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, 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I just read a story where a cop visited someone based on a noise complaint and ended up gunning the young Airman down while he was on a video call with his mother and gf… So from my perspective, cops are the danger.
He might have even had some dangerous written materials they should have searched his whole house. Or maybe dangerous chemicals hidden in his closet. Or maybe dangerous weapons stuffed in the couch cushions. They should have ransacked the whole place.
Why even endanger themselves going in with just cuffs? Flashbang the guy before he can react with a possibly deadly weapon. Drive a battering ram through his front door it only takes a second to open fire.
Put him under surveillance for a few weeks and collect his whole schedule so you can hit him when it’s safe.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.)
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, this line short circuited my brain:
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.
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.
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” ?
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.
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 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.
Yes, but then there’s the matter of HOW they respond.
Which is what i adressed in the comment…
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.
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.
I just read a story where a cop visited someone based on a noise complaint and ended up gunning the young Airman down while he was on a video call with his mother and gf… So from my perspective, cops are the danger.
He might have even had some dangerous written materials they should have searched his whole house. Or maybe dangerous chemicals hidden in his closet. Or maybe dangerous weapons stuffed in the couch cushions. They should have ransacked the whole place.
Why even endanger themselves going in with just cuffs? Flashbang the guy before he can react with a possibly deadly weapon. Drive a battering ram through his front door it only takes a second to open fire.
Put him under surveillance for a few weeks and collect his whole schedule so you can hit him when it’s safe.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
This is in Germany, idk what laws in the US have to do with this