Let's face it, 2017 has been another year most of us are just as happy to see gone as was 2016--and many others--were. We have had our cases of murder. Murder by racists. Murder by thieves. Murder by Arkancide. Murder by war. Murder by starvation. Murder by indifference. Lots of ways to kill. Now, before 2017 is officially ended, at least here on the west coast, comes another method of murder.

Death by "swatting".

Swatting

Swatting is the harassment tactic of deceiving an emergency service (via such means as hoaxing an emergency services dispatcher) into sending a police and emergency service response team to another person's address. This is triggered by false reporting of a serious law enforcement emergency, such as a bomb threat, murder, hostage situation, or other alleged incident.

The term derives from the law enforcement unit "SWAT" (Special Weapons and Tactics), a specialized type of police unit in the United States and many other countries carrying military-style equipment such as door breaching weapons, submachine guns, and automatic rifles. A threat may result in the evacuations of schools and businesses. Swatting is described as terrorism due to its potential to cause disruption, wasting resources and time of emergency services. It causes money and tax dollars to be wasted by the city or county when responding to a false report of a serious law enforcement emergency.[3][4]

Making false reports to emergency services is a criminal offense in many countries, punishable by fines and imprisonment.[5] In California, swatters bear the "full cost" of the response which can range up to $10,000.[6]

News of unjustified police killings are rampant, a common affair. The story referred to here has two significant features:

1. The bodycam footage is actually public

2. The victim was targeted at random, allegedly by a "gamer", a video game fanatic who values fleeting images on a computer screen more than real live people. Many gamers are loners, introverts, devoid of social skills, unable to or unwilling to make friends.

Such seems to be the case here.

On Thursday, Deputy Wichita Police Chief Troy Livingston said a substation received a call that there was a hostage situation in a house in the 1000 block of West McCormick — and that someone had been shot in the head.

Wichita police say a man was fatally shot by an officer who was responding to a call about a homicide and hostage situation that turned out to be false.

“There’s where he was shot,” Andrew Finch’s aunt, Lorrie Hernandez-Caballero, said, as she pointed to spots of blood on the home’s porch, and on the carpet just inside the door. “They (police) had to take the screen door as evidence.”

After she heard the shot, Finch said she walked out of her bedroom and into the kitchen. A door leading from the kitchen to the side yard was open, she said.

“The police said, ‘Come out with your hands up,’” she said. “(The officer) took me, my roommate and my granddaughter, who witnessed the shooting and had to step over her dying uncle’s body.”

The family was handcuffed, taken outside and placed into separate police cruisers, she said. They were taken downtown and interviewed by Wichita police officers.

Asked if the family has talked to investigators from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Finch said they were told KBI investigators would contact them.

Watch the police video. See if you can see any reason for the fatal shooting. Play it again. See it now? I didn't.

Here is the heartless moron who thought he was being funny.

Tyler Barriss, 25, suspected of phoning in a false 911 call that led to a police raid and the fatal shooting of a father of two, was arrested Friday afternoon in South Los Angeles, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman tells NPR.

Barriss is being held in a Los Angeles County jail without bail, according to LAPD Officer Mike Lopez.

The deadly prank began Thursday when a 911 operator in Wichita, Kan., received a call from a man who claimed he had shot his father and was now holding the rest of his family hostage. When police surrounded a house at the valid Wichita address, a confused 28-year-old man, Andrew Finch, stumbled out his front door. Within seconds, he had been fatally shot.

Is there a deeper, societal meaning to this mindless death by proxy? If there is, it escapes me. It is doubtful that this particular malicious act is grounded in socioeconomic injustice. It is rooted in an amoral person who, without consideration for the possible consequences of his actions, is now an accomplice to murder.

Two explanations are possible:
1. Neurodevelopmental maturation of the prefrontal lobes did not occur
2. The perpetrator simply did not care, in which case he is a psychopath.

Is there a moral to this amoral story?