“Swatting” someone refers to getting law enforcement (usually SWAT teams) to another person usually for malice related reasons. It is common for large streamers to face this as people want to capture their reactions on video and sometimes private details.
In the United States, there are three general circumstances in which a warrant isn’t required: Exigent circumstances, plainview, and consent.
Exigent circumstances are situations where context necessitates law enforcement to act quickly. A fire, actively running after a suspect (hot pursuit), a hostage situation, etc.
Plainview is when an illegal act or substance is clearly visible, like drugs in a bag or domestic violence through a window.
Consent is pretty self explanatory; an individual voluntarily allows law enforcement to do what they need to.
With this in mind, how does swatting someone work? How can someone, with no evidence, call law enforcement and get them to break down someone else’s door and why can’t the victim simply refuse on the basis of the above situations not applying?
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It falls under exigent circumstances. A report of an imminent danger to someone’s life. They call and say someone shot someone, or is holding people hostage at gunpoint, etc… They make it sound believable.
Exigent circumstances; someone calls the police and says “I’m at <address> and there’s a willdy unstable guy here holding people hostage, he’s pointing a gun around and threatened to kill us if we call the police.” If the police take that seriously, then there’s no time for a warrant and you don’t want to knock on the door and announce yourself as police because he might start killing hostages, you send a SWAT team in.
I got swatted because the guy I was renting a room to told his niece that he’d taken a bunch of pills, and was going to shoot himself in the head with one of my guns, then hung up on her and refused to answer the phone.
I had no idea this was going on, so when my door popped open a little bit I thought it was just the breeze because… y’know… it was one of those cheap shitty apartment doors that does that.
You can imagine my surprise when I found myself pinned to the ground moments later, with a cop screaming “Where’s the gun? WHERE’S THE GUN?” and a home absolutely *full* of armored mother fuckers with AR-15’s.
I was not pleased with the experience. 0/10, do not recommend.
EDIT: I realized I didn’t actually say what happened to dude. He had not, in fact, taken a bunch of pills. He did not have one of my guns, that would have been impossible. He was just extremely drunk and being foolish. They sent him to the hospital for alcohol poisoning, and I had his son pick up his shit the next day.
Typically the bad guy calls the dispatch center on a non emergency line through a voip line. They act out a script describing an emergency at the targets house. Usually a murder or hostage situation in progress. This gets the cops to respond as if it’s actually happening and chaos ensues. Sometimes the cops figure it out with minimal chaos and sometimes the cops shoot some innocent people in the chaos. Most of the time it’s somewhere between these two situations.
In most states a false emergency is a crime but is amplified significantly if someone is harmed in the response.
Swatting meant something else 20 years ago. Back then some guy called the cops and blocked his number. They were a decent actor, and convinced 911 there was a bomb, kidnap victim, somebody was being held at gunpoint in a house. Ten cop cars showed up and busted into your house. That’s what swatting is.
> How can someone, with no evidence, call law enforcement and get them to break down someone else’s door
Police take the call *as evidence* that there is exigent circumstances. Leaving whether the police SWAT response is heavy handed or not aside, if you were in a immediately life threatening situation you would want the police to respond quickly right?
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