by Anna North

July 6, 2017

 

Three families had to evacuate their homes in Florida in January after someone sent an anonymous email to a detective, claiming to have placed bombs at their addresses. The case, discussed at greater length in This Week in Hate on Wednesday, was unusual in that the only apparent connection between the victims was their surname, Gonzalez. But it was also an example of a kind of harassment that’s become disturbingly common: a practice called swatting.

In a swatting, someone makes a fake report of a bomb or shooter at a victim’s address, hoping to draw law enforcement officers, such as a SWAT team, to the house. This can be terrifying and sometimes dangerous, as heavily armed officers arrive at the home of an unsuspecting person. In 2015, a 20-year-old man in Maryland was shot in the face with rubber bullets by police after someone allegedly reported a fake hostage situation at his house.

The FBI has estimated that about 400 cases of swatting occur nationwide every year, but anecdotal reports suggest the numbers are far higher than that, according to Rep. Katherine Clark, Democrat of Massachusetts, who introduced an anti-swatting bill in Congress in 2015. In addition to the physical risks, swatting also wastes law enforcement time and money — some cases have cost police departments as much as $100,000, Ms. Clark said.

Full article:

www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/opinion/swatting-fbi.html