McKenna on swatting: Example should be set ‘for all these idiots’

Former Attorney General Rob McKenna said homicide charges would be justified in the swatting death of a Kansas man.

Tyler Barriss, 25, placed a hoax 911 call that sent a SWAT team to Andrew Finch’s home in Wichita on December 28. Finch allegedly stepped outside and reached for his waistband, prompting police to shoot.

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“This idea that Tyler is not going to be charged with murder according to him because the officer did the shooting doesn’t really hold up in my view since he created the conditions that resulted in the shooting. He set it up that way,” McKenna told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross on Seattle’s Morning News.

Swatting is when someone calls 911 and reports a fake crime, one that often involves violence or hostages, in order to draw SWAT teams to another person’s address. The FBI estimated in 2013 that there are about 400 cases of swatting per year, many of which are linked to online gaming.

“It’s pretty horrible. This is obviously the absolute worst-case scenario. As the deputy chief of police in Wichita said, the premise of a 911 call is to believe the caller. This individual who called in from Southern California sounded credible on the phone,” McKenna said. “So the police reacted accordingly.”

And although the officers themselves may not have heard the actual 911 call, McKenna said, the dispatcher would have informed them that they were dealing with a hostage situation. Finch, on the other hand, had no idea what was going on.

“It makes this especially tragic. He had no reason to believe the police were going to be outside his door,” McKenna said.

One thing Barriss’ defense attorneys will likely argue is that the police officer was the one that pulled the trigger and killed Finch. But McKenna said that argument may not hold up.

“We have this rule in the law regarding police officers and their use of deadly force that if the officer believes that he or someone else is in imminent danger of a grievance injury or death, he’s allowed to shoot first,” he said. “The police believed that they were dealing with a hostage situation and whether the officer thought he was reaching for a gun to shoot at the police or was reaching for a gun to shoot at someone in the house, he’s going to argue that he had an objectively reasonable fear of an imminent threat to someone’s life.”

Charges in swatting case

McKenna said that federal charges of false information and a hoax could land Barriss in prison for life. However, he said he would still try to bring homicide charges if he were in the prosecutor’s shoes.

“There needs to be an example set here for all these idiots, many of whom apparently are video gamers who started this practice of swatting in order to be able to watch other people online be interrupted in their video gaming by police raid,” McKenna said. “These guys need to get the message that this will not be tolerated.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, the LA Police Department had already been investigating Barriss for similar hoaxes. He even went to jail in 2016 after being convicted of making a false bomb threat.

“I think because this moron was the proximate cause of this poor guy’s death, that a homicide charge would be justified,” McKenna said. “Now it would be up to a judge and a jury to decide whether or not the law in Kansas can be applied in such a way that he can be convicted of a homicide if he’s charged under state law.”

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