On Tuesday morning, a call came into the Broward County Sheriff’s Office “claiming there was a barricaded person” at a Parkland, Florida, address that just happens to be the home of anti-gun activist David Hogg. News reports have described the hoax call as a “prank.” Wrong.
“Pranks” are when you order a bunch of pizzas and send them to a frenemy’s house, or when you steal the rival high school’s mascot before the big game. What happened on Tuesday was “SWATting,” and it’s more akin to attempted murder.
The practice first came to the public’s attention back in 2013, when cops were called to the homes of various celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Justin Timberlake, and Miley Cyrus. Someone would call 911 and report that they were being held hostage or that they had witnessed dangerous or suspicious activities. Given that celebrities tend to have multiple gated homes and are frequently traveling and away from all of them, no one got hurt. Which seems to have lead people to believe that SWATting was harmless.
That all changed on December 30, 2017, when police in Wichita, Kansas, shot and killed 28-year-old Andrew Finch after responding to a call about a hostage situation. It’s a horrifying story of moral depravity and disregard for humanity: Two strangers got into a feud over an online Call of Duty game and threatened to SWAT each other. Here’s what happened, according to gaming site Dexerto:
Based on that call, police were under the impression that Finch had just shot his father and was holding someone else hostage.
The officer believed that Finch “was reaching for the gun that he would have used to shoot his father moments earlier,” Bennett said. “The officer believed he saw a gun come up in Mr. Finch’s hands.”
The entire concept of SWATting is dumb and juvenile on its face. But placed in the context of the current state of relations between communities and law enforcement—and the militarization of local police forces—it’s willfully negligent not to realize the danger of calling in such a hoax. Even when police are out on legitimate calls, human error can lead to tragedy. Just look at the examples of Cory Maye, Christopher Roupe, or Stephon Clark.
Law enforcement and prosecutors have some tools available to them to combat SWATting, namely charging perpetrators with false reporting of a crime, or false public alarm. Some SWATters are charged with crimes related to computer hacking, if they use technology to mask their location when they call 9/11. There is no federal law against SWATting, though callers could possibly be brought up on conspiracy charges. But that’s not enough. Both the states and the federal government ought to pass laws creating a detailed definition of SWATting as a crime and giving it penalties akin to attempted murder—which is what it is. No reasonable person can call in a SWATting without understanding that there is a reasonable chance the call could end in someone’s death.
Tyler Barriss, the man who placed the SWATting call that lead to Finch’s death, is awaiting trial on involuntary manslaughter charges. As Variety reported in April, Bariss managed to access the internet from prison. How did he use his time? He went onto Twitter and threatened to SWAT people.
