Swatter Arrested, Could Face Five Years in Prison

[Varrdy]

Considering all the furore around heavy-handed policing in the USA last year, shouldn't he also be charged with intent to endanger life?

Regardless, I hope this serves as a wake-up call to those morons who think this kinda crap is funny.

 

[Zato-1]

Your empathy is misplaced. If you're going to feel sorry for anyone, feel sorry for the victims of the malicious crimes that could have been killed by police officers believing that a very serious crime was occurring in their house rather then the perpetrator.

Seriously, this man's actions were straight-up sadistic, he's done this before, he would have done it again had he not been caught.

Another thing worth mentioning, there's a good chance that the people that've been 'swatted' by this psychopath may very well have lost any trust they may have had in the American police force after having a loaded and armed 12-gauge shotgun being pointed at their head simply because some pathetic excuse of a man thought wasting tens of thousands of tax payer dollars would be funny.

Honestly, would you still feel bad if he were the one holding a gun to his victim's head simply because he could? Because what this malicious asshole did, on multiple occasions I feel the need to mention again, was only one step away from just that. Actually, if anything, what he did was worse then if he had been holding the gun himself. Just imagine how the police officer that may have shot an innocent man to death may have felt after doing so once he'd realized they'd been tricked. He didn't just risk ruining the lives of the men he targeted, he risked ruining the lives of the police officers he mislead into attacking innocents they'd sworn to protect.

Just consider that the next time you think of this asshole and feel even the slightest pinge of empathy for the situation he deservingly got himself into.

Most of your points are fair, but I do want to point something else out: innocence.

Innocence is best understood as the illusion of invulnerability. If an adolescent sees videos of Tony Hawk skating and wants to try stuff out himself, he's going to think that his parents fussing over knee guards and helmets is tedious, then he's going to get himself hurt and be in a lot of pain... and then he's going to greatly adjust his expectations of how careful he ought to be. Once you get burned, you lose that illusion of invulnerability.

One of the reasons I'm pretty sure a 30-year old wouldn't have done the things this young man did is just that- the 19 year old shithead almost certainly believed himself invulnerable because he was too innocent, had never gotten caught before and thought he never would be. This certainly doesn't excuse his actions, but it does make it easier to understand them.

 

[Zato-1]

At first I thought he deserved it and it was right, hell 5 years may not even be enough! Then..
Think about it for a second here..
Put this kid who is already sort of missguided in a place with a bunch of actual criminals, is that really a good idea?

Yeah he deserves something, but I don't think surrunding him with people that have done way worse for a long period of time is going to do much good for him.
No sure how the jail system works over there, but I've got a feeling that this is not helping him in any way, and he might be even worse when he gets back out.
But hey why care right? He did something wrong so "fuck him" right?
Unless he does something wrong again, first THEN people care... Gahh...

This is not about what's best for him, it's about what's best for the rest of US society. This man is a danger to society if left at large, and so he's put in confinement so everyone else can be free from his abuse and so as to dissuade other potential bad apples from doing the same things he's done. What's best for this guy is secondary to what's best for society as a whole, so locking him away should be the first priority, and then you can worry about how he's being locked away and whether letting him rot in prison is best or if there's some other method which would be better for him and for society while still keeping him locked up for the requisite time.

Oh, well that's certainly true... We seem to have some weird standards on what is worth punishing and what isn't... Also sometimes just seems like it's down to the whims of whatever judge presides over any given trial

A lot of it has to do with the discretion of the prosecutors, not the judge. The prosecutors decide which crimes to charge suspects with, and the crimes people end up being convicted for define to a large extent what their punishments will be. In fact, in the US, judges do not have ANY say in the matter of sentences in 95% of convictions- I'll let this excellent article elaborate why in a much more eloquent way than I could:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21621784-american-prosecutors-have-too-much-power-hand-some-it-judges-plea-change

 

[WookyFeet]

Eh lets make it 3 years and mandatory soap dropping, that should be enough for him to hide in a corner for a LONG time.

 

[IKWerewolf]

it depresses me when people are happy to see a kid go to jail, no matter what they did.

not saying he doesnt deserve it, but if you must send a 19 year old to prison, it should be done reluctantly, not with a smile on your face. plus, if you think its going to make him a better person, youre probably wrong.

It's not about making him a better person. It's about crime and punishment. An "Oh, you!" response will make him think nothing is wrong, and there's literally nothing you can do to take away the ability to make this Criminal less dangerous as compared to taking away someone's ability to legally own a gun, or making sure a sex offender's neighborhood is aware that he is charged with such heinous tasks.

Some responses are supposed to be made drastically. As a societal animal, that's how Civilizations learns. Remember back in the early 90's? Remember Napster and Limewire and the rest? Remember the handful of arrest and bombastic fines attached to it? I'd say 80% of people I knew who were downloading illegally literally stopped overnight once they realized that it wasn't a game and there was actual cost.

Especially with the invincibility and untouchable idea of 'I'm just a kid, what are you going to do' that these late teenagers.. and in this case, a Legal Adult [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=age%20of%20adulthood%20in%20the%20us]... operate with, it's time to cut this stupid practice in the bud because someone was literally going to die from this. It was just a matter of time.

I have to agree, up until this point there has been serious luck on the side of the SWAT teams that they have not killed an innocent. No officer in any civilised country really wants to pull the trigger if its avoidable; they pull the trigger and people turn on them, the news swarm.

The media would get hold of the squad involved somehow and you can imagine the result; "SWAT team identified, the swatter's murderous pawns", its not fair for people to be caught up in this crossfire. At the same time, killing an innocent would not sit well on an officer's conscious.

It changes the game as well; this goes from wasting money and Cop's time to being involved in the killing of an innocent person, I don't know American law AND I don't know how far the District Attorney would take it.

 

[TwiZtah]

it depresses me when people are happy to see a kid go to jail, no matter what they did.

not saying he doesnt deserve it, but if you must send a 19 year old to prison, it should be done reluctantly, not with a smile on your face. plus, if you think its going to make him a better person, youre probably wrong.

To be honest with the way kids and young adults behave nowadays I find myself with increasingly little sympathy. If you do an adult sized crime, you deserve adult sized crime. Especially when the motive is malicious and tied to things like deliberate intimidation.

See, a bit of shoplifting (stealth, not mugging), some vandalism, maybe pulling a fire alarm, that's all stuff I think you can go easy with kids on and scare them straight. I mean I don't think some kid deserves 5 years if he eggs a house on Halloween and is too slow running away for example. On the other hand when your dealing with someone who falsely deploys a SWAT team, directly risking lives, and engages in identity theft and electronic intimidation... that's an entirely different case. As are cases like those girls who tried to kill another girl to appease Slender Man, sure it's a fictional character, and yes I think more time needed to be involved in finding who convinced them of this, but at the end of the day while a fictional character they still made a conscious effort to murder someone in the name of a malevolent supernatural entity. Sure, maybe some elements of this were childish, but it was still a conscious, pre-meditated, act of pure evil. Ask yourself what they wanted to do if they actually DID make friends with Slendy... I mean seriously, I might have actually tried to get them on planning mass murder, sure it would never work, but the intent was there, sort of like someone who thinks he builds a nuke (and fails) and tries to set it off, he was never really a threat, but that doesn't mean he wasn't trying to kill a crazy amount of people.

What's more at 19 this isn't a kid... and frankly I think five years is too little given the number of crimes, the motive should be a major aggravating factor as well. If this was all over something as petty as video games he represents a threat to society on a major level since who knows what he would do with a real motive. See, if your motivated by a lot of money, love, position, or similar things that's at least understandable, a person gave into temptation of a sort that would affect a lot of people. It's still wrong, but it's not like people run into those kinds of opportunities (real ones) every day, and I can see how someone can have that part of a moral compass repaired. On the other hand when your going after people for video games on their own (not money that just happens to be connect to them) I can't see the person ever having had a moral compass to be repaired. There is a big difference between getting mad, and maybe even wanting some kind of extreme revenge over something like a game, and actually premeditating and putting such a plan into motion electronically. Most people calm down. While it doesn't apply to cases like this, that's why "heat of the moment" is a defense in a lot of other crimes, or more appropriately a mitigating factor, not an actual defense.

Do you think this is some new phenomena for those damn youths today? Because you sound like a grumpy old man. Swatting might be new, but "The youth of today is so much worse than when I was young" has been said for thousands of years.

"Damn those kids, always running around outside, why can't they just stay in the cave and not get eaten by a sabretooth tiger?"

 

[Scorpid]

I hope he gets jailed for each charge he gets convicted of and has to serve the sentences consecutively, hopefully after a few examples are made this will stop.

Just like murder. Murdering Murders has built us a world of all man kind embracing each other with absolutely no knives involved!

OT: I think that sentence is too harsh. Fine him for sure but locking a young man into prison where he can sit on his ass do nothing for 5 years isn't going to improve his life or that of his loved ones who are going to likely support him. But then again that is my problem with the american prison system (which lets never forget is itself hyper racist).

is it? the swat teams that are called in are armed to the teeth with the expectation that they are there to save someone from a home invasion im surprised no one has been killed by swatting yet

I know what swatting is and its still harsh. Swatting is a terrible and a stupid fucking thing to do but so is taking someones life away from them. The prison system and justice system to a lesser but still terrible degree, isn't about rehabilitation or benefitting society but its about eye for an eye bs. It is costing us our moral values and a shit ton of treasure so that these people can sit in prison and become more a burden on society by being in prison itself and then getting out and having felony charge which they have to report to any potential employer, not being able to vote (which isn't a privilege its a duty), and not having any credit history or job skills. And lets not forget this is because he did something incredibly stupid at 19.

 

[Boba Frag]

... Take the case of Brandon "Framed God" Wilson, a 19-year old man who was arrested last Thursday ...

Given the things he's done, shouldn't that read man baby, or man child?

Thank you! That part of the article seemed... wrong, somehow. I certainly didn't see the actions of an adult in the article.

Enjoy prison, Brandon!

 

[XenoScifi]

Perhaps instead of law enforcement spending tons of millions of dollars chasing those who grow, distribute, sell or smoke marijuana and clog up 60% of our jail and prison system with them, we could get more of these people out of the loop.

2015...it's time to refocus. IMHO

 

[Thaluikhain]

I have to agree, up until this point there has been serious luck on the side of the SWAT teams that they have not killed an innocent. No officer in any civilised country really wants to pull the trigger if its avoidable; they pull the trigger and people turn on them, the news swarm.

The media would get hold of the squad involved somehow and you can imagine the result; "SWAT team identified, the swatter's murderous pawns", its not fair for people to be caught up in this crossfire. At the same time, killing an innocent would not sit well on an officer's conscious.

Couldn't this have already happened, but it isn't known to be due to swatting? A SWAT team working from bad information/anonymous tip off (that happened to be swatting) and things going might not stand out amongst "normal" police shootings.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

This is why I will never swat people.
I don't want to live in a world where people have checked my browser history.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

I know what swatting is and its still harsh. Swatting is a terrible and a stupid fucking thing to do but so is taking someones life away from them.

What are you implying here? That his life was "unjustly" taken away from him?

If he sincerely felt that way, then to him, I'd have only one thing to say:


If this young man didn't want his life taken away from him, as you put it, maybe he shouldn't have lied to police to send a team of heavily armed police to traumatize a completely innocent human being, and send threats of identity theft and destroying the finances of an entire family? Maybe, he shouldn't have done all that?

Look, I understand. I really do. But personally, I find the sympathy towards this man to be misplaced. In the messy criminal justice system, through the chaos and mass complications of human lives, and the unimaginable amount of factors that go into a crime being committed. There still is such thing as personal responsibility. He is personally responsible for his, ultimately needless crimes.

I honestly don't think there's even a discussion to be had about the broader failures of the prison system here. Yes, that is a discussion worth having. But I don't believe it has a place in this regard. The guy was caught red-handed doing some needlessly fucked up shit, one of which seriously threatened the life of another person. The bottom line is that some people actually DO deserve to go to prison, and I believe this guy is one of them.

 

[NeutralStasis]

Extradition to Illinois for fraud, theft, and intimidation? Ladies and gentlemen of Illinois, I think we've found our next Mayor of Chicago. Or governnor...you know, once they kick out the honest guy they elect from time to time.

^^ This made me legit laugh, having lived in Illinois for my formative years and seeing multiple governors go to prison.

 

[Sylocat]

I dunno. I suppose a lot of people are going to be shouting "Ha, good, fuck this guy!", but that's just not something I can take any joy out of. He might have ruined other people's lives and now he might have ruined his own, and he's not even twenty years old.

Normally I would agree, rehabilitation is almost always better for society in the long run than punitive "revenge" style justice is but this is something else (assuming he is found guilty of course). Firstly he had the other crimes, harassment and intimidation but the Swatting incidents are far worse.

Each one of those put lives at risk, firstly the Swat teams were out dealing with his bullshit and they might have been needed somewhere else in a real situation were the lives of the public and other officers might have been in danger. Then you have the risks of any forced entry like that, things can go badly wrong and members of the Swat team and the the victims could have gotten badly injured or killed. Not to mention the terror and property damage the victims had to suffer because of it, having armed men break into your house and hold everyone at gunpoint is terrifying even if they are a lawful entity like the police and people can be left feeling anxious and unsafe in their homes for years to come.

He is allegedly responsible for several Swatting incidents, as the first one to face trial for this if he is convicted they should make an example of him. This behaviour needs to be shut down fast, unlucky for him to get caught when he did but it should reduce the number of incidents and less lives will be at risk plus fewer young men will be going to jail at all as more will see what a bad idea Swatting is (I have no illusions about all of it stopping obviously).

As sticky a situation as it is, I think that motive and mindset count a lot in terms of how people should be punished for crimes.

With things like nonviolent drug offenses, or cases where people get into crime because of poverty, punitive justice serves no purpose other than to slake the bloodlust of a spiteful public. The correct solution would be to address things like poverty and ending the prosecution of victimless crimes, but because the public wants to see people's heads mounted on walls, we're stuck with a system of brutality. In those cases, I'm very sympathetic.

But this guy wasn't doing this out of desperation or need, and his crimes weren't victimless. He was endangering people's lives (and property, and pets... seriously, read some of the stories [https://www.google.com/search?q=swat+team+kills+people+at+wrong+house]) just for giggles, and he's not the only one. There's a whole horde of people who think things like this are just hilarious, and gleefully gloat over the prospect of getting people killed or maimed for disagreeing with them over video games. In this case, I have no problem with him getting Made An Example Of.

 

[Lightknight]

Well good, as long as he's guilty and it looks like he is, then I hope the book is thrown hard enough to stick.

 

[Dakkagor]

If he's guilty, let him rot in jail, and serve as a warning shot to all idiot teenagers who think sicking a government paramilitary force on people is good for the 'lolz'. I've got no pity for this dickhole, who could have killed innocent people over a frakking computer game.

 

[MHR]

5 years seems a little light for this fat turd.

"Oh noes, this 19 year old boy has his life ruined now because the justice system."

Wth, you make it sound like that's a bad thing. Fuck him.

 

[Rattja]

At first I thought he deserved it and it was right, hell 5 years may not even be enough! Then..
Think about it for a second here..
Put this kid who is already sort of missguided in a place with a bunch of actual criminals, is that really a good idea?

Yeah he deserves something, but I don't think surrunding him with people that have done way worse for a long period of time is going to do much good for him.
No sure how the jail system works over there, but I've got a feeling that this is not helping him in any way, and he might be even worse when he gets back out.
But hey why care right? He did something wrong so "fuck him" right?
Unless he does something wrong again, first THEN people care... Gahh...

This is not about what's best for him, it's about what's best for the rest of US society. This man is a danger to society if left at large, and so he's put in confinement so everyone else can be free from his abuse and so as to dissuade other potential bad apples from doing the same things he's done. What's best for this guy is secondary to what's best for society as a whole, so locking him away should be the first priority, and then you can worry about how he's being locked away and whether letting him rot in prison is best or if there's some other method which would be better for him and for society while still keeping him locked up for the requisite time.

I understand that, I just don't agree with it.
I don't believe in punishment in general, as it does not really work and is far from ideal. The whole idea behind it is fear right? They are supposed to be afraid of being locked up so they won't do bad things. That to me is just all sorts of wrong. Yes some people will decide not to do this sort of thing because the risk of getting caught, but the rest will just adapt by becoming better at hiding. Point being that it will not solve the problem, it will reduce it somewhat.

Also let me ask you this: If this was someone close to you, would you still think that sending them to jail would be the best thing to do? Would you still be this "cold" about it?

Another thing is that he himself is not all that dangerous, the SWAT force he tricked are the ones with the guns. This is not the first time it has happened, and even after all these events I still see videos where the cops/SWAT comes in and are all like "Twitch? Streaming, what the hell is that?". I would assume that educating your force and being informed would be top priority.

Blame him all you want, but you can't really ignore the fact that we have created a world where this sort of thing is possible, and we all know that if it is possible, someone out there will do it as long as they find a reason to, regardless if said reason is regarded as valid by others.
The best for any society would be to prevent this sort of thing happening to begin with don't you agree? I don't know exactly how to do that, but seriously, there are how many Twitch streamers? How many watchers, police, or people in general that sees this as a problem and want it to stop? There has to be someone out there with an idea of how to prevent this from happening, but that does not seem to be a focus for anyone, not from what I can tell anyway. No, just punish those who do it and hope it will go away.

 

[DerangedHobo]

I find the sympathy towards this man to be misplaced.

From a matter of principal, I find that sympathy, even for the most heinous individuals, is what makes us human. We're all a 'mixed bag' and taking the moral high ground can quickly escalate into degenerate witch hunting. Not that I'm for letting him off the chain or anything, just a thought.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

"Let's take already criminal people and put them in very bad conditions surrounded only by other criminals. That'll straighten them up!"
- USA logic

Can't really be happy about anyone going to American prison who isn't a murderer sentenced to life. The lifers aren't gonna come out, so while it's bad that their conditions are awful, it is not so dangerous for everyone else. A person like this though, who is clearly intelligent, set to do a five year stint, that is terrifying. Just image what crimes this man will know how to commit after five years among career criminals. Now, just imaging how many more crimes he will be willing to commit after five years in hell.

Our prison system makes criminals worse. Until it is fixed, it will do more harm than good to society to incarcerate criminals, other than lifers. Now, I'm not saying I don't think prison systems are generally necessary, simply that ours is so broken that it is worse than useless.