In recent years, a particularly dangerous breed of idiot has discovered a new form of entertainment: weaponizing the police against complete strangers. It is called swatting.
The formula is breathtakingly simple. Some coward sitting safely behind a telephone or computer contacts law enforcement, pretends to be a terrified victim, neighbor, or eyewitness, and reports a fictional emergency. Hostages are being held. Someone has a gun. A family is about to be murdered. Pick whatever nightmare is most likely to produce an immediate and heavily armed police response.
Congratulations. With a few lies, some fool has potentially turned somebody else’s home into a battlefield.
Swatting gained notoriety through online gaming feuds, where spectacularly immature sore losers decided that losing a video game apparently justified sending armed police to the winner’s house. But the insanity did not remain confined to gamers. Swatting has become a weapon for revenge, harassment, intimidation, and general lunacy.
The Fourth Amendment ordinarily requires police to obtain a warrant before entering a home. But there are recognized exceptions, including exigent circumstances. When officers reasonably believe someone inside is facing an imminent threat of serious injury, they may be permitted to enter without a warrant.
And that is precisely what makes swatting so extraordinarily dangerous. The criminal making the call manufactures the emergency that may cause police to believe immediate entry is necessary.
Now imagine the call comes at 4:00 in the morning.
A homeowner is sound asleep. Perhaps he is hearing impaired and never hears police announcing themselves. His dog suddenly goes berserk. He awakens to pounding, crashing, shouting and figures moving through his darkened house.
He does not have the luxury of knowing these are cops or armed home invading criminals.
He knows only one thing: someone is breaking into his home in the middle of the night.So he reaches for a firearm, a knife, or whatever he keeps available to defend himself and his family.
The police, meanwhile, have been told they are entering a house containing a violent criminal, perhaps an armed hostage taker. They suddenly encounter a frightened homeowner holding a weapon.
Now we have two groups of people, each believing the other may represent a deadly threat, brought together by a liar who may be sitting hundreds or thousands of miles away enjoying the spectacle.
What could possibly go wrong? Everything.
Seconds later, the medical examiner may be the person left explaining what happened.
That is why calling swatting a “prank” almost trivializes it. Putting a whoopee cushion on someone’s chair is a prank. Sending armed officers charging toward an innocent person’s bedroom at four in the morning is something altogether different. Swatting can kill.
As these incidents have become more common, law enforcement agencies have been forced to confront an exceptionally difficult problem: officers responding to the call cannot simply assume that the reported emergency is fake. A genuine hostage situation cannot be ignored because somebody might be swatting.
But neither can agencies pretend the danger to innocent occupants is theoretical.
Every swatting investigation should therefore answer two separate questions: Who made the fraudulent call, and did the responding agency handle the information and tactical response reasonably?
When somebody manufactures an emergency designed to send armed police into another person’s home, everyone involved has been placed in danger, including the homeowner and the officers.
And if somebody dies, calling it a prank will sound like one hell of a sick joke.
Comments