California Man Arrested in Kansas ‘Swatting’ Incident That Led to Fatal Shooting
“the caller claimed his father had been shot”
Swatting is an extremely dangerous practice which entails calling 911 and pretending to be someone else while claiming that you are in a situation which requires a SWAT team. If it is done successfully, police arrive at the home of the unsuspecting target with guns drawn.
In this case, a California man sent a SWAT team to the home of a 28 year old father of two in Wichita who was fatally shot by police.
Benjamin Brown reports at FOX News:
Man arrested in ‘Call of Duty’ ‘swatting’ hoax that led to fatal police shooting
A 25-year-old California man was arrested in connection to an online quarrel between two “Call of Duty” gamers that prompted a hoax call and led to a man being killed by police in Kansas.
Los Angeles police on Friday arrested Tyler Barriss, who law enforcement claimed is the “prankster” who called 911 and made up a story about a kidnapping in Wichita, ABC 7 reported.
Barriss reportedly gave police the address he believed the other gamer lived.
In the audio of the 911 call, the caller claimed his father had been shot in the head and that he was holding his mother and a sibling at gunpoint. The caller added that he poured gasoline inside the home and “might just set it on fire.”
The address was for the home of Andrew Finch, 28, whom police believed was not involved in any argument on “Call of Duty.”
Here’s a video report:
Here’s a photo of the suspect:
Police arrest Los Angeles suspect in “swatting” episode that led to Kansas man’s death https://t.co/qfxTmiFTmJ pic.twitter.com/9ZFs93bAy0
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 31, 2017
Swatting is nothing new. In 2011, conservative blogger Patterico was a target:
At 12:35 a.m. on July 1, 2011, sheriff’s deputies pounded on my front door and rang my doorbell. They shouted for me to open the door and come out with my hands up.
When I opened the door, deputies pointed guns at me and ordered me to put my hands in the air. I had a cell phone in my hand. Fortunately, they did not mistake it for a gun.
They ordered me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me. They shouted questions at me: IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE HOUSE? and WHERE ARE THEY? and ARE THEY ALIVE?
I told them: Yes, my wife and my children are in the house. They’re upstairs in their bedrooms, sleeping. Of course they’re alive.
Deputies led me down the street to a patrol car parked about 2-3 houses away. At least one neighbor was watching out of her window as I was placed, handcuffed, in the back of the patrol car. I saw numerous patrol cars on my quiet street. There was a police helicopter flying overhead, shining a spotlight down on us as I walked towards the patrol car. Several neighbors later told us the helicopter woke them up. I saw a fire engine and an ambulance. A neighbor later told me they had a HazMat vehicle out on the street as well.
He has posted an update here.
In 2012, conservative commentator Erick Erickson was also a swatting target, Mediaite reported:
On Friday, CNN’s Don Lemon spoke with conservative blogger Erick Erickson about “swatting,” or making it appear as if another, targeted person is making fraudulent 911 calls. And, as Lemon warned viewers, the results could be fatal…
Erickson told Lemon he is targeted all the time, but this marks the first time his wife and child are included in someone’s attack. “It’s surreal to hear someone calmly pretend to be me saying they’ve shot my wife and they’re going to shoot someone else,” he shared. Lemon agreed, adding that the call upset him, too.
As it turns out, Erickson continued, one of the officers who arrived at the scene that night recognized him from CNN, and inquired about an “accidental shooting.” Another officer kept his distance, holding his hand over his gun while Erickson’s three-year-old stood nearby. Other officers had the house surrounded.
Some news outlets are calling swatting a prank. It’s not a prank. It’s a malicious act which is done with the full knowledge that the target could be killed.
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Frankly, I’m more than a bit disturb that police shot and killed an unarmed man. I really don’t care if it was “swatting” or not.
So since the caller was committing a crime, and the result of the crime ended in a death, could the caller be charged with Premeditated Murder?
If so, Kansas has the death penalty, last I checked.
I think you’re talking about the crime of Felony Murder – usually not a DP crime.
I want to know why the cop decided “Hey, we don’t really know if this is the right address, so let’s just shoot the first person we see and call it good.”
In Florida the caller could be charged with first degree murder.
The following is the most detail I have seen to date on the shoot:
http://gunfreezone.net/index.php/2017/12/31/wichita-swat-bad-procedure-should-be-criminally-breaking-the-law/
Ok, that showed me something that I didn’t know, I thought that this was a door knock kind of thing, I didn’t realize that the guy was like 90 feet away.
The cops were rolling up on a house that as far as they knew contained several hostage, one nutbar…. who had spread out gasoline all over the place just waiting for a match.
I see any number of cop haters wondering why the cops didn’t act faster in various school shootings, Las Vegas massacre, etc. blasting the cop who shot.
I wonder what they’d have said if the cop hadn’t shot and this had resulted in a burning house and dead hostages.
“But it was fake!!!eleventy!!!” And how were the cops supposed to know that? Clairvoyance? Telepathy? X-Ray vision? This isn’t X-Men or the Justice League.
There is a difference between shooting the first person that you see and waiting several hours for the maximum damage. Yes, if the cops can’t do better, then we certainly don’t want them.
In this case, the guy was outside and following orders. He was absolutely no danger to anyone. He let his hand down for a fraction of second, but he represented no threat. If he had retrieved a weapon (he didn’t), it would have been easy to shoot him before he had any chance to deploy it.
We shouldn’t give cops the license to kill just because they are nervous. We need police who are patient and brave enough to recognize the threat and deal with it. On the other hand, we don’t want cops who wait several hours for the situation to become less dangerous for them.
They don’t have to have a stop watch to know the difference between a fraction of a second (this case) and 2.5 hours (Columbine).
I care that it was “swatting!”
The innocent victim of the swatting had NO IDEA what was going on and that he had been targeted by “swatting” nor did the police know that the call was bogus- thus the officers were rightfully alert to the possibility of the man being armed. Because he was “swatted,” the victim did NOT realize how precarious the situation was, so an innocent move, like putting his hand into his waistband could be interpreted as reaching for a weapon. Likewise, the police, not knowing that this was a “swatting” call, did not know that this man had not already murdered someone and was not going to pull a gun on them.
I hope that the man arrested for the “swatting” call will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and be liable for reparations to the family. If laws are not adequate to address this crime, they desperately need to be made more stringent- IMMEDIATELY! ANY innocent person is at risk!
So, there was probable cause, based on one piece of evidence (“a tip”), but not an immediate threat. The police should not attempt to predict or infer the future, but react in real time as circumstances dictate.
Well, I don’t know about that. The caller stated that he’d just murdered his father and had his mother and (someone else) confined in a closet under threat from a weapon and the he’d spread gasoline around the house and was prepared to set fire to everything. Sounds kinda immediate to me. I mean the call was structured to trigger a disproportionate response. Should the kid answering the door have been shot? Of course not but the cops weren’t just wandering around looking for an excuse to off someone.
Hindsight is 20/20. One of the most effective ways to shut up cop haters like Black Lives Matter leaders is to put them through actual police training scenarios on shoot / don’t shoot. Inevitably, they end up dead once or twice and then shoot more quickly than the cops do.
People say the police are wrong until they get to live without them. Ask Baltimore how that’s working out for them.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/
Swatting is NOT a prank. It is done with the HOPE that the person targeted will be violently arrested by police.
A lot of ignorant morons are also whining about police officers and act like they should ‘know better. Why the hell would they know better? They didn’t take the call. They only know what the dispatcher had told them – that a suspected violent crime is taking place.
Swatting should be a felony and this asshole is a murderer
The police operate under the same rule of self-defense as everyone else. The expectation, however, is that someone trained to confront violence, experienced in its practice, will demonstrate better judgment and response to a presumed, perhaps imminent, but not immediate threat. That said, with a well known risk of “swatting”, they need to realize a risk management plan to mitigate the risk to innocent lives, including their own.
Actually I believe the laws for the police regarding lethal Force are a bit more forgiving. Someone else correct me if I’m wrong but I believe they have more latitude than civilians do.
Nope there is no specific “self defense” law that covers police specifically, so it’s the same law. However, Police do seem to be given the benefit of the doubt that they were in the right more so than an civilian.
In NY state, to the best of my knowledge, ordinary people have a duty to retreat, but cops don’t.
This is appalling.
Andrew Breitbart was also subjected to this felony, which needs to increase in severity of punishment.
This constitutes ‘spoofing’ an serious event and framing likely violence/entrapment to violence.
Death could be an acceptable remedy here.
“Why the hell would they know better?”
Because many of us have served in the military and dealt with these kinds of instances, have had training.
And as someone who has been a hundred percent behind the blue line and argued vociferously Martin, Brown, Scott etc were justified shootings… I have to say that police are incompetent when it comes to the use of firearms.
Last month I had a drunk woman place a fake 911 call that put me in front of two armed police officers. I was in fear for my life, not because I had done anything wrong, but because both officers were arrogant and ignorant, and likely incompetent re the standard to employ lethal force.
I know. Someone should tell those guys to keep their guns on safety unless they are going to use them.
The most common police sidearm, the Glock G17, has no safety. We don’t know if this weapon was used, or if another with a safety was used, or if he was shot with a pistol or rifle (do we?). Regardless, best practice would be to keep your finger off the trigger until you need to shoot. A black object in hand must be identified as lethal before the need to shoot arises.
Concealed carry practitioners are taught to keep the finger off the trigger until the threat is identified as dangerous. A comparison between police shootings and CCW shootings shows that innocent people are three times more likely to be shot by police.
In this era of suicide bombers, where there are innocent hostages to roast, a one shot takedown was a reasonable attempt.
911 doesn’t know the call came from California and the victim is in Kansas?
They should.
No…the caller somehow blocks the area code from 911…
(not sure how that works)
voice over IP. They can ‘fake’ any return phone number they want, so they can make it seem as if the call is coming from the house in question. Sometimes they call the victim also, so they can keep them on the line and the police can’t call to verify the incident.
It’s the same stupid thing that lets phone scammers fake a local number when they call and try to sell you an extended auto warranty/student loan fee adjustments/your computer has a virus and we need you to do a few things/etc…
Hey, Thanks for the info…and whoever invented that voice over IP thing should have their eyebrows pull out with a pair of rusty pliers!
Just realize that 99+% of your phone calls go through the internet by Voip. We’re rapidly getting to the point where our children will wonder why we ever paid per minute for phone calls, and what ‘long-distance’ is.
Ok…I’ll change my statement…May all phone scammers have their eyebrows pulled out with rusty pliers!!
The one I’ve been getting lately is the, “We’ve got a great new rate for your credit card”….
It turns out that the swatter called an emergency line at city hall and had them call 911 for him. 911 should be a local call, always.
Hillary Clinton is “Swatting?”
‘Stunning Audacity – Clinton Tweets Support For Iranian Protests She Previously Helped Destroy…’
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/12/31/stunning-audacity-clinton-tweets-support-for-iranian-protests-she-previously-helped-destroy/
klinton is so transparently full of excrement, she’s become a parody of herself
Now, lock her up.
From Jack Cashill’s digital news outlet, sentinalksmo.org: “(The suspect, Tyler Raj) Barriss, however, had given the police the wrong address. When Andrew Finch came to the door, officers screamed at him to put his hands in the air. Unaware of why a SWAT team would be at his home, Finch did not react quickly enough, and a police officer shot him thinking he was reaching for a gun. He was not.
The Wichita Police will have a lot of explaining to do when the dust settles. Finch was a 28-year-old father of two.”
Knowing those few facts, the suspect is a POS loser who needs to do hard time, but more over, since when does answering the door to your own house merit a death sentence – regardless of the stupidity put into motion?
This strikes me as extreme inexperience or carelessness or poor training on the officer’s part – or all three.
The Wichita Police will have a lot of re-training of officers and revamping of policy to do when the dust settles.
I live in this area…The police didn’t knock on the door, Mr Finch saw the lights outside his window and stepped out on the porch to investigate!
So this poor guy had no idea WTF was going on….
Sending armed individuals to someone’s house is never a prank.
Can any criminal law/penal code experts chime in with respect to what are the specific applicable charges under California (and, I assume, Kansas) state law, for a defendant who engaged in a “swatting” that led to a death? I was wondering what the relevant crime(s) would be under state penal codes, given that this crime is sort of a new arrival that hasn’t been specifically-addressed with on-point statutes at either the state or federal level.
I imagine that since the call was made in one state and the shooting occurred in another roughly halfway across the country that Federal charges are going to be made when the “swatter” is hauled into court.
This is a form of terrorism. It should be treated as such, and punishable with similar sentencing.
Making a false report is a serious crime. It’s like felony flight from the police, very dangerous even if it does not end in tragedy.
But judges don’t treat it seriously. A person fleeing the police or a guy calling in a false report are putting people’s lives at risk. It ought to be a five year minimum and a federal crime if you do it across state lines. Both crimes will decrease if judges got serious.
Five year minimum? No, the minimum should be whatever happened to the victim.
Since whatever happened to the victim isn’t part of most sentencing guidelines I don’t think that will work. You could add an enhancement for harm to the victim.
Clearly though the worst problem is that judges let 399 people off with a relative slap on the wrist. While most of the time no one is harmed the potential for harm is huge. What if some guy sees a bunch of armed and masked men sneaking up on his house or busting down his door and he shoots them? Frankly, given the usually breathless media about the out of control police I’m kind of surprised this is the first person harmed in 400 swattings.
Same potential in car chases but judges rarely treat it seriously.
This is felony murder. The perp could get life.
Swatting is a despicable act, a cowardly way to get the police to commit acts of violence for your gain. It is quite frankly a miracle that it took this long for the act to finally claim the life of someone and what’s worse is that it took the life of a complete innocent, someone who had nothing to do with the argument at all. Every last one of those responsible for this need to be brought up on charges and if convicted spend a good portion of the rest of their lives behind bars.
Good that they caught the murderous son of a bitch who called in the SWAT, but what about the equally culpable son of a bitch who provided the innocent victim’s address? They both need to face one another as they’re given the needle.
Did you see the tweet denying responsibility?
Grrr.
Interestingly, this swatting thing didn’t start in the gaming world; it started when leftists started swatting conservative and right-leaning bloggers. It then moved on to celebrity swatting before landing in the gaming world. Someone was bound to be killed, and that was the goal.
He may not have pulled the trigger but his actions are in part responsible for that trigger being pulled. If he didn’t want to put someone else’s life in danger than he never should have provided the false address in the first place!
I hope the swatter and the cop hang.
The cop, maybe. Is there evidence that he acted in self-defense?
None, so far.
I don’t give a damn. It’s very clear, the guy went to his door and was shot dead. By the police.
I know that mistakes will get made and some will be deadly. When we accept them, we make them all the more common. The officer that pulled the trigger should pay a price. No excuse.
We make them not just more common, but more “acceptable”.
What gets me is that swatting has been going on for years. Why didn’t these officers consider that it was a prank? That should be standard protocol for any such calls given how wide-spread swatting is.
Also, why would a criminal about to kill people and set a fire walk to the front door and open it to talk to police? I don’t see how this shooting is clean.
Dont rush to judge. These kinds of calls are RARELY swattings, and usually very dangerous.
They don’t give you a lot of training about people trying to trick you into murdering someone. At least they didn’t thirty years ago.
You always try to determine what you’re dealing with on any call but you can make mistakes even without someone trying to deceive you.
The “swatting” is bad enough.
But it would have resulted in nothing at all if the police hadn’t bungled the situation. It was the police presence which turned mere childish malevolence into a real disaster.
A guy answering his door isn’t a deadly threat.
A guy stepping out onto his own porch isn’t a deadly threat.
A guy opening a second-story window and taking a few pot shots … that’s a deadly threat. Or would be, if it had happened … which it didn’t.
A law-enforcement type who’s so afraid of shadows he can’t control his trigger finger … that’s a deadly threat, too.
The police shouldn’t need to wait until after a disaster to prevent that one.
Maybe they bungled it and maybe they didn’t.
So far, I have not seen any in-depth report on exactly what transpired. People do all kinds of stupid things when confronted by LEOs. In this case, we have a report that the man was “reaching” for something and one of the officers thought it was a firearm. Anyone remember the body cam footage of the man who drew a gun on police while they escorted him from a business? It turned out to be a fake gun, but why would any intelligent person pull something that looked like a gun under those circumstances? Then we have the deputies who were just shot in Denver answering a disturbance call.
LEOs responding to a report of a violent crime in progress HAVE to act as though the report is true. Otherwise they are a killed in the line of duty statistic. So, when an officer points a gun at you, freeze. Then follow his instructions slowly and explicitly. It might mean a few minutes of discomfort. But, it will make it much more likely that you will not end up on a slab in the morgue.
Yes, all true.
But remember why police got the call.
I’m not sure what you are trying to say here. Could you clarify your statement, please?
The cops were rolling up on a house that as far as they knew contained several hostages, one nutbar…. who had spread out gasoline all over the place just waiting for a match.
I see any number of cop haters wondering why the cops didn’t act faster in various school shootings, Las Vegas massacre, etc. blasting the cop who shot.
I wonder what they’d have said if the cop hadn’t shot, nutbar has a chance to light a match, and this had resulted in a burning house and dead hostages.
“But it was fake!!!eleventy!!!” And how were the cops supposed to know that? Clairvoyance? Telepathy? X-Ray vision? This isn’t X-Men or the Justice League.
I don’t think you have to be a “cop hater” to question the police procedure in this particular incident…
Cops aren’t perfect, they make mistakes and, though not to the extent some would have us believe, there are bad ones. Obviously this was a mistake, an innocent man died. Now it is perfectly acceptable to look at what happened and decide whether that mistake was criminal or not.
Yes, everything you say about the response is very true, the police had to respond to the situation as it had been reported. But that doesn’t preclude the possibility of an officer being to trigger happy. When someone dies, especially someone who wasn’t armed, it should be reviewed if for no other reason than to see if there needs to be a change in policy and/or procedure.
Frankly I see some things in the video that has been released that I think should have been done differently. One example is the police were yelling at him with their unamplified voices from almost 100 feet away (I read somewhere it was 30 yards). That should not have been the case they had 3 cruisers pointed at the house, surely one of them had a PA system on the radio. That is something that needs to be looked at.
But just because we ask the questions doesn’t make anyone here cop haters, because they are questions that should be asked.
Whoever participated in contacting the police deserve and should get the death penalty.
They knew what they were setting in motion, and that’s why they set it in motion.
The police? As another poster wrote, it should not be a death penalty to open the door to your home, and walk out on the porch. That cop was judge, jury and executioner.
Reminds me of 17 year-old Christopher Roupe, killed by a female police officer on the evening of Valentine’s Day, 2014. They knocked, he opened the door and she shot him the chest. He died.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/grand-jury-finds-officers-use-force-not-authorize/137115110
I have to put this into perspective for you.
In the first place, there are literally thousands of confrontations with LEOs who have deployed firearms, for one reason or another, every single day, in this country. And yet we are not seeing thousands of police involved shootings. The number of SRT [SWAT] deployments run around 50000-80000 a year. Yet, we end up with about 10-15 people injured in these deployments and 2-7 people killed. Using the higher number number of people injured and killed and the lower number for SRT incidents we see that the percentage of incidents which result in injury or death is 0.03% and 0.014%. That is pretty darn low AND, these number include those suspects shot while attacking LEOs during these incidents. So, before we all jump on the incompetent, evil cop bandwagon, let’s understand what we are talking about, here.
Now, one of the main reason why people get shot by LEOs, without them being in the process of attacking that LEO, is because they do things which are contraindicated by the situation. They do not place themselves in the position of the person pointing the gun at them. Here is a link to an old article which sums this situation up perfectly/ Enjoy.
http://www.joecopnw.com/blog/2009/11/26/why-cops-hate-you/
The silver lining in all this is that after reading this, milhouse might better understand the difference between a felony and a misdeameanor.
I am very well aware of it, and always was. It remains the case that they are both simply categories of crime, which a state can rearrange as it pleases for its own administrative convenience. A state can even abolish them and establish different categories, if it likes. Crimes are crimes. No distinction between them can match the distinction between a crime and a lawful act.
More information on the lowlife and his claims of other acts can be found here: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/12/31/1936232/kansas-swatting-perpetrator-swautistic-interviewed-on-twitter
I agree that he should be held responsible for that poor youn man’s murder.
He’s going to face state and federal charges.
Wouldnt want to be him.
Agree with Kimberly. The message that swatting sends is “your SWAT team is so incompetent that we are going to use them to accidentally shoot people we don’t like”
Bear in mind that various gun control groups have been advocating since at least 2014 that the cops be called on any legal gun owner spotted in public, preferably using language that exaggerates the threat, hoping that something will happen to the gun owner.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389441/moms-demand-swatting-charles-c-w-cooke
“…17 year-old Christopher Roupe, killed by a female police officer on the evening of Valentine’s Day, 2014”
Why does the sex of the cop matter? If it does, let’s take a relook.
some followup
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/01/serial-swatter-swautistic-bragged-he-hit-100-schools-10-homes/
krebs has been on the receiving end of swatting and usually gives a very precise and accurate accounting of stuff like this