From the Boston Globe:
US Representative Katherine Clark and her husband were watching “Veep” Sunday night, when police lights engulfed her Melrose [Massachusetts] home.
Clark went outside, assuming something was wrong with one of her neighbors. But she said she was alarmed and frightened to see cruisers blocking both ends of her street and “multiple officers, some with long guns, on my front lawn.”
An officer told her they had received a report of an active shooter at her house, where her 13- and 16-year-old boys had just gone to bed.
But of course.
As the Globe notes, Clark is the sponsor of a bill that would make swatting a federal crime. Swatting, of course, is the practice of maliciously making false reports in order to send swarms of police and/or SWAT teams to the home of your target.
It’s not a hypothetical worry: several Gamergate critics have been swatted. And it goes without saying that it’s pretty dangerous to send a small army of heavily armed cops to a home where they think an active shooter is barricaded.
If Clark’s swatters intended to intimidate her, they seem to have failed. The Globe again:
Clark acknowledged that the experience Sunday night was deeply disconcerting.
But asked if she would be less vocal about the issue now, she laughed and said no.
“If that was the intent of calling in this event,” Clark said, “I think they have underestimated my commitment to making sure that we do stop this practice.”
Clark said she had been very sympathetic to people have been the victims of swatting before Sunday night but now fully understands what it’s like.
“It will,” she said, “really cause me to double down.”
Targeting a politician with what is essentially terrorism? Doesn’t seem like a particularly smart choice on the part of whoever was behind this.
H/T — r/GamerGhazi
@ EJ & Orion
I also appreciate burger flippers (the ones who operate out of vans though, not the fast food place types) but realistically are they really who you want to be calling if someone attacks you?
All joking apart, who would a society without police benefit the most? I’m quite lucky in terms of likelihood of being attacked (I’m also a moderately decent shot) but what about others? Yes, there is a huge problem that the police don’t serve everyone equally, but we might be able to address that problem without getting shut of the police completely.
Re: Trump
Suddenly I feel like watching The Man Who Would Be King again. Except I doubt he’ll walk onto the bridge quite as admirably as Sean Connery.
EJ- when I first got steady enough internet (late, poor) to fuck around in comments, I was convinced all these trolls needed was education. I had gotten plenty sans internet (not to be braggy) the hard way so I thought if I can just post some links to studies, oh I will open their eyes and save the world! So I would post eloquent essays on youtube, meticulously cited. & they WOULDNT EVEN READ IT. Much less visit a link! Apparent as they responsed in nonsequitor brainwashed bleats.
These are not critical thinkers seeking truth who have been misled, they are purposefully self-deluded (NOT to be confused with the delusions of an illness), purposefully ignorant, for selfish emotional reasons. but wimmens is so hysterical tho.
@Kat:
This is utterly true and really sad; and you phrase it really well.
If you have any of those essays saved anywhere, please link me! I always like explanations of cool things.
Black teenagers.
EJ- thanks! alas, that was many moons ago and I dont even remember my old usernames. It was basic should-be-common-sense stuff like “no, really, sexism does in fact exist”. Im too busy with my return school to pontificate extensively atm, & I seperate my IRL identify from my “SJW” comments after getting harassed.
Katz – YUP
@ Katz
You make a good point. Remove the police and white people may feel more in danger, but black people may well feel safer. That’s pretty sad; but it’s a punchy way of illustrating the situation.
I posted this link in the Dawkins thread but I’ll put it here too since this is the latest post, and this might be of interest to David.
http://www.donotlink.com/i3zc
Juicebro is making a documentary, along with some other weirdo (Loren Feldman) who seems to have previously made a fawning fanboy movie about Milo Y. The movie was called American Milo. I’m not joking.
EDIT: Both Juicebro and Nazi Loren are of course huge Trump supporters, and today they’ve both been busy claiming Trump’s poor result in the Iowa caucus was due to fraud. Owww, so salty.
How strange is it to make an entire movie based on how free speech doesn’t exist? They pretty much have to fail to succeed, but their failure would almost certainly just be lack of interest and lack of talent.
@kirbywarp
Right? I almost feel like they’ve defeated their own premise by simply getting the word out about this project.
Ooh, how about we raise loads of money for a project about creativity, communication and free speech and all that, and say it’s a multi media platform
Then we don’t do anything.
It’s all ironic and post modern, like that 3′ 17″ of silence thing.
Who’s in with me? I’ll take care of all the actual production side of things and you just sort the fundraising .
Alan:
It’s actually 4′ 33″ actually, but like that idea. But I think we have to make a video showing the money with a credit to John Cage for the “music” 4′ 33″ worth, natch.
I took an art course for visual artists where we had to study music and dance and let me tell you, I thought 4’33” was the best thing he ever wrote!
@ hambeast
I’ve got the disco remix.
Drat you, Alan! I snortled water into my borrowed laptop keyboard >:(
And now my nose hurts.
But anyhow, make sure we get Paradoxy to do the graphics and any voice overs cuz she’s awesome at both.
I don’t know about the UK, but in the US police work doesn’t even crack the top ten most dangerous jobs.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/28/charted-the-20-deadliest-jobs-in-america/
The excuse that cops put their lives on the line so much that they can’t be blamed for shooting anyone who “looks like a demon” just never holds up for me.
I also don’t see why the only way to deal with a mentally ill person having a breakdown is too shoot them. Somehow workers in ERs and psychiatric wards manage to non-violently deal with mentally ill people in distress all the time.
There are some cops who are on a power trip and are looking for an excuse to use force. There are good cops who aren’t like that, but until they stop making excuses and covering for the bad ones, I’m feel perfectly fine with side-eyeing the entire institution.
I’ve heard Paradoxy do her video game commentary thing and it is the most adorable voice ever.
@ WWTH
Most injuries our Police get is from stuff like lifting things wrong or tripping up (not meaning that in a derisory way).
It’s a massive thing over here if a cop gets killed, were talking number one thing on the news for weeks. In fact there was a story about our last cop killer just the other day, and that happened a few years back.
Over here more coppers have been killed than people have been killed by cops. I think that’s a “good thing” (without of course wishing any ill on the police as I’m sure you understand). The statistic that my US friends put up very time you have a cop killing is something like Brit police have killed fewer people since WW2 than US cops kill in a three week period. We average one cop killing every 5 years or so.
There’s lots of factors. Our police feel a bit safer so they don’t need to be trigger happy. There’s an understanding amongst criminals that cop killing is out of bounds, and at the same time the cops first thought won’t be to kill you, so things are less likely to escalate.
And because of our culture if a cop sees a kid with even a realistic looking gun, then it’s almost certainly a toy, so there’s some breathing space.
There’s a video on youtube I think of some armed police officers actually intercepting a kid with a gun in the street. Pretty different to how it would play in the US. More of a “daft bugger, think what might have happened” sort of thing.
Bit garbled there, but you get some of my points?
Yes, but the reason cops feel unsafe here is racism. They see black children and they feel unsafe. It’s not because of the actual danger level.
Which brings us back to the real problem: Our cops are racist.
@ Katz
We used to have a thing here called police houses. Basically public housing for police, but in the area they patrolled. That’s not the case now but there’s still a trend to try to get uniformed officers to police areas they live in so they’re from the community they serve. That helps a bit.
We of course did have a problem with racism. No doubt it’s still not completely cured, but after a notorious murder case and a fucked up investigation there was eventually a big public enquiry where some difficult questions were faced up to, and some overdue self examination and houseclearing took place.
We also have a thing called ‘integrity testing’. Basically undercover cops of various races act like ‘mystery shoppers’, that keeps people in line.
Unless he’s black, of course. Then they shoot him dead, blame him for it and lie about it.
I know you’re an establishment guy, Alan, and so you feel the need to support the establishment; but in this case it comes off pretty thin. Any application for sainthood on behalf of the Metropolitan Police has to be severely side-eyed.
@ EJ
Well, I’m sort of a take people as I find them. I don’t have any preconceptions about the police. I know they’re far from perfect, but I do work with them and many of them are ok.
(I work for the establishment at times and at other times against it. In D&D terms I’m lawful neutral)
I can’t think of any example of our cops shooting a black kid. The nearest was Mark Duggan. We of course had some riots about that, but that seemed just an excuse for mayhem. When they interviewed people afterwards most of them didn’t know anything about the actual event that had supposedly triggered it.
What was interesting about the Duggan case was that many people in the black community spoke up against middle class white people lauding him. Black people in his own community felt the same way about him as a white community would feel about a gun runner.
As the mother of a black kid killed by a gun supplied by Duggan’s gang put it “It’s not middle class white kids being caught in the cross fire”
Of course lots of white people jumped all over her saying how she didn’t understand racism.
Is there a Truest Thing Ever Posted On The Internet award?
Yes you do. Everyone does.
@ Katz
No, I think I can say I genuinely don’t (except insofar as I know there’s a police force etc.)
I’ve seen great cops, I’ve seen terrible cops. I appreciate as a white guy my dealings with the police will be different than my black friends. Not necessarily in outcome, but certainly in undercurrent. But many of my cop acquaintances are not white, so I understand it’s a complex situation.
At any given time my default position on the police is informed by my previous experiences and I’m happy to modify that position as new information comes in.
I get perhaps a broader perspective than many people. I lecture the police but I also act for a lot of the criminal gangs (only white guy the broadwater farm guys will instruct, not saying that to show any cred, but I do know how they operate). You know I do the self defence law stuff. Last case I did was for a guy who stabbed a copper (acquitted). The next time it could be for a cop who hit someone.
You know how detached I am about stuff. That’s pretty much my attitude to everything. Only ignorance begets certainty and all that.