SWATing

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SWATing (sometimes written as swatting) is a type of false police call in which the perpetrator tries to trick the police into sending a heavily armed response unit, such as the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team, to the victim's address.

This type of action is most common and most viable in the United States, where the police are heavily militarized. SWATing is usually related to online harassment as it relies on the victim having already been subject to doxxing — the public distribution of personal information such as their home address. SWATing is also a major problem for police departments, as it wastes money and departmental resources intended for genuine emergency calls.

In August 2015, Oxford Dictionaries added SWATing to its online dictionaries.

Overview

A SWATing generally begins with the perpetrator using a spoofed phone number, or in more recent years VoIP, to place a phone call to the victim's local police precinct. The call is not made to emergency services, as they always track phone calls. The caller alleges that a violent crime has happened at the victim's home address, generally a bomb threat or a murder, such that the heavily armed SWAT team is sent to handle the situation. Usually, the intent is for the victim to be psychologically intimidated, but there is also the very real possibility that the police could physically harm the victim in making the arrest and it is likely that the victim can be shot.

Prominent events

While people from all walks of life have been affected by SWATing, including CNN political commentator Erick Erickson and California State Senator Ted Lieu, who was himself pushing legislation against SWATing due to the number of celebrities affected by the phenomenon, it seems to predominate within the video game community. Multiple cases of SWATing in the United States and Canada seem to involve teenagers and video games in some fashion:

• The White House was swatted on Jan 15, 2024 after a fake call was placed, claiming "there was a fire and someone was trapped inside".
• Andrew Finch, age 28, was fatally shot on December 28, 2017, after two kids got in a fight over a Call of Duty match. The players, under the handles "Miruhcle" and "Baperizer," were participating in a $1.50 wager match through competitive gaming platform UMG. They ended up getting into a heated argument due to a friendly fire incident, with each threatening to "swat" the other. They were on the same team. Miruhcle posted a fake address claiming that it was his own, and egged Baperizer on. Baperizer followed through and asked someone to swat the address. Police in Los Angeles have arrested 25-year-old Tyler Raj Barriss, who is believed to have made the call inciting the incident. DJ Keemstar interviewed Tyler Barriss, aka "SWauTistic", on his YouTube show DramaAlert, in which Tyler denied all claims of culpability.
• Nathan Hanshaw was arrested by the FBI in 2013 for having used spoofed phone numbers to make a hoax call on a former acquaintance and video game player living in a hotel.
• An unnamed 16-year-old Ottawa teenager was arrested in 2014 and charged with 60 counts of criminal actions by Canadian authorities after he had made at least 30 prank calls to police departments throughout Canada and the United States, including several bomb threats.
• An unnamed 17-year-old Coquitlam, British Columbia, teenager was arrested in 2014 and charged with 23 counts of "extortion, public mischief and criminal harassment", over unrequited love for multiple women who were players of League of Legends. He even caused an evacuation of Disneyland's Space Mountain ride due to a bomb threat, in cases completely unrelated to the League of Legends harassment.
• Jordan Mathewson, a.k.a. Kootra, was livestreaming a game of Counter-Strike when the SWAT team raided his office and held him at gunpoint live on camera after a false call had been made to the police about an active shooter.
• In 2014, nearly seventy police officers were responded to a possible mass murder after teenager Rafael Castillo won in a Call of Duty match against another player who called in the false report that he had killed his mother and brother and was going to kill others.
• Wesley Wolfe, a.k.a. "Wolvereness", was victim to a SWATing after he had filed a DMCA takedown against SpigotMC & Craftbukkit (Two popular Minecraft server hosting tools) for violating the GPL by redistributing his work without releasing the source code.
• An unnamed executive of the video game developer Bungie (Halo series, Destiny) was victim to a SWATing after a hostage situation was called in to local police from a computer call.
• SWATing has also been prominent within victims of Gamergate's mob, although victims have avoided unnecessary confrontation with the police and wasting of their funds by being proactive and notifying their local departments that they have been targeted online.
• Transgender YouTuber Keffals was swatted and arrested by the London, Ontario police under her dead name after an email impersonating her was sent claiming to go on a shooting spree against cisgender people and non-pedophiles. It's assumed that a member on Kiwi Farms and/or Doxbin were responsible, as they were the first to resurface her dead name. Kiwi Farms specifically had started a harassment campaign, smearing her as a pedophile who gets aroused at young boys becoming feminized.
• The United States has seen a surge of coordinated swatting incidents targeting schools that have resulted in hundreds of hoax shooter threats. One morning alone saw eight schools in Michigan get targeted with hoax shooter calls. It's been reported that a familiar voice has been heard in many of the calls. The caller has a "heavy accent," and the calls themselves tend to follow a distinct modus operandi. The calls, using spoofed US numbers, were found to have been conducted using the free services provided by a Canadian VoIP company called TextNow.

Outside North America

SWATing is a largely North American practice due to the police being armed with guns, but there have been instances elsewhere that have been deemed "SWATing" by the local press. Sydney, Australia, resident Mathew McGrath was victim to a SWATing in June 2014, and believed it had something to do with his participation on HackForums, a grayhat hacking website. The United Kingdom has also seen SWATing attacks on the owners of parenting website Mumsnet, who were being targeted by MRAs.