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SWATting
SWATting
#1
I really hate posting anything here in the politics forums these days. But I consider this to be too important not to. This story is not being told by the "mainstream media". In fact it is being actively ignored. But you truly need to hear about this  -   here’s Erick Erickson of Red State.org on Friday:
Quote:Ever hear of swatting? It’s a tactic used by left-wing activists and others these days to spoof phone calls in order to get SWAT Teams to show up at houses. It has happened to several conservative activists.
Consider this your must read of the day. It is LA County Prosecutor John Patrick Frey, who blogs as Patterico, describing just what harassment he and his family were subjected to by the online left.
The mainstream media, which has greater sympathies with the left than
the right, would prefer not to cover stories like this. But it is
getting to the point where they ignore the ongoing, sustained harassment
of conservatives because they are conservatives.
And here’s Erickson early this morning — after he got SWAT-ted himself on Sunday evening:

Quote:Sunday night as my family and sister’s family were around
the dinner table and playing outside, sheriff’s deputies pulled into my
driveway responding to an accidental shooting at my home.

One deputy was in the driveway. Another blocked the end of the
driveway with his car. A neighbor tells me another was up the hill from
the house.

There was no shooting at my home. Someone called 911, claimed to be at my home, and claimed to witness a shooting at my home.

As the one deputy and I spoke, the other deputy walked up the
driveway, positioned himself behind the car in the driveway, and kept
his eyes on me and his hand on his gun. My three year old ran between us
all thinking it was so cool to have a police car in the driveway with
its blue lights flashing.

Luckily, after I had starting writing about Kimberlin, I advised the Sheriff’s Department to be aware this could happen.

It was a prank, but not just any prank. This is a prank left-wing
activists are increasingly deploying against those who dissent from
their political views. When Barack Obama told his supporters in 2008 to
bring guns to knife fights, some of his supporters took him more
literally than I assume he intended.

The stories of what is happening are not getting much traction
outside of right-of-center blogs and the occasional opinion column at
the Wall Street Journal, D.C. Examiner, and Washington Times.
Patterico himself describes the night that someone SWATted him:

Quote: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.

Meanwhile, police rushed into my home. They woke up my wife, led her
downstairs and to the front porch, frisked her, and asked her where the
children were. Then police ordered her to stand on the front porch with
her hands against the wall while they entered my children’s bedrooms to
make sure they were alive.

The call that sent deputies to my home was a hoax. Someone had
pretended to be me. They called the police to say I had shot my wife.
The sheriff’s deputies who arrived at my front door believed they were
about to confront an armed man who had just shot his wife. I don’t blame
the police for any of their actions. But I blame the person who made
the call.

Because I could have been killed.

The weirdest part of the whole thing was that I halfway expected this
might happen. Because I was not the first one it had happened to.
Folks, this is nothing less than an attempt to have a man "murdered by cop".
Quote:Although I am an L.A. County Deputy D.A., it is certain that I was
“swatted” because of my blog and not because of my job. As Andrew
Breitbart noted, this happened to two people within the course of a
single week: a man in New Jersey and myself. Both of us had had contact
with Andrew Breitbart. Both of us were writing about the same story. And
both of us received email threats days before we were swatted. The
threat to me said, in part: “Please think about your family. This story is not worth it. I can assure you that.”

So who is behind all of this? The links all seem to converge on one man -
Brett Kimberlin, subject of the book Citizen K,
is the Speedway Bomber. If that is not familiar to you, you might
remember him as the man who claimed he sold Vice President Dan Quayle
drugs. Kimberlin is also, now, decades later, a left of center
activist, former Independent Music Awards Industry Judge,
involved in organizations getting Tides Foundation and Heinz Family
Foundation grants.
In the late 1970's Brett Kimberlin planted bombs all over the town of
Speedway Indiana. One of those bombs was in a gym bag placed outside a
school. Carl DeLong, a Vietnam War veteran, picked up the bag thinking
he would be able to identify the owner and return it. For his trouble he
had his leg blown off, his body filled with shrapnel, and an injured
wife. DeLong was in so much pain he took his own life a few years later.
His widow won a wrongful death suit against Kimberlin, who has not paid
up.
The police who investigated the bombings believed Kimberlin
planted the bombs to deflect attention from another crime – the
cold-hearted murder of the grandmother of a girl he may have molested.
They didn’t have enough evidence to charge him for that crime,
especially after the victim’s husband died. Eventually, Kimberlin was
sentenced to fifty years in prison, but thanks to lax federal parole
laws at the time he got out early. The Indy Star covered the events, and
their reporting is available online.
In more recent times, Kimberlin, after being released from prison in the 90s, has made something of a name for himself among far left activists. Though neither website publicly reveals Kimberlin’s role, tax and
corporate documents show that he is one of four directors who
incorporated the Velvet Revolution, and that he is the registered agent
for the tax-exempt, non-stock company, which is registered at his
mother’s house in Bethesda. In 2008, the last year for which tax records
are available, Velvet Revolution took in $83,000 in gifts and
contributions.Kimberlin is also one of two incorporators of Justice Through Music, as well as a $19,500-a-year employee of the
non-profit, whose purpose is to “shed light on some of the injustices of
the world through music” and which took in more than $550,000 in
contributions in 2008.
I should note that Frey believes it was one of Kimberlin’s associates
who made the SWATing call, not Kimberlin himself. But it’s all tied together and
leads back to Kimberlin. Kimberlin himself is careful not to get involved personally in anything violent these days, considering his past. But he is a "jailhouse lawyer" who has learned how to abuse the legal system to harass his enemies.
SWATting is merely the latest in a long line of harassment tactics these people have been using in recent years to intimidate people into shutting up. Read up on the various links in the above linked articles for more.
It's getting very scary out there these days.
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#2
SWATting is despicable.

Especially given how trigger happy some SWAT-teams can be.

Nothing more needs to be said.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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#3
When I was a kid we used to hear about people behind the Iron Curtain lived in fear of a midnight knock on the door by the police and I thought it was horrible that people had to live in fear of their government like that.

When I remember those stories now, they make me think that Soviet cops must have been incredibly polite and easygoing compared to modern American ones.
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#4
khagler Wrote:When I was a kid we used to hear about people behind the Iron Curtain lived in fear of a midnight knock on the door by the police and I thought it was horrible that people had to live in fear of their government like that.

When I remember those stories now, they make me think that Soviet cops must have been incredibly polite and easygoing compared to modern American ones.

+1.

There is an urban legend that the FBI was hosting some child porn and they would raid the houses of whoever visited those URL's. Then 4-chan got a hold of them, and the ability to rickroll people into a swat raid on their own home caused the FBI to stop the program. Not sure if it's true or not but it would not surprise me.

The entire notion of the swat team needs to be revisited, why do you need military gear to police the populace? Are they in open rebellion?
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
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#5
CattyNebulart Wrote:The entire notion of the swat team needs to be revisited, why do you need military gear to police the populace? Are they in open rebellion?
Occasionally - very, very occasionally - it becomes necessary to use military gear to enforce the law.

A clip from 1970 (the last time it was necessary in Canada):
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/XfUq9 ... 3&hl=en_US

Three days later, Trudeau called out the army to enforce the law. Nowadays this is called the October Crisis.

I understand that there's something in the US Constitution that makes calling out the army to enforce the law illegal. Thus, you folks need SWAT teams or the equivalent... very, very occasionally.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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#6
It's the Posse Comitatus Act, not the Constitution. It's not a blanket ban on using the military to enforce the law--it allows it when such use is "expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress." In practice, it's widely ignored in the "War on Drugs," and in any case US States all have their own militaries (called the National Guard) answerable to the state governor which it doesn't apply to at all. It's the National Guard that gets called out to deal with things like rioting or natural disasters.
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#7
http://en.wikipedia.org/w...North_Hollywood_shootout

That shit happened. That is why things like SWAT teams are needed. Also note that SWAT teams are supposed to be life-saving operations for use in things like hostage situations... or sometimes when dealing with a particularly slippery and dangerous person.

So, that a SWAT team gets involved when 'hostages' are involved? Only natural. Patterico did all the right things that night he got SWATted. Though I'm a little surprised that the Deputies didn't stand down the moment they found that nothing was happening. I wonder if they even double-checked with their dispatcher - which would be mildly troubling to me if they didn't.

And yes, SWATting is dispicable and a gross misuse of our public services. SWAT is there to pull your ass out of the line of fire, not endanger and annoy your political enemies. The man that did this should be held on felony charges.
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#8
blackaeronaut Wrote:And yes, SWATting is dispicable and a gross misuse of our public services. SWAT is there to pull your ass out of the line of fire, not endanger and annoy your political enemies. The man that did this should be held on felony charges.
Given all that's been said, it's pretty clear to me that "felony charges" should be "fraud, abuse of emergency services, conspiracy to commit murder" and probably more.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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SWaT
#9
Current penalties are $20,000.00 and 18 years imprisonment; based on recent convictions.
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#10
Guys - I want to caution you - don't focus too much on the SWAT aspect of this. That's not the real story here. It's just the most visible, visceral component of it.
The real story here is the abuse of the legal system and the attempted suppression of Free Speech. This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court
system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury,
and harassment of family members.
Over the past year, Aaron Walker (who blogged as “Aaron Worthing”), Patterico, Liberty Chick, and now Stacy McCain
have been targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because
they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did. The
late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and company.
McCain was forced to move with his family out of his house last month due to personal threats against him and his family. Aaron and his wife were fired from their
jobs after their employer feared the office would be targeted next.
Convicted bomber Kimberlin has filed bogus “peace orders” against Aaron,
when it is the Walkers who are the victims, not the perpetrators.
Institutional inertia, incompetence, and apathy among law enforcement
officials on both coasts have exacerbated the victims’ suffering. It has
moved far beyond a partisan or political story to a bottomless,
Kafka-esque morass. And, via investigative journalist Matthew Vadum, it
certainly doesn’t help that “progressive,” left-wing foundations that have funded Kimberlin continue to look the other way.
Dan Collins has a very useful summary of Aaron’s plight and the obliviousness of Maryland prosectors:
Quote:That Kimberlin lied repeatedly in his sworn charges isn’t a surprise,
but it is a deep disappointment that the Maryland prosecutor seems to
think there’s no substantial public benefit to be procured by making
wannabe mass murderer Kimberlin pay for his false testimony in trying to
frame blogger Aaron Worthing. My opinion is that people who attempt to
use the law and the legal system as a means of tortious aggression
towards other citizens should be summarily sentenced on conviction to
penalties at least twice as high as those they’ve contemplated for their
targets.
And most recently, due to the utter Luddite incompetence of Internet-ignorant and unbelievably arrogant Judge Cornelius Vaughey, Aaron Walker was arrested. For what? Apparently for nothing more than blogging. For posting the objective truth.
Quote:This is a clear-cut case of a First Amendment violation — about as clear-cut as you’ll ever hear.
Quote:So Brett Kimberlin, knowing that Aaron was coming to court to defend
against a civil “peace order,” lay in ambush with a criminal charge, so
that Aaron would be arrested.

One wonders if this is his new strategy: he sues you for your
blogging, and simultaneously obtains a peace order saying you harassed
him. If you blog about him again, he gets a judge to rubber stamp a
criminal complaint for violating the peace order.

Now, if you don’t show up for the lawsuit, he gets a default judgment. If you do, you get arrested for blogging.

Catch 22. And a nice scam if you can get judges gullible enough to go along with it.

This is, I had thought, the United States of America. I thought we had freedom of speech here.
Please - read all the linked material. As much as you can. Context is everything, especially here.
My goal here is simple:  Spread the word. This is important. It transcends politics. Left or Right doesn't matter. This MUST be stopped. I wish I could do more. But if I can just be a link in the chain, maybe it'll be enough.
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#11
I'm back to harp on my point of how the militarization of the police causes more trouble than it's worth;

http://arstechnica.com/te...ue-to-open-wifi-network/
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
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#12
CattyNebulart Wrote:I'm back to harp on my point of how the militarization of the police causes more trouble than it's worth;

http://arstechnica.com/te...ue-to-open-wifi-network/
The issue here isn't really militarizing the police forces... it's idiotic police chiefs trying to look good on camera and utterly failing.  Seriously, they should have investigated this more closely, as the article shows other LEOs have done so in the past.
BTW: I'm of the opinion that threatening an LEO does not warrant a SWAT Team.  More like a detective knocking on your front door with a search warrant and some burning questions to ask.
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#13
You don't get to hand a loaded gun to a 5 year old and blame the gun when he shoots someone. Yes the police chief is an idiot, that is nothing new, there are probably ten thousand or so of them across the country, some of them are bound to be idiots.

I like the name cato gives it, an "epidemic of 'isolated' incidents"

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
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#14
Like I've said before, there are entirely too many cops who became cops for the power trip rather than to protect people. It's inevitable that some of them Peter Principle their way up to chief. And god save those municipalities.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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#15
Because this is exactly why I'm glad our local cops aren't armed. And I gladly forgo to right to be armed myself to ensure it stays that way.

It also makes tactics and abuses of the judicial system such as this much harder. As much as the individual abusing the system deserves to be punished, the fact that the judicial system can be abused in this way indicates that the system itself is inherently flawed and needs to be fixed. Judges can only rule on the information they have, on the case presented to them by barristers, and the law as it is written.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
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#16
CattyNebulart Wrote:You don't get to hand a loaded gun to a 5 year old and blame the gun when he shoots someone.
.........Uhhhhmmm... I understand what you're getting at... but in this case the weapon of choice was a smartphone and an unsecured internet connection.  Kid probably coulda done it at the local library - boy wouldn't have that been freakin' hilarious.
But anyhow... I would say that where a threat against public services (IE: bomb threat against cops, hospitals, water chlorination plant) the police have every right to fast-track that sumbitch (Patriot Act anyone?) and find out what the hell is going on... but until they know whether or not the threat is real, they should keep SWAT on leash.  Close at hand, but definitely on leash.
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#17
Hmm, I strongly disagree with you blackareonaut, that is just a wast of police resources.

Because if a teenager posting on the Internet is a credible threat then what if an 'artist' (more like crime against humanity, but I digress) such as say NWA with this lovely piece?

Now if there was a credible threat.. then yeah I could see it, but an teenager posting on the Internet is just not a credible threat.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
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