Don’t know if any of you fellows associated with LE have heard of this new phenomenon. I will relate the incident that happened to members of my family. An out of state stepson (Admin of company website) gets into a beef online with hacker. Hacker tries to get his addy, info etc…My wife gets a call from a “friend” asking for his phone number and addy, she declines, but unfortunately gives him his sisters info. The sister refuses to give out any info when called by this stranger. The hacker has the sister’s address and phone number now.
That night SWAT bursts into the sisters house hard in the wee hours. Could have been a tragedy because the husband is an avid AR15 owner and grabbed his M4. The dogs were in protection mode too and barking like crazy. Fortunately, no one got hurt. It turns out that a “caller” stated that he was being held hostage in a closet at that address and feared for his life. He pretended to be using a cell phone to make this call for help.
LE calls this criminal act “Swatting”.
It’s a good thing my wife did not give the “hacker” our info because I am also prepared for home invasions and have a loyal German shepherd companion. I had no idea about any of this when I went to bed that nite until we got a call from our hysterical daughter. As you can see a situation like this could easily end in death. This is just another example of how sick our society has become and the total lack of morals.
We have been told that the suspect is on the run and traveling across the country in a van.
Well, I thought I’d give you guys a heads up on this “Swatting” thing.
Our local police say that they have no choice but to enter hard in a situation like this. Since they know we may be victimized next by this criminal, they promise a soft knock first.
It would seem to me that given a call like that, LEO has some obligation to at least rule-out the likelihood of the call not being a crank before doing any kind of hard-knock. Especially it this is becoming so much of a trend that they have a name for it like “swatting.”
Someone claiming to be kidnapped and being held in the home (without a current Missing Person) who doesn’t give a real name seems a bit bizarre that police would go in hard without some form of observation first to verify.
Based on the available info, LE probably should have smelled a rat and if it had gone bad, nevermind the injured innocents, the liability potential was pretty high.
I agree. I would think a dispatcher would be very suspicious about a call like that.
My Bother in Law said that the dogs woke them up and he observed many flashlights darting about the front window. Before Swat even busted the door down they were calling for him to get on the floor.
Where in FL did this occur? What was the date and what LE agency
was involved? I live in FL and have heard nothing on this.
Wow! Thanks for the link. I’ll pass that on to my Bro in Law.
The “Swatting” happened in Gainsville while my daughter was at UF studying to be a Veterinarian. Small house not far from campus. It was several years ago, I do not know the exact date or which LE agency was involved. I could ask my daughter tonight for specifics if you would like to have that info.
wow now that’s pretty crazy.
xxxxx
And CSI has what to do with this incident?..
Please don’t let this site become like TOS
ohhhhhhhhh I thought you said SWAPPING. Some chicks dig it.
Media coverage almost always encourages a wave of copycats.
This happened to a good friend of mine and one of his friends. The two of them had a feud with some script kiddie. He somehow got their info and called the cops. My friend got two cops with guns drawn banging on the door at 2am. The was due to a call to 911 from someone claiming to be suicidal and armed with a gun. The cops threatened to arrest him for carrying a folding knife (which was 100% and he actually quoted them the VA code section, if i’m remembering right). The other call directed at his friend claimed that there was an armed man holding his wife hostage. SWAT showed up raided the home. There’s more story to this (it gets worse), but for privacy reasons I’m not going into it.
There is a real problem: cops break into a place (based on legitimate warrant, distress call, or prank call), the person living there thinks it’s a robbery/home invasion/etc, both sides shoot. Unfortunately, this really happens - but I’ve never heard of a single department trying to change their actions to prevent a repeat. Acceptable loss, apparently.
I really don’t know what I’d do, half awake in the middle of the night. You have just a split second to guess if it’s the cops or criminals breaking in and it’s almost impossible to tell the difference.
xxxxx
That is so messed up. Fucksticks that do that kind of stuff need to be put under a jail.
It’s not hard to imagine departments falling for this kind of junk though. Just look at the mess a call created for Texas CPS just recently. Feel sorry for the LEO. They are in a loose-loose situation. They don’t react and it’s for real they get their asses handed to them. They react and it’s fake they get their asses handed to them. Hopefully there are enough level heads around that some intel is gathered before kicking doors at o’dark thirty gets someone killed.
It happened to a guy with a web cam strapped to his head while a couple of hundred people were watching him. Not quite SWAT kicking in the door, but close enough for me.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/23/police-raid-justintv-more-pranks-on-the-way/
My sentiments exactly, things could escalate out of control very easily. I still can’t believe that no one was hurt. I was very upset that my step-son did not warn any of us that he was in a serious conflict with some hacker, but who would ever suspect that something like “swatting” could ever happen to you.
I was going to post about this incident when it happened but I did not think that would be a good idea for obvious reasons. Since sufficient time has passed, I thought it would be an interesting event to relate to everyone here.
After talking to my step-daughter, she said it happened about May of 04’ and it was the Alachua (sp?) Sheriffs Office. She remarked that they replaced her door, hehe.
im with TAZ this is pretty sick , LE has their hands full with real crime and cant be everywhere needed as it is , this type of thing should draw some hard time ,
Sounds like a job, for a 19th century NYC beat cop of Irish extraction. He could “swat” such a miscreant… across the head with a night stick! :eek:
Bob :mad:
Is it just me… I don’t see the need for a hard, fast no knock raid in this circumstance.