Disclaimer: This article may contain the viewpoint and opinion of the author.
Swatting is when someone calls the police department with a false story of a crime in progress – often with killing or hostages involved in an attempt to draw a “SWAT” team, a tactical team, or a large number of police officers to a particular address.
It is often related to online gaming, so when SWAT teams arrive, the entire incident is live-streamed. It is a step up from the old fake 911 calls kids used to place as a prank. Many of those old calls originated from payphones located around the area. The callers would then sit back and watch the police response.
Unfortunately, over the last fifteen years, there is a war on Police that began during the Obama administration. The distrust instilled on behalf of the progressive politicians has caused a lot of bloodshed and put officers on edge.
It is why these Swatting calls are so dangerous. If the person answers the door with a video game controller in their hand or anything that is mistaken for a weapon, officers will protect themselves. This occurred when a Witchita man was killed by police in 2017 because of an online gaming prank.
It now seems leftists are using the tactic against conservatives. Thursday night, just before President Biden gave his divisive speech in Philadelphia, Police arrived at the home of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon.
Bannon said he was not at his Washington, DC home when Police were called to his home at 7:17 p.m on Thursday, The Daily Mail reported. The caller alleged a gunman was on the loose and was possibly inside Bannon’s residence.
It was the second time Bannon was swatted. In July, Bannon was reportedly doing an on-air podcast when cops swooped in on his D.C. home, but he was not home. He was later seen walking up the steps to the rowhouse with officers and told reporters the Police had “been terrific.”
Bannon accused US President Joe Biden of trying to stir up hatred of his political enemies to get them killed. He told the UK’s Daily Mail on Friday, “They’re stirring up unstable people on the far left to do this.” Biden was divisive in his speech and called Trump supporters extremists trying to destroy America.
He isn’t the only Biden critic to be swatted recently. Georgie Representative Marjorie Taylor Green was Swatted at her Georgia home on August 24th. Police responded to her house after receiving a phone call saying a man had been shot multiple times in her bathtub.
According to the NY Post, “When officers responded they discovered this was the home of Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Assistant Rome Chief of Police Burnett said. “She assured the officers there was no issue and the call was determined to be a false call commonly known as ‘swatting.’”
After the incident, the party responsible for the call made another call to the police station. In a computer-generated voice, the suspect explained they did not like her political views on transgender youth rights.
Representative Green has been an outspoken critic of Biden since she took office. She filed the Articles of Impeachment on the President for the second time. She infamously filed impeachment documents on the very first day of Biden’s presidency in 2021.
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Politicians are not the only victims of these calls. Miley Cyrus was Swatted twice. Other celebrities targeted include Justin Timberlake, Ashton Kutcher, and Justin Bieber. People think it is funny until someone ends up dead.
There are no records of Swatting calls because there has not been an official study on them. The FBI believes 400 of these calls happen per year. Each of them costs roughly $10,000 per response. As the political rhetoric heats up, it is only a matter of time before this turns deadly for a politician.
