“Swatting.” I didn’t know this was a thing!
Oh it is a thing. Sadly. Anyone who reads the security blogs it has been a thing for way too long a time. The problem is the people calling it in are in other jurisdictions (countries even) and it makes it a major PITA to track down and prosecute.
There was an article here on BB actually about a family ruined because the trollies were after one of the kids. Multiple swattings, fire department calls, etc. They lost their jobs, got divorced…
ETA
Modern equivalent of pulling the fire alarm? YIKES!
I knew it was a thing but I assumed it was already illegal. How is this not already a serious crime?
With way more dangerous consequences. “Who the fuck is beating on the door at 2am?.. whats with all the lights outside… jezus quit pointing that rifle at me…” and etc.
I’m disappointed the left-most playmobil guy is search-and-rescue, and not a SWAT member like the rest.
Was trying to figure out why those crazy Germans have SWAT officers with a jump-ropes.
Shutdown the swat teams down and take the equipment. Swat team problem solved.
Probably because of this
The computer generated voice might just be a clue that someone’s being swatted. Who, in the middle of a crisis, is going to grab a voder to make the call? (wouldn’t a deaf person use a TTY?) Its also a clue that whoever did it, knew they were up to something serious by targeting a politician.
It is. It’s called filing a false police report. It’s just that the stakes are so much higher than before due to trigger-happy militarized police.
It is illegal but falls under filing a false police report. In many jurisdictions that’s a misdemeanor. Given the complexity involved in tracking down the people who do this and the fact that they are often out of state (or country), little is ever done about these.
The article about the Canadian kid cited above in the comments took a lot of dedication on the part of a local officer; even then, he had to show evidence it happened dozens of times before he could get help from other agencies.
Her bill would have made this a federal crime. Penalties would have been much more severe; if one of these stunts killed someone, the bill allows them to be sentenced up to life in prison.
Which is hard to prosecute when the perp is 4 states/countries over and using a spoofed caller ID. It is one of the times I can sympathize a bit with the officers for the whole pain of tracking the perp down however this is something that needs to be tracked down and prosecuted with prejudice because of the danger of it and the actual monetary cost of it as well.
It’s still the absolutely perfect picture for the story.
It almost certainly was via a TTY system, sometimes a relay human actually reads the message, but I believe that more and more this is automated, hence the computer voice.
But yes, it’s a dead giveaway (no pun intended). I wonder how many “active shooter” TTY claims in the US were real over the past 3 years. My guess somewhere around zero.
Cops need to be made aware that TTY reports using the words “Active Shooter” are almost certainly false. Obviously, at some point it will be real, but if they know that there’s a 99% it’s a malicious hoax, they’ll presumably be at least somewhat hesitant to become patsies.
I showed a documentary about the1972 Munich Olympics for my AP language class (examining rhetorical devices/biases in the overall narrative) in 2008, and I have a vivid recollection of one of my students asking why West Germany didn’t just send in a SWAT team?
A quick world history lesson followed.
I guess I didn’t state my point well. I found it hilarious/puzzling why Playmobil would have a SWAT team member with a jump-rope as his tool of the trade.
The jump-rope being the key bit.
I know it’s actually spelunking-or-rappelling-down-a-building-type-of-equipment, but I didn’t see it at first and just saw SWAT guy with mean dog, SWAT guy with rifle and night vision hear, and SWAT guy with jump-rope.
Because this is how I now imagine German SWAT teams dealing with protesters: https://youtu.be/OcPEbD0JHzw. Which in my mind makes the Munich Massacre reply even funnier. If only they had jump ropes!! (I’m a terrible person, I know)
When robots cry wolf, who will come when the robots really are under attack.
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