Congratulations on becoming an advlt and you're entitled to the benefits of being one...

Pay local taxes, sign up for the selective service act, no one has to legally do anything for you anymore...

Oh wait, these are benefits?

The press can essentially say whatever names they are given. The laws in place protect the minors names being released from the police, and even then some minors it doesn't matter because they're technically a young advlt. In PA, it's as soon as you can get a drivers license: 16.

It's ridiculously easy to get a user's IP address via Xbox Live. It literally takes a program download and 20 setup clicks (less if you know what you are doing) to get the IP address of people you are playing with, which then gives you the basic location of the person. That, combined with the person's Xbox Live username, can give you a whole lot of information that can often be associated with, say, a Facebook account. That gives you a name. And at that point, well, it's not all that hard to figure out the rest. It's also possible to figure out an exact match between username and IP by simply chatting with that person via XBL.

That all being said, the police (and the FBI) are both investigating that it was a fellow CoD player that SWATed Rafael. They have way more information on this case than we ever will, and if that is the direction they are both looking into, then it only makes sense that is where the evidence is pointing. Also, the guy who called the police never mentions a brother. The hoaxster most likely said "I just killed my mother and I might shoot more people" (IGN and NY Post - neither 911 call snippet mentions a brother). That means that the attacker didn't know that Rafael had a brother, just a mom, like pretty much every other 17-year-old.

PVP games are notorious for having these kinds of players.

They do not need to look too far to find the guy who made the phone call. All 911 calls are logged with Caller ID, it can't be blocked. The only way around this is if he got a Vonage or Skype, then moved after he signed up. But then they have the IP address and the ISP knows who is assigned to that IP. Finally, the gamer tag is tagged to an account, and there is a payment trail on that. So, how dumb is someone to commit a crime with the police as an unwitting accessory?

What baffles me is, someone who is smart enough to find that kid's home address should know all this.

It's not hard to send a Skype call (which was used to send the 911 call) through TOR / a socks5 proxy, for example, by blocking UDP transmissions and forcing Skype to use TCP instead. Assuming the guy in question knew what he was doing, it is possible (though difficult) to make sure that the Skype call could not be traced back to him.

Its sad because it makes all gamers look like low life rejects. Well, to those who already frown upon gaming.

Nice.

Directly from the article the OP linked: "One of the police officers said somebody called and said that the mother and brother of somebody in this house was killed," Jose Castillo told reporters. "I said, ‘How is that possible if she’s right there and I’m right here?’”

Secondly, nowhere in that article does it state that the FBI and police are investigating people the guy was playing CoD with. If you read that in another article, please share, but don't assume that others have done extra investigation and read other articles that you have. The only thing the article the OP linked says is: Police are currently working to identify the caller, who if caught, will face serious criminal charges and could be responsible for the cost of the day's events.

Lol..."old people." How old do you have to be to qualify as "old people" these days? 25?

But yes, that damn transistor radio does nothing but spread the Devil's corruption. Also: dancing. No dancing!

Yeah, this type of person is one of the reasons I don't play many multi-player video games anymore. Too many people (of all ages) acting like sociopathic babies. Got no time for that.

Anything to maintain that KD ratio, I've done worse

One thing odd here but why would a SWAT team respond to such a call? Yes the call said "I killed my mother and I will shoot others" but really a SWAT team?

I know cops and people who work for 911 and a call like that would get a couple cop cars first, not a whole SWAT team and more.

Maybe check to see if the call is real first. Just saying saves some tax money. A couple cops with guns should handle one guy just fine even if that guy said he killed and is willing to kill again.

Now if it was at a school or some other public place with alot of people then yeah send in a SWAT team.

Edit: "A couple of cop cars" would be two or three which would mean four to six police officers.

Edit: Crossed out a part because it was dumb of me to say that.

Not around where I live. Two cops won't engage someone with a gun if that person is relatively contained. They'll call for back-up. I doubt they'd jump straight to sending a SWAT team in, but they'd wait for more cops to show up unless the suspect was escaping or engaged them first. They definitely would not try to handle the situation themselves. Too dangerous. Source: I have a friend/family friend that's a cop on the South side (Chicago).

I agree it is a dangerous situation and any police force will take it seriously. But four to six police officers should be able to figure out the situation pretty quickly.

And yes you are right it would largely depend on the area. Police Cars showing up with lights going and police coming out with weapons at the ready would get many people's attention. Including those in the place they are focused on.

If there was a shooter and so on... they would make themselves known and other signs to show the situation is real. SWAT teams would be called in if it was shown to be real and the person couldn't be talked down and proving to dangerous.

In the call it said he would shoot people, the cops did everything right. Its not their fault, I'm glad they didn't waste time checking the call, it may sound counter intuitive but I believe they made the right call.

Not blaming the police if that was how they were trained to deal with such matters then so be it, better safe then sorry. I am just saying from my experience with police officers (I know a lot of them) and people who work for 911 who have responded to such calls, a SWAT team and more is an over reaction to a call that wasn't real.

I am just saying a step seems to have been skipped. Send police in force to see if the call is real and then send in the SWAT if it was indeed real. The SWAT Team could have been alerted to the call and even been patched into the officers responding. If you are going to send SWAT every time there is a (potential) shooting then that SWAT team is going to be very busy all the time.

Worse? Have you managed to call an airstrike on someone yet?

Well it being NYC they have designated SWAT IIRC, so the biggest problem is just, as stated in the article, the cost of mobilizing such a force. Though I can see their line of thinking being that if it was real they didn't want to risk the deaths of officers/civilians in checking if it was real and instead chose to ride in with the entire force. While expensive I think they did the right thing, not saying you think other wise, but I can see your point.

shhhh these forums are monitored

I can see the commanding general being infuriated when he finds out a kid on xbox live called that airstrike!

It's probably just them being cautious. Better safe then sorry.

Over here, if there's even just a report of someone in possession of an illegal gun, it's always going to be dealt with by an armed response unit.

the more I read this Article the more fictitious it sounds..

"I told him there there's a bunch of cops that are outside looking for you"

if infact the SWAT Team was called in and were under the assumption the person inside was Armed and Dangerous they wouldn't knock on the front door and say "is Castillo home, we would like to have a word".. thats the kind of thing the Police do for a domestic Disturbance.. if SWAT was called in and was told the suspect may be armed and dangerous, they would have much more likely taken a battering ram to the door at the very least (i wouldn't be surprised if they threw in a tear gas grenade as well)..

and once again, how would they know the person who made the call was upset from losing a game of CoD?

Would like to point out that there are always people like this in games... So not surprise. Though would agree that CoD seems to have a bigger chance of kids like this than any other PvP game (but CoD still has a lot of good mature players).

Also, I will post my quick thoughts on CoD... As a series, I hate it. As a single game, it's alright to temporally play.

It is not my fault if you or others don't keep up with the news surrounding this thread topic. Here is the article from CBS that says the FBI is helping the investigation and that the current focus is on other CoD players: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-joins-new-york-swatting-prank-investigation/

Ya know, it would be nice if you dropped your attitude when discussing this topic. I've done nothing but question why exactly everyone claims that it's a CoD player that started this fiasco. I went off the OP's link, and assumed that mostly everyone else in the thread would be as well. If you had more in-depth information, you should have shared it from the get-go instead of assuming that everyone else was interested enough to go out and find other, more well-written articles. I haven't been rude to you at all, but all I've gleaned from your posts thus far IS rudeness, and outright dismissing anything I've said, even when you were wrong(the part about the caller saying I killed my mother and brother, even though it was clearly in the first article). I have at least considered it could be a CoD player, I just don't think it's that terribly likely, maybe because I have a bit more faith in humanity.

And in response to the "it's not my fault if you or others don't keep up", it's generally common practice that if you are bringing new facts to an argument or discussion, you provide your sources. It's not up to everyone else to prove what you are saying is right or could be right, it's up to you to provide the information you are stating has an actual source.

Because if the Police department does not use the SWAT Team, funding gets cut so they don't get to have a SWAT team. So, they call them out anytime they think there is a gun in the hands of a criminal. The more they get called out, the more funding they get.

Besides, the police want to intimidate in order to deter, and to them that means showing up with a squad of 10 to 20 armored people carrying semi automatics weapons to break into someone's house because someone else made a phone call.