Whiteboy7thst, aka Alexander Wachs, is a YouTuber who streams games. Last month, he was the target of a “Swatting” when it was falsely reported that he was both armed and suicidal. When cops arrived at his house to find he wasn’t a threat, however, they did find 30 grams of marijuana.
Wachs and his housemate were subsequently charged with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. As a felony, that’s serious stuff. Last week, however, the Chicago Tribune reports that police dropped the charges when they realised that, given the circumstances of their discovery of the weed, there was a pretty good chance “the evidence might not have survived a motion to suppress”.
So Whiteboy7thst- – who as you can see posed for one of the cutest mugshots of all time — is now free to get back to talkin’ about video games on the internet.
Cops drop charges against streamer arrested for pot possession during ‘swatting’ raid [Daily Dot]
Comments
12 responses to “YouTuber Gets Swatted, Cops Find Weed And End Up Busting Him Anyway”
This swatting crap is “some ol’ bullshit”. It really annoys me to think that people find it funny to scare the shit out of a YoTuber/Twitch streamer with the use of a swat team, as well as wasting valuable time, resources and whatever else. I sincerely hope my channel never reaches the point where we get raided.
We’re in Australia, I don’t think the police will take gun threats as seriously.
Quick google search suggests we’ve had at least two instances of swatting in Aus, one in NSW and one in Brisbane.
People are just dicks, though hopefully our cops aren’t quite so trigger happy…
You aren’t talking about Thursday’s IS operation are you? lol
I don’t think so, just thought I’d heard of something a while back and googled “Australia Swatting” there seemed to be multiple hits regarding two instances in a quick skim.
By that point I felt I’d done more research than many Plunkett articles themselves and decided I couldn’t be bothered reading anymore =P
Actually a friend was filming for his school media project & part of the scene involved someone standing out the front of a shop with a fake gun, checking that it was loaded before concealing it & going through the entrance.
Someone on the street called the cops, believing it to be serious…
Police showed up, a number of marked and unmarked cars and a lot of officers were on the scene. Turns out they went to the shop next door.
You don’t live in Brisbane do you? A place where now all bins at train stations have been welded shut and others at public gathering places will follow in the coming weeks. Where there are police and security guards out in increasing force, and an increased urge for everyone to be suspicious of everything. Oh, and we just had an arrest made of a group that planned to kill a random stranger publicly. Not to mention we have the G20 in just over a month so tensions are high.
I think the days where that was true are pretty much over.
The police entering with a SWAT team, may not of had a warrant given the fast response to an anonymous tip and if they had a warrant didnt have probable cause to search for drugs… it was to search for a person armed and dangerous. Hence the drugs would of been illegal search, also any action they took after the SWAT team came to realisation the anonymous tip was most fake, would make anything they discovered also an illegal search… also it was broadcast live and on Twitch.
But most likely they dropped the charges, cause he could counter-sued for excessive force of a whole SWAT team kicking in his door.
Counter-sued? SWAT exist for situations like this. Except this time it was false.
When someone is reported as mentally ill and have a weapon, you don’t send an officer to knock on his door. Well not these days anyway. SWAT teams get sent out for parole violations and all sorts of tame shit now.
Nope, they can and will do that. If they find any illegal substance in plain view its theirs for the taking and charging. If the Swatee had the gear hidden and they found it when carrying out the raid that might be a different matter, Even if they smell it, its probable cause to search for it / ask for it to be handed over.
Potentially ruining people’s lives for laughs. Seems like a legit pastime. Although my anger is double since I’m in the pro-drug camp.
It was an illegal search. From the headline before I even read the article, I was wondering if they were dumb enough to try and charge him for it. Nope.