Advances in technology allow prank callers to mask their voice, phone number or IP address, or make their false 911 calls sound more credible.
Author Patrick Tomlinson and his wife, business owner Niki Robinson, have been “swatted” at their home in Milwaukee more than 40 times, often resulting in police pointing guns at their heads. Their tormentors have also called in false bomb threats to venues using their names in three states. Yet law enforcement hasn’t been able to stop the prank calls.
The couple’s terror comes as these incidents appear to be on the rise in the U.S., at least on college campuses. In less than a single week in April, universities including Clemson, Florida, Boston, Harvard, Cornell, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and Oklahoma, as well as Middlebury College, were targeted by swatters.
To combat the growing problem, the FBI has begun taking formal measures to get a comprehensive picture of the problem on a national level.
Why not just disband the murder squads (why are there murder squads??) rather than increase surveillance of the populace?
Swatting is a huge problem and needs addressing, no argument there. But it’s not about disbanding SWAT teams. These units exist for high-risk situations like hostage crises and active shooters - genuine threats.
The focus should be on improving how these incidents are handled and preventing false calls in the first place. We need better training for 911 operators to spot potential swatting calls and more targeted legislation to crack down on these dangerous pranks. Tech companies could also step up their game in addressing online harassment that often leads to swatting.
It’s about creating a system that can respond to real threats while safeguarding innocent people from becoming victims of cruel pranks. Not an easy task, but something we should definitely aim for. Let’s fight for change where it’s needed most.
How many hostage situations have been resolved via murder squad and how many innocent people have been murdered by the squad whose job it is to kill people?
If you ran the numbers, I’m certain you would find society safer with no murder squads—with surplus military gear no less—than with them.
To be clear: I advocate not just the disbanding of SWAT teams, but the abolition of all police.
SWAT teams were designed to handle high-risk situations, not just hostage scenarios. They assist in various law enforcement operations, protect high-profile individuals, respond to civil disturbances, and serve high-risk warrants. These roles are crucial and can’t be ignored.
The unfortunate cases where innocent people are harmed are heartbreaking, yet they don’t represent the majority of SWAT deployments. Most SWAT teams manage high-risk situations without resorting to lethal force.
Rather than complete abolition, we need to focus on better training, stricter oversight, and stronger accountability. The militarization of police, including surplus military gear, is a concern and should be addressed separately.
As for ‘swatting’, it’s a serious misuse of the system by individuals making false reports. This issue requires improved training for 911 operators and stricter punishments for those who make false reports.
While your concerns about SWAT teams are valid, I believe that reform, rather than total abolition, might be a more effective solution to ensure safety and justice.
Counterpoint: hostage takes can get a new hostage after killing the first one without if nobody is present to stop them
Isn’t FBI too high level to prevent swatting? Seems like if the local police are getting sent out, any solution would have to happen at that level instead.
Like if the local PD couldn’t figure it out with 43 reported swattings on the couple mentioned in the story, how is a national database going to help?
Any one, from any where in the world, can do it.
Between VPNs and VOIP phones, it’d almost impossible to sort out whose legitimate and whose not without showing up.
As a short term fix, people who are frequently swatted, usually coordinate with the local/responding cops so that if there’s a call at their adress, they call first before breaking down doors
As a shorter term fix, not murdering people based on a simple phone call would also fix the problem.
Yeah this was my thought as well.
The problem here is pigs murdering people without evidence.
I’m not confident the FBI is going to solve that problem.
It’s not nearly that simple, though.
that a bomber might set off a bomb if cops showed up and asked if everything was okay.
Or that abusive spouse whose menacing their partner with a kitchen knife and tossing around the kids might start getting all stabby.
over twenty-thousand people in the US have died THIS YEAR, so far, from gun violence. there’s been over a hundred and fifty mass shootings. Ten million adults in the US and far, far too many children, are victims of domestic violence.
You are thinking of this problem from the premise that the call is false. the reality is the cops have no way to know that, and the safest response- for everybody involved- is in fact coming in hard and fast and ending whatever is going on.
Yes a few people have died.
yes, it is an extremely traumatic experience.
YES, cops- generally speaking- really should stop killing people. We can agree on that.
The alternative to cops not repsonding to reports of bombs, of domestic violence or active shooters… is letting bombers bomb shit and letting Stabby Mcstabberson continue to beat the living shit out of the rest of the McStabberson Family, and letting assholes run around killing people.
Look at what happened in Uvalde. 911 call reported an active shooter. cops responded. Active shooter was found in a school. Cops didn’t go in… kids died. More kids died than if responding officers had followed decades-old protocol of going and engaging immediately.
Yes, I get the outrage. I may even agree with it. We should not have to live in this shithole of a world. But we do, and it’s not as simple as “well, we shouldn’t do that.”
(sorry for the formatting edits,)
Sometimes I’ll listen in on police radios and you will hear officers sigh like, “Damn, not this shit again” cause they recognize the address they are being sent to for a call and remember the guy from just a few prior meetings.
And now these cops are being sent to the same couple over 40 times and are like, “Oh ummm gee, I wonder who these people could be”.
I honestly think the real reason is that most of these cops want these calls to be true, because they get sold on the idea that being a cop is cool and about fighting crime when 90% of the job is super boring.
I remember hearing that a canadian twitch streamer kept getting swatted, moved to the UK, then someone tried to do it to her again, instead a single police officer showed up just to make sure she was alright and said it sounded like a prank call
judging by the lacklustre assistance Tomlinson has been getting (as per the article) it seems law enforcement doesn’t care that their resources are being horribly put to waste by these incidents? You’d think it would be dealt with the utmost urgency.
That assumption is predicated on law enforcement being willing to publish statistics on their actions. You can’t have this work without that. Considering how often SWAT teams are unnecessarily used and the military tactics they employ, the results will be unflattering to police departments.
Of course they don’t want their time wasted, but they won’t trade transparency and accountability for it.
It feels wrong to use the word “prank” with this. Isn’t there a better word they can use?
VOIP has more or less reduced phones to the status of email and other internet services. It’s amazing that there weren’t more trust provisions put in place for verifying phone numbers prior to the shift away from the old phone lines. The militarization of police is bad too, but it’s amazing that there was a technology change that removed a point of trust from something as important as the phone system and 911 calls. It’s a truly bizarre situation we find ourselves in, and frankly I’d rather we went back to the pre-VOIP days at this point.