Every once in a while, something happens that makes you stop and realize just how much the world has changed in a very short amount of time.

Take this week’s news that recently signed B.C. Lion Euclid Cummings had been charged last May with four criminal counts, including sexual assault, for an incident that allegedly occurred in Vancouver in October 2016 when he was a member of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Just a few short years ago, in what we will call the pre-Ray Rice era, this would have been a story, not a scandal. And there’s a decent chance Cummings might have been able to continue playing right up until his day in court, based on the legal principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Instead, the Cummings story is an embarrassment to the CFL, and questions are being asked about who knew what and when, and who else should have been drawn into the loop. Most importantly: How is it that a player could face such serious charges without anyone knowing and manage to play the entire 2017 season?

This demonstrates the kinds of things pro sports league and teams have to be thinking about, because simply turning palms upward and saying, “we didn’t know” won’t do anymore.

The details of the Cummings case are that the Blue Bombers were aware in the fall of 2016 that there had been an alleged incident involving Cummings in Vancouver that police were investigating.

Cummings met with police when the Bombers played in Vancouver for the West Division final in November 2016, but by the time he left Winnipeg for Edmonton via free agency the following February, charges still hadn’t been filed.

In other words, even if the Eskimos had run his name through a background check, nothing would have turned up.

So, was it incumbent on someone to let the Eskimos know Cummings was the subject of an investigation a few months earlier, and still might be? Whose responsibility would that be? The league’s? The Blue Bombers’? His representative’s?

And would it have been fair to Cummings, who hadn’t been charged at that time, for either the league or the Bombers to tell the Eskimos about the alleged incident before they signed him? What would Edmonton’s reaction have been if they’d been told after they signed him?

Cummings was charged in April but no one in the CFL seemed to know about it. He played the 2017 season in Edmonton without so much as a whisper about his troubles off the field. And so, last month Lions general manager Ed Hervey was unaware that Cummings was due to face serious charges in the city in which he’d just signed.

It’s worth noting the charges against Cummings occurred during a brief window when there was no full-time CFL commissioner, between the exit of Jeffrey Orridge and the arrival of Randy Ambrosie. Whether that is significant or not is impossible to say.

The question becomes whether a league these days should be expected to track and follow every one of its players who is ever investigated or accused of something, even when no charges are laid. Could you ask a league to run its players’ names through police information checks twice a year? Is that really where we are?

Cummings’ trial is set for October, although the league voided his contract this week upon learning of the charges, a decision the Lions publicly endorsed.

That’s a positive sign of the times, of the lowering of the threshold of acceptance for violence against women, one that began in the football world with Rice and continues right up to today’s #MeToo movement.

But if that’s the new standard, the CFL and other leagues need to have policies and procedures in place that reflect that.

The CFL should start by making it the obligation of every player and agent to make their employer aware any time one of them is charged with any sort of offence. The punishment for failing to do so should be an immediate suspension and a substantial fine, and possible expulsion.

Cummings is the second CFL player to sign a contract this off-season without his team being aware of a criminal charge. Saskatchewan’s Duron Carter signed a new deal with the Roughriders in January, less than two months after being charged with having more than 30 grams of marijuana with him at the Winnipeg airport, something the Roughriders claimed to know nothing about.

The fact that Cummings played the entire 2017 season after being charged with such a serious offence is and should be an embarrassment to the league.

It’s a situation that, in this day and age, shouldn’t happen again.

The man arrested in connection with the Wichita case, Tyler R. Barriss, 25, was a known swatter. He was sentenced to two years in a California jail for phoning in false bomb threats in 2015 to the ABC Studios in Glendale, prompting an evacuation and a search with police dogs. He was released from jail in August, after serving another sentence for violating a protection order.

Photo

Mr. Finch’s mother, Lisa Finch, said in an interview on Sunday that both the officer who fired the shot and the swatter who lied to police should be charged with murder for her son’s death.

“I think the whole city government should be held accountable,” Ms. Finch said. “Don’t they do training for swat incidences?”

Ms. Finch said her son, who worked at a fast-food restaurant, had been using his phone in the living room on Thursday evening when he heard noises outside and went to investigate.

“He was looking to protect this place,” Ms. Finch said. “He took such good care of family.”

But unbeknown to Mr. Finch, Wichita police officers were staking out the home thinking there was a hostage situation underway. Body-camera footage released by the department shows Mr. Finch appearing in the doorway, officers yelling commands from a distance and, moments later, the pop of a single gunshot fired by a seven-year veteran of the Wichita police force.

“My son would have not opened the door had he known there were cops out there,” Ms. Finch said. “Not one time did they announce themselves. Not one time.”

Chief Livingston said Mr. Finch, who was unarmed and apparently not the intended target of the online prank, did not immediately comply with officers’ commands and moved his hands to his waistline, leading one officer to fear he had drawn a weapon.

State and local authorities are investigating the shooting, but police officers are seldom charged for on-duty shootings.

Photo

The law allows the police to use deadly force when an officer reasonably believes, given the information at the time he pulls the trigger, that his life or someone else’s life is in imminent danger. The Wichita officers had been told, wrongly, that they were encountering an armed hostage-taker who had already killed one person and was threatening to burn the house down.

“Nine-one-one is based on the premise of believing the caller: When you call for help, you’re going to get help,” Chief Livingston said. The prank call, he added, “only heightened the awareness of the officers and, we think, led to this deadly encounter.”

It remained unclear on Sunday what charges Mr. Barriss, who was being held without bail in California, might face for his alleged role in the incident. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department listed his charge level as a felony, but spokesmen for the Wichita and Los Angeles police departments declined to detail the charges against him.

Swattings can be difficult to investigate. The perpetrators often operate in dark corners of the web, hiding their identities and sowing mayhem across state lines and even national borders. In past nonfatal swattings, suspects have been charged and convicted in federal court with crimes such as conspiracy to provide false information, which can lead to up to five years in federal prison, and false information and hoaxes, which has a maximum sentence of life in prison if a death results.

A bill introduced in Congress in 2017 by Representative Katherine Clark, Democrat of Massachusetts, would specifically outlaw interstate swatting and impose a maximum sentence of life in prison for fatal instances.

Swatting is rare in Kansas — Chief Livingston said he was not aware of another instance in Wichita, the state’s largest city — and it was not clear what state laws might also apply.

Jean Phillips, a clinical professor of law at the University of Kansas, said she was “sort of perplexed, at least under Kansas law, as to what would happen.” If prosecutors pursue a second-degree murder case against a swatter in state court, she said, the charge could be undermined if the officer’s decision to shoot is deemed lawful.

Photo

“I assume that the state is going to try to go after something that’s more than a year or two in prison or probation, because they do have a death,” said Ms. Phillips, a criminal defense lawyer in Kansas for more than 25 years. “I’m not sure how they’re going to get there.”

As Mr. Barriss spent the weekend awaiting extradition proceedings in California, a process that could take days or weeks, a digital trail of what led to the deadly encounter on Thursday began to crystallize.

Several video game players and online news outlets posted screenshots and tweets that they said showed an argument about a petty wager over an online round of the game “Call of Duty.” The screenshots suggested that one person threatened to orchestrate the swatting of an opposing player, and that the opposing gamer egged him on and sent a random address in Wichita that he falsely claimed was his own.

Soon thereafter, a distraught-sounding man called the security desk at Wichita City Hall and gave that address — the Finch family home — to report the fake hostage situation, according to an audio recording of the 911 call released by the police department.

Hours after the shooting, a man claiming to be the swatter called into a popular YouTube program on gaming and online culture, and was interviewed by the host, Daniel Keem, known as Keemstar.

The man claiming responsibility did not give his name, but his voice sounded similar to the one in the 911 recording. After the arrest was announced, Mr. Keem said that he believed the person he spoke with was Mr. Barriss.

Mr. Keem’s interviewee sounded ambivalent about his complicity in Mr. Finch’s death.

“Yeah, the call was made by me,” the man said. “But as far as the whole incident, you could point the finger at numerous people. You could point the finger at the cop who killed someone.”

Continue reading the main story