Seattle Police Service launches program to fight "disappearance"

The Seattle Police Service this week launched a program allowing the public to inform it that it could be a potential victim of a "blatant" type of hoax, according to Ars Technica.

The attack is a crime in which an ill-intentioned party incites the police to believe that a dangerous situation is developing in another person in the hope that the police will pay their grudges against them. Many cases have involved streamers or online personalities whose enemies, or simply random jerks, want to harass them.

"Many of these people, the links you make with these streamers are intense and personal," said James KFORE, director of the Seattle Online Broadcasters Association. "If they reach a point where they do not like a person, that feeling of hate becomes all the more intense."

The crime is based at least in part on the idea that US police will not use a reasonable amount of judgment, but that they will attack the target harshly. Sometimes it becomes deadly, as in the case of Tyler Barris, a Los Angeles man who allegedly claimed to be a serial drummer. He was charged with manslaughter for allegedly escalating Call of Duty play a murderous scenario by telephoning a hoax that could lead a police officer to kill Andrew Finch, a man from Wichita, Kansas, who is otherwise uninvolved and unarmed. (Authorities refused to charge the police, although Finch's family filed a lawsuit for civil rights violations.)

Other targets include the survivor, David Hogg, whose home was surrounded by officers and a police helicopter flying over a hoax in June 2018, while he was in Washington DC to accept the RFK Award. Human Rights.

Ars Technica wrote that the SPD has created an official resource page and has posted a public service announcement on YouTube warning against this hoax. They have also put in place a system dedicated to emergency regulators in which users can submit specific law enforcement addresses to double-check before determining a response. Ars Technica wrote:

The SPD process asks citizens to create a profile on a third party data management service called Rave Facility (managed by Smart911). Although this service is advertised for public places and businesses, it also supports private residences. SPD provides steps to enter data and add a "Related Concerns" tab to your profile.

With this information in hand, SPD states that any police officer or 911 operator who receives a particularly troubling emergency report and links it to a location already marked with a "concise concern" report will provide this information to "first responders". inform ". and improve their police response to the incident. "

Suppression "is a deliberate and malicious act that creates a climate of fear and unnecessary risk and, in some cases, has resulted in loss of life," writes the SPD on the resources page. "Everyone can be the target of war, but victims are usually associated with the technology sector, the video game industry and / or the online broadcasting community."

The anti-swatting system does not constitute a card without leaving prison: the SPD wrote that the first responders would continue to respond to the call, but with more context as to what would await them. In theory, this should give officers the warning that the potential hostage situation, firearms or any other incident caused by a fagot could be a hoax.

"Nothing in this solution is designed to minimize or slow down emergency services," added the SPD. "At the same time, if information is available, it is more useful for agents who responded to the interrogation to have this information than not."

Hopefully this works, although any long-term solution to unnecessary violence involving agents at the national level will most likely depend on an in-depth reform of the police services themselves. It is currently doubtful whether this trend is going in the right direction.