[HIGHTECHDUDE]

By request...

WICHITA, (December 28, 2017) — A fatal "swatting" incident occurred in Wichita, Kansas. During an online dispute between Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill regarding the video game Call of Duty: WWII, Viner threatened to have Gaskill swatted over a $1.50 bet.

Gaskill responded by giving him a false address for his residence, one that was occupied by an uninvolved person, Andrew Finch, 28, and his family.

Viner then asked Tyler Barriss to make the required fraudulent call to initiate the swatting. Wichita Police responded to the address, and as Finch was exiting his house, police officer Justin Rapp fatally shot him.

Barriss pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and many other charges from unrelated incidents for which he was wanted.

In March 2019, Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Viner was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment and two years supervised release for his involvement, while Gaskill was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. Rapp was not charged for Finch's death.

#OIS

[CatBatMan]

There is no other way to describe this than a straight up murder. This Qualified Immunity bullshit, and that is exactly what it is, just pure bullshit, absolutely must be abolished. No good comes from it for anyone except the shitty fucking thug cops with deep psychological problems who get off on completely unnecessary violence. Here's an idea: instead of having to adopt a policy to forgive these crimes to be able to find people to hire, screen them and weed out these psychopaths so that the public they are supposed to be serving are safe from exactly this kind of thing.

[kellyhound]

Wichita police officer Justin Rapp, who shot and killed unarmed Andrew Finch in 2017, told a police supervisor that if he ever ran into Finch’s mother, he would tell her to “get over it,” a leaked internal police record shows. That’s one of apparently multiple inflammatory comments Rapp made to fellow officers in the aftermath of the Finch killing that “damages the public trust and confidence and shows lack of sound judgment,” according to a letter sent to Rapp by a deputy chief in May 2020.

It’s unclear if Rapp was disciplined for the comments. But they were troubling enough to former Chief Gordon Ramsay and his executive team that they denied him a promotion to detective in 2020. “You failed to demonstrate an appreciation for the immense impact of the incident on the community, the department and the impacted family,” Deputy Chief Wanda Givens, who retired in January, told Rapp in a “skip” letter alerting him that he had been denied the promotion. “Most notably, when discussing the propriety of your return to off-duty employment at Wal-Mart with supervisors, you acknowledged that you would probably run into the family someday,” Givens wrote, ”and, if you did, you would say something to the effect of ‘yes, I had to shoot your son. I’m over it, and you need to get over it too.’”

“Of course, anything communicated along those lines would not only be unnecessarily hurtful to the family, but also would greatly damage the entire police department’s reputation and relations with the community,” the letter continued. Givens reminded Rapp that Wichita police detectives are expected to be “perceptive and aware of the effects their words have.” Under the terms of the city’s contract with the Fraternal Order of Police, promotion denials require the city to give suggestions of what the officer can work on to improve their opportunity for promotion in the future. The suggestions given to Rapp were “continued good work in the field” and “the passage of time.”

Within four months of Ramsay’s March 1 resignation, and two years after the skip letter, interim chief Lem Moore promoted Rapp to detective, despite concerns raised by Mayor Brandon Whipple and City Council members Maggie Ballard and Mike Hoheisel. Moore did not disclose Rapp’s comments to City Manager Robert Layton, Whipple or the council members, who met with Moore in late June for a briefing on the promotion. At the time, Moore told city leaders that there was nothing in Rapp’s personnel file that would stand in the way of a promotion. Whipple said he feels like he was lied to. Layton said he trusts Moore but that there’s a problem with information sharing between the police and the rest of the city government.

“I did not have a copy of that when I initially learned about the promotion and talked to Chief Moore,” Layton said in an interview with The Eagle. “And then after . . . the HR Director (Chris Bezruki) shared a copy of the letter with me. So the decision had already been made that we were moving down the road in that regard, but I visited with Chief Moore to ask him did he consider what was in that letter when he made the promotion. And he said that he had considered it.” “According to Chief Moore — and you need to talk to him because it was his judgment — he believes that his (Rapp’s) performance had been good since 2020 and that enough time had passed and that he had scored high enough on the test to be eligible. So that’s the rationale he gave for moving on beyond what was in the 2020 letter. It’s his subjective opinion about how Officer Rapp had performed since the 2020 letter.” City officials did not respond to a request for an interview with Moore and Rapp or to written questions.

On the night of his death, Finch opened his front door, stepped out on his porch and within 10 seconds had been shot in the chest by Rapp, who was positioned 40 yards away with a rifle. Law enforcement had surrounded the Finch residence and shouted conflicting commands when he stepped outside. There was no verbal warning before the shot. Rapp told detectives he thought Finch had a gun and planned to use it on officers. He later testified in a separate federal court case that he did not see a gun in Finch’s hand and shot him based on his hand motions.

Lisa Finch, Andrew Finch’s mother, said the Wichita Police Department should not have promoted Rapp before her civil lawsuit is resolved. It claims Rapp used excessive force and violated Finch’s Fourth Amendment rights. “It’s atrocious,” she said of Rapp’s promotion. “It pierces my heart.” She said it appears that the city is rewarding Rapp for shooting her son instead of holding him accountable.

[Roosta]

[houseoftechno]

That lethal shot was out of range for any carry pistol I own. Rapp was standing next to a cop with a scoped rifle, who is much better equipped to assess threat. Rapp was holding his gun with poorly fitting gloves and waiving his gun around as he hollered. The gun went off mid-sentence. Between the movement, hollering and gloves, I am pretty sure Rapp misfired. No excuse.

[houseoftechno]

It looks to me that there are at least 4 cops who set themselves up in cross fire. I give that 4 facepalms. and a .

[HIGHTECHDUDE]

Originally Posted by houseoftechno ↗

That lethal shot was out of range for any carry pistol I own. Rapp was standing next to a cop with a scoped rifle, who is much better equipped to assess threat. Rapp was holding his gun with poorly fitting gloves and waiving his gun around as he hollered. The gun went off mid-sentence. Between the movement, hollering and gloves, I am pretty sure Rapp misfired. No excuse.

Just to clarify, Rapp is the officer holding the rifle and takes a shot at the beginning of the first video. He is standing behind a vehicle in a driveway directly across the street, approx. 40 yards away. I believe the officer you described was standing next to Rapp and flinched at the moment of rifle fire making it appear that he may have shot his pistol.

There’s no doubt that this was a cluster-fuck from the onset and the decision to fire should have been delegated to the officers closest to the porch. Wichita PD admitted that none of the cops or supervisors on-scene that night were tactically trained for such an incident. If they had, I’m reasonably certain no one would have taken that shot and Andrew Finch would be alive.

[Black_Spruce]

Originally Posted by CatBatMan ↗

There is no other way to describe this than a straight up murder. This Qualified Immunity bullshit, and that is exactly what it is, just pure bullshit, absolutely must be abolished.

Qualified immunity is only a small part of the problem. All that means is you can't sue them for their crimes. Like what the murderer said in Kelly's post, they have absolutely zero fear of any repercussions, legal or physical. He was confident in pulling the trigger because he knows the conflict of interests involved with law enforcement investigating crimes by law enforcement will protect him from legal consequences, and the fact that he would mock his victim's mother shows he feels completely safe from physical consequences. So the bigger picture is that most cops are completely unconcerned with the concepts of right and wrong, and are only motivated to control their impulses through the fear of accountability, and since they've gotten away with so much for so long, it's escalated to things like this, where every single person involved in the death of this man was punished except for the murderer.

If you were given free reign to roam around, raping, murdering, and pillaging without having to fear going to prison, would you? These guys sure do.

[tricon7]

Sounds like both the mayor and the chief of police need to be fired for letting this POS be promoted, even after they knew he had murdered someone.