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
@Alan
Are we talking American cops or British cops because, like, apples and pigs, man, apples and pigs.
@ pandapool
Brit cops.
Found that video.
http://youtu.be/PwFu0wZ6Igg
@NickNameNick
I hate false equivalencies to–I have a friend who’s caught up in the whole “feminists and gamergaters are equally as bad” despite the fact that EVERY “evil feminist” he has tried to show me has turned out to be a troll and I’m trying to avoid one of my boyfriend’s friends because he thinks pointing out that women have it worse than men is competing in the oppression olympics.
Also, this might not technically be a false equivalence but it pissed me off, some people are criticizing this meme
about Sanders and Hilton for being sexist and in the comments on buzzfeed people kept saying how noticing that Hillary is being treated differently is what’s really sexist
back OT–as someone who lives in Massachusetts I’m kind of proud that out legislature has taken measures to try to counter newer (I’m assuming swatting is new) sex based harassment
@Alan
I had this whole tirade that kinda went off point from what I was trying to say but, basically, I don’t think you, as a British white guy, have any ground to discuss about the police in the United State and comparing them to your British ones in such a flippant manner.
Of course, every day it seems someone dies in police custody with either weak excuses if an excuse is even given, so I’m probably rather sensitive about anything positive about the police.
I haven’t seen it discussed here, but the latest in-custody killing I’ve heard of was of a 16 year old girl earlier this month, so excuse me if I just want to tear the whole fucking system of pig fuckers down at this point.
That meme is so shit. It doesn’t even make sense. Hillary’s the policy wonk who has really detailed, well-researched opinions about every single thing.
Also, the fact that there’s a Radiohead one pretty much tells you all you need to know about Bernie bros.
http://i.imgur.com/BDrrYKk.png
The sexism and double standard in the Democratic primary is really getting to me. Some good articles about it.
@ panda
I hope I haven’t been flippant, apologies if it seemed that way.
I think I can comment though to a certain extent about some of the more obvious defects in US policing and the differences between the US and the UK. Obviously the bulk of my experience is this side of the pond but I do a have some professional contacts with people examining the situation on your side.
As we mentioned up thread policing generally is a huge topic.
Whereabouts are you located? I might be able to put you in touch with some people who work to address some of the injustices in the system. As you’re probably aware it’s not exactly an over funded enterprise so they’d appreciate any help you could give.
So it’s not just me? I’ve been wondering how much of Sanders’ sudden popularity was driven by his politics and how much was driven by misogyny, brogressives who don’t want to vote Republican but can’t vote for a woman, but thought I was just reading too much into it. I’m not sure if I feel vindicated (I’m not paranoid!) or annoyed (fuck brogressives). Annoydicated?
(I know there are a lot of people here who do prefer Sanders for his politics, not his gender, so please know that I’m not talking about you guys. I’m only talking about the dudebros who spam “FEEL THE BERN” everywhere, call Clinton the c-word and say horrible racist shit about #BLM.)
@Alan
You can comment on the broader, obvious defects all you want but unless you live in the system, you still have no right to talk about them like you did. Listen to us Americans who are talking about American police forces instead of comparing them to British ones with your British perspective. That is all I’m asking from you.
@ panda
Will do. Can you give me some specific examples of the problematic comments. This isn’t one of those ‘yeah, citations!” rhetorical gotcha things. I comment a lot in other arenas about comparative policing so it would be helpful to know areas where I’m putting my foot in it!
@Alan
Some of the points here other people have already addressed, but these are what stuck out to me.
katz responded:
And I like to add last I heard, police on your side of the pond don’t even carry guns on their person while some of ours has military grade weaponry as standard issue in the stations that like to tote around. This, admittedly, was addressed by President Obama last year, but then again, it was addressed last year and had been going on since 1997. Some places still have military weapons.
So of course British police wouldn’t have itchy trigger fingers if they don’t carry around guns.
We technically do the same “houseclearing”, but the corruption is so deep, cops get slaps on the wrist. They often get paid leave. There’s a reason why people were happy that cop got jail time for raping all those women a few weeks back.
EJ responded:
(I know EJ isn’t American but he’s got the right idea.)
Yes, it hinges a lot on the color of your skin with the cops. Racism runs so deep in the system, cops are afraid to turn on their own if they’re black. (Link has a video btw.)
You’re very dismissive here. A few good cops do not outweigh the bad, especially when the bad are VERY bad and the good have no power in the system. There is no easy way to get rid of a bad cop within the system.
And we see in this very article that the system can be abused by almost anyone. There’s been many people who have been injured and killed in instances of SWATing. There have been many pets that have injured and killed in instances of SWATing. Homes damaged, resources wasted. It’s not something to be thought of lightly because the assholes who SWAT people take it lightly, as it’s used commonly as a “prank” during gaming livestreams.
People don’t even need to SWAT to do such damage to people. Just call the cops and say there’s a disturbance at a residence and the cops are likely to respond violently. You remember the young black kids at the swimming pool or the poor girl in class.
Of course, many of those crimes are racially motivated. There was also, recently, a cop handcuffing a disabled child. I would link more cases but, honestly, I’m lazy and don’t want to link everything.
You frequent here a lot and I’ve seen you talking about the examples I’ve posted above plus many other examples of how shitty the police are here. These aren’t just once in awhile things that happen, nor should they be viewed on a case by case basis; this shit happens every day and are deeply ingrain in the system you’re speaking very lightly about by comparing how Britain does it “right”. You cannot use your experience of your country’s police system when talking about our own.
@P.I.
It comes off as really insecure though, as if admitting fault is a sign of weakness – even though their constant denial is an obvious act of cowardice. Between admitting I’m wrong and being a coward, I’d rather just admit I’m wrong.
Which is funny, when I’m incredulous of their stories involving gangs of roving Dworkinites on university campuses – they fault me for not being considerate of their experiences.
It’s an anecdote I used to give the benefit of the doubt, until I had been to enough university campuses and noticed how similar each anecdote was from the last. It reminds me of a phenomenon during the Vietnam War where there were rumors of anti-war protesters spitting on returning soldiers, repeated so much that people believed it was an actual thing…even though there wasn’t enough evidence to show it was that ubiquitous. If it did occur, they were isolated incidents, and it doesn’t help such anecdotes came from people who supported the war anyway.
I simply can’t help but assume, when hearing that anecdote, that the reality was that they got into a heated discussion with a fairly reasonable feminist and poorly reacted to such – to the point where their entire perception of the event is absurdly skewed. Thus, a normal feminist becomes a raging man-hating Dworkinite.
But, hey, they can generalize and misrepresent very common and factually proven experiences of marginalized groups ’cause reasons…
@sparkalipoo
I partly blame that on overexposure to the internet – I’d call it “internet addiction”, but usage of the medium is so common now that the term seems dated. Still, that doesn’t mean some people spend too much time on the internet and erroneously attach more importance to online individuals than is warranted.
Really, having a conversations where someone tries to “prove” all feminists must be crazy by quoting some internet rando is exhausting at this point. They expect me to be shocked or surprised, but I can’t because I don’t know who that person is or what they say actually matters.
Just look at Anita Sarkeesian: all she’s doing is analyzing tropes in fiction, specifically videogames, and the implied sexism that comes with some of them. Yet all her critics act as if she wields the power to take away all the games they love and she criticizes…which she doesn’t. She could influence others, like with Volition in relation to the Saint’s Row games, but she couldn’t ban any of them even if she wanted to (and there’s nothing that proves she wants to ban anything anyway). She’s not a politician or a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, she’s an internet commentator.
Re: Bernie Sanders and Bern-Bros
I’m not fond of the meme either.
Admittedly, I do prefer Bernie Sanders over Hilary Clinton – but that has more to do with the fact Clinton has ties to a number of health insurance companies as contributors, which makes me suspect of how she’d handle the issue in office.
At the same time, however, I don’t want to jump on the hype-train and find myself disappointed when it comes to reality. People put a lot of high expectations on Obama as if he was the Second Coming of Christ, and all of them ended up disappointed when his policies led to a bail-out of corrupt financial institutions and we still have drones bombing Middle Eastern bystanders in a conflict almost everyone is regretful of getting involved with.
If he does end up as president – I’m not expecting a grand utopia to come about from it.
The brogressives are the most noticeable, but even within the progressive mainstream, the dominant narratives about Clinton and her supporters have strong ties to sexist narratives, from the “coronation” narrative (because women get given things, they don’t earn things) to all the narratives that people only support Clinton because of pragmatism/apathy/ignorance/vaginas (because her mostly-female base can’t have made a decision for good reasons) to the fact that “first female president” isn’t part of the narrative at all.
These narratives can intermingle with totally reasonable ideas and can’t always be extricated. But I’d like more acknowledgement that they’re influencing the whole landscape of the election, even for the most feminist among us.
I know I’m acting like a total Hillary wonk but someone needs to talk about it.
@Katz
I still come across people who claim a woman shouldn’t be president because they’re “too emotional.”
Yeah, ’cause it isn’t like male politicians haven’t had angry outbursts or violently overreacted to anything ever…
@ panda
I take your points on board. I hope I did make clear that I wasn’t specifically addressing the US experience. The two points I perhaps should clarify though are that I did mention that our armed police (we do have them, just not all cops are armed) attended those 14,800 incidents but only fired twice and with no fatalities. I hope that was a valid point to make in highlight that there would seem to be an alternative to the US police way of dealing.
As to the Establishment thing and *Brit* cops (which is what EJ was referring to, not US) I can only speak from my own experience, that’s all any of us can do. I wouldn’t comment on US cops but I do think I can speak to my own experience with the caveats that I gave that it’s a personal view and I can’t speak for anyone else.
Oh, and I’m certainly not establishment 🙂 I may work for them occasionally but that’s a poacher/gamekeeper thing.
But anyway, this is a topic that’s probably not really at the heart of what we do here so I’ll save it for the more appropriate fora.
Oh, on this subject, I have been chatting to some of my US friends who, like I say you may like to get involved with. They do stuff all over the US so there’s probably an organisation near you if you fancy it. Any particular areas you’re particularly interested in? One group is dealing with the new Washington State legislation on gender issues which you might find interesting.
@Alan
I’m a shut-in with horrible anxiety issues. It took me forever to figure out how to express how I felt about you talking so casually about police brutality on the internet, let alone face to face in a group of people talking about issues in real time. Thanks but no thanks.
So, I’m an American, but I kind of fell like I might not have much of a right to comment on the police issue. Also, I’m in Alaska, and things seem to not match the contiguous super well.
Our cops can still be problematic, but I see some good things regularly?
I don’t know.
@ panda
No worries. You’re such an interesting person to chat to that I sometimes forget that perhaps people are having a hard time of things. I hope you don’t feel I’m patronising you if I say I admire your courage in dealing with issues with such passion and clarity, with all you’re going through. I’m also pretty desensitised to such things, as are the people I usually work with on such issues, so feel free to call me out anytime you feel I overstep the mark.
If you ever do feel up to getting involved on anything though let me know, a lot of the stuff is done over the net these days. The US is huge!
Alan, maybe try being a little more careful about pushing conversations?
It puts a lot of pressure on everyone else if they feel like they have to be responsible for letting you know when you’re stepping on their feet.
I’m totally cool with every once in a while letting you know when you get on my toes, but it would also be cool if you got in the habit of every once in a while checking in to make sure your feet aren’t on my feet (or anyone else’s feet for that matter).
Just practice checking in.
@ contrapangloss
Duly noted. I hope I wasn’t pushing this one too much. Just responding to the bit about criminalising SWAT teams. It wasn’t so much a case of ‘this cannot go unchallenged!” but it’s the old personal experience thing.
Yes.
My favorite one of these is the feminist who yells at men for holding doors upon for them. I hear so many stories about these feminists on the internet. Only the internet. I’ve yet to meet a man out in meat space who’s made this claim. That’s the number one thing that makes me suspicious. I’ve certainly never witnessed it. Just because you don’t see something doesn’t mean it never happens, it’s true. But on the other hand, it’s a very implausible claim. Also, I’m a low stimulus screener. Besides events that are supposed to be noisy like concerts and sporting events, it bug the shit out of me when people are really loud in public. I would probably notice the phenomenon if it were real.
@ WWTH
I’ve been on a lot of campuses and I’ve lived in islington North London. I’ve got friends in social work. One of my friends *grew up* with her lesbian mum in the camp at Greenham Common. I’ve been in spaces where just about ever woman has those earrings with the circle and cross symbol on them. Cliche City, Arizona. I’ve held open quite a few doors; and I have never once had anyone say anything that wasn’t some variation on “thanks”.
@W.W.T.H.
Right. Like I said, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt – but I stop doing so, once it stops being believable or highly suspect.
I’ve never heard a single woman complain about a man opening a door for them, probably due to the fact that’s just common courtesy. If someone is right behind you – you open the door and let them go ahead of you, regardless of who they are. The same way you’d help someone pick up something they’d drop, as that is what a decent human being would do.
Hate to keep being presumptuous, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this complaint came from the fact these guys weren’t given adulation for the act. To quote a character from Fairly OddParents: “you don’t do good things for recognition, you do them because they are good.”
‘It reminds me of a phenomenon during the Vietnam War where there were rumors of anti-war protesters spitting on returning soldiers’
Someone actually wrote a book about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image
One thing I remember from reading it was the author considering how likely it would be that a weedy, stoned, out of shape hippie decides it’s a good idea to provoke a well-trained, trigger happy, stressed and completely unpredictable soldier.