.

Hold on, so the cops are the bad guys in this thread? You people are fucked in the head.

Again and again, the issue isn't "the police should respond to calls for help" but the issue is "the police are responding to calls for help heavily armed and without a clue what they are going into". And again the issue is that they could have figured out something was amiss by checking a couple of details electronically. Storming a house just for any call for help is crazy because it is risky for them and for the people in the house. What started as a prank ESCALATED into an armed encountered where luckily no one was hurt.

I'm not excusing the prankster either but to suggest that this is how the police should always respond is nuts.

Makes me feel scared for doing extra life this year.

I'm not sure which part I find more disturbing about this. That even a single person thought of this idea and followed through with it, or that it's been happening enough to have a colloquial nickname. Sort of akin to that ridiculous trend a few years back where people were putting vodka directly into their eyes to get drunk.

ABC News even did story on the topic

I don't think that going with force into a situation that you know nothing about is "necessary". Shouldn't they figure out the situation before the breach? How many people are inside, who are the victims/ perpetrators, are there hostages, has there been previous criminal activity, validity of the claim, etc.?

Vice had interesting talk about these kind of things:

Edit: OK GB not redirecting to last page after clicking the "show latest message (hence late reply) is getting infuriating.