The Kansas gamer swatting incident? A new development!

[thewayne]

The jerk who called the Wichita cops in December 2017 that prompted the SWAT deployment that resulted in the death of 28 year old Andrew Finch, well, he is serving 20 years. The other man in the argument has probably completed his prison sentence, he gave the jerk his old address.

A couple of things have happened. First, a court has ruled that the City and Police Department of Wichita cannot be sued in the matter, their policies and response were not inappropriate. That is sad, but at least the matter was looked in to by theoretically independent and neutral third parties.

But that's not the biggie.

A court, and held up by a Federal court, has revoked the qualified immunity of the police officer that fired the fatal round that killed Finch! From the KWCH article: "A U.S. appeals court sided with the Kansas district court in denying Officer Rapp qualified immunity in Finch’s death[.] The court said a reasonable jury could believe Finch was unarmed and unthreatening when Rapp fired the shot that killed him."

The family is suing the officer for wrongful death damages and now it looks like that trial will proceed.

https://www.kwch.com/2022/07/05/wichita-officer-face-civil-trial-deadly-shooting-swatting-call/

Comments

[disneydream06]

Well, at least that A**H*** is serving, well sentenced to 20 years. :o
Hugs, Jon

[ndrosen]

I’m glad to hear this. The swatter belongs in prison for a long time, and I believe that qualified immunity should be seriously restricted, if not abolished. I wasn’t there, and I don’t know exactly what happened, but even if there had been an actual violent crime in progress/hostage situation, the policeman should have taken reasonable care that he was shooting a dangerous criminal, rather than a bystander or victim.

[thewayne]

There are far too many police shootings.  Allegedly there is training in de-escalation, clearly it is not enough.  The real problem is there isn't enough TRAINING.  In Germany, police are in their academy for two to four YEARS, just like university.  Now THAT is training!

[silveradept]

It is good that the courts are willing to revoke the immunity for something where it's clear there were bad decisions made. And also good that the person who called in the SWAT team is spending a long time in jail for having caused the murder of someone.