Trolls turned 911 into a weapon. Now cops are fighting back.
Once viewed as a prank, police are now treating 'swatting' as a serious crime that wastes city resources and puts lives at risk.
Anyone with a grudge and someone’s address can make a ‘swatting’ call, but what was once a niche prank played by gamers has become a favored means of terrorizing famous, controversial and vulnerable people. It has also become more organized in recent years, with online forums and chat rooms dedicated to targeted attacks on individuals, including YouTube personalities, tech executives, activists, authors and journalists.
“This is not an accident. It’s intentional behavior intended to punish people for who they are, where they work, the color of their skin,” said Seattle PD’s public affairs director, Sean Whitcomb. “It’s happening every day in America. It’s awful for us and it’s awful for the community.”
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Just another form of bigots in action....cross burning and "swatting" seem so similar because so many cops were/are racists sexists
Larry68Feminist
Level 7
Dec 22, 2019
1
To be fair, some of the videos of random racist white person calling the cops on random black person, for being in publuc, did show proper cop behavior. Im glad those cops might have a way to respond to the people who try to use them as weapons. I know its a small group tho
@Burner my son in law is a Veteran and professional law enforcement officer for a State University....a completely different "mission" than cops.....they protect students and staff on campus and only interact routinely with cops on intersecting streets .....it's easy to be campus police and hard to be an honest cop who might have to arrest a bad cop in action
I was Swatted twice by my neighbor of all people.
The first time terrified and confused me, ending up with me in handcuffs and bare feet on the sidewalk outside my front door while the police searched my apartment. Luckily one of the officers was a former colleague of mine from the Department of Corrections who recognized me when I responded to the pounding and inarticulate screaming at my door at 1 a.m. with a handgun held behind my back (that's how push-in robberies start, after all... and not once could I distinguish the word "police" in all the screaming and shouting), otherwise it could have turned very nasty. It transpired that "someone" had reported a woman screaming at a man and brandishing a gun in my apartment, where I live alone.
Next time was at lunchtime, when the police were much calmer and more professional, knocking at my door and showing their badges instead of the muzzles of their guns. This time they just asked if I had a pit dug in my floor where I had people buried. Well, I answered no, of course.
My neighbor, they told me, apparently takes medication, and she's fine when she does. When she doesn't, she fantasizes things happening in the neighborhood and calls 911. I can't blame her for this, and if the PD didn't know this at first, I can't blame them for responding to her reports. But they should have been a lot more professional the first time around, knocking at the door and clearly announcing themselves instead of pounding and screaming. That's how people wind up dead.
Paul4747
Level 8
Dec 22, 2019
1
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