Swatting reports are increasing. Why are people making fake calls to police? | The Excerpt

On Sunday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Swatting is when someone makes a false report to emergency services to trigger an armed police response to an unsuspecting victim. It is a hoax that is dangerous, illegal and pervasive. Even members of Congress have fallen prey to swatting. Earlier this year, a 17-year-old from California was extradited to Florida after allegedly orchestrating a swatting call on a Florida mosque and may be behind hundreds of swatting calls. Lauren Shapiro, author of "Cyberpredators and Their Prey" and a professor at John Jay College School of Criminal Justice, joins The Excerpt to discuss the risks involved with swatting.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, July 7th, 2024. You may have heard stories recently about swatting, where someone makes a false report to emergency services to trigger an armed police response to an unsuspecting victim. It is a hoax that is dangerous, illegal, and pervasive. Even members of Congress have fallen prey to swatting. Earlier this year, a 17-year-old from California was extradited to Florida after allegedly orchestrating a swatting call on a Florida mosque, and may be behind hundreds of swatting calls. Here to talk about the risks involved with swatting is Lauren Shapiro, author of Cyberpredators and Their Prey, and a professor at John Jay College School of Criminal Justice. Thanks for joining me on The Excerpt, Lauren.

Lauren Shapiro:

Thank you for having me.

Dana Taylor:

First, how did swatting get its name? Paint the picture for us regarding the scale of the response to a swatting call.

Lauren Shapiro:

So swatting gets its name from S-W-A-T, which is the tactical team that the police have for these special situations. And in terms of the type of responses you would get, in addition to the regular police and all the other first responders, SWAT is specifically called in when there's a very dangerous situation.

Dana Taylor:

What are the swatters trying to accomplish here? What's their end goal, and do they ever achieve it?

Lauren Shapiro:

Their end goal usually is to harass someone. It could be done also for revenge, they're settling a bet, or they perceive some harm that someone has done to them, and this is their revenge. It also could be for bragging rights. A lot of them want to show off and boast that they are able to do this large response from the police. It's also for fun, they think it's entertaining, and they like to humiliate and terrorize people.

Dana Taylor:

There's also the troubling issue of doxing. We saw this recently when Michael Cohen's family was doxed following the guilty verdict in the Donald Trump hush money case. First, define doxing for us, and is it a precursor to a swatting attempt?

Lauren Shapiro:

So doxing simply means that documents, which means docs, would be released to the public. So private information regarding anything that's personal to you, like your health or your sexuality, could also be your address and phone number, things that the public necessarily wouldn't have. The way that swatting typically works is it needs to have a component of doxing, you need to figure out who the other person is. Originally from the concept where you had these gamers who would be interacting with each other, they didn't know who the other person was, they only knew what their handle was, and they needed to determine who the other person was, they might also need to find out the address of that person. So doxing is a key component, first step for starting the swatting.

Dana Taylor:

Experts have said that swatting poses a threat to both the target and to responding law enforcement, how so?

Lauren Shapiro:

There are two dangers, first to the victim and then to the SWAT and police themselves. The first responders go in believing that this is a dangerous situation. They will break down the door, they will grab the victim, who they think is a perpetrator committing some crime, and there's a risk to that victim for physical harm, psychological harm, and even death. For the first responders, they're taking this very seriously, they don't know that this is a hoax, and they themselves will go through the same type of psychological, emotional harm, as well as their family members who are thinking, "My loved one is in danger doing his or her job."

Dana Taylor:

There have been issues regarding the way law enforcement has responded to some instances of swatting. Black Lives Matter activist recently lost her case against the LAPD following their response to a swatting call at her home. How can police minimize the effect or the risk to the victims here?

Lauren Shapiro:

I think that they've actually been doing an excellent job. If you think about the thousands each year of the swatting incidents, in all these years since 2002, there's only been one death through swatting, and that was a mistaken identification of what was in the person's hand. So Andrew Finch had been shot thinking that he had a gun in his hand when it was a cell phone. That in itself shows how disciplined and how well-trained they are. I think they do the best they can with the information that they have, because there's no laws in place right now in order to handle swatting situations, there's no resources available.

If the resources were there, you would be able to have the 911 callers getting better training in terms of differentiating between a real call and a fake call, you would have more training from the police in order to handle these situations, because it's not always SWAT who goes in. If it's a small town as opposed to a large city, it's mainly the police, and they would be unable to make this distinction, if this is a real case or a hoax, and how they could handle it, especially in a serial swatting situation. And thirdly, you would have more resources for the detectives who have to determine who these swatters are, you said in the case for the Florida teen, it took a while for them to find who this person was in order to prosecute him. And also, you need some resources for the victims of these crimes. And that's not really part of our structure right now because there's not a specific law in place.

Dana Taylor:

What's the cost to law enforcement agencies in terms of both time and money?

Lauren Shapiro:

So in terms of time, it could take all day for them to determine if this is a real or a fake case. If there's a bomb threat with SWAT being called in to the university, for example, then they're going to have to shut down all of the university, everybody's sheltering in place, you have businesses that are shut down, roads that are shut down. All of that takes a lot of people to coordinate this. You have all the first responders coming in, so you have police, you have fire, you have emergency medics there. You're trying to determine where the bomb is or where the shooting is taking place. So it could be the entire day where this occurs. In terms of cost, it could be anywhere from 20 to 30,000 initially just to pay all the salaries of the people that are involved. You have a loss of the businesses who can't do anything during the time that they're shut down. This revenue is then lost for that community.

Dana Taylor:

Are there any laws on the books to help counter swatting? What challenges do law enforcement face here?

Lauren Shapiro:

So I think that the main problem with laws is that there are laws that can handle some elements of swatting. For example, there's the law for false reporting. And that could be used, but it doesn't cover all of the elements, for example, the doxing part of the swatting methodology. So you can't really prosecute fully, and that becomes a problem. The legislature has tried for many years to come up with a law that satisfies everybody in terms of making sure that all the elements are covered, and it never gets out of the House, it gets stuck there and it doesn't get to Senate. And when people try to support it, they themselves have gotten swatted.

Dana Taylor:

Lauren, in what ways might social media encourage swatting?

Lauren Shapiro:

I think that the idea behind social media, of being anonymous and being able to say what you want, and if somebody says something that you don't like, it's very natural and accepted for people to harass other people and to use swatting or other means in order to get your revenge when you feel hurt. And in that sense, social media, and the acceptance by the people who use social media, has contributed to be acceptant of this type of violent response.

Dana Taylor:

Is swatting occurring more frequently now than, say a decade ago, or is it that the number of high-profile individuals and those close to them being targeted, that it's just garnering more attention now?

Lauren Shapiro:

I think that there's a combination of the two. First, people are becoming more aware of what swatting is. There are people who are high profile, who are being swatted, and that draws attention from the media. And I also think that we're getting better at understanding the need for determining how often swatting's occurring. And the FBI last year in May opened up a national database to try to track how much swatting is going on. And these swatting incidents are being reported by different levels of law enforcement, but not necessarily in a consistent manner, it's up to each law enforcement agency to do it.

Dana Taylor:

Then finally, are there any steps individuals can take to protect themselves from swatting?

Lauren Shapiro:

I think it depends on what it is that you're doing online. For people who are online and social media, protect your identity, do not share personal information with other people if you don't know what they're going to use it for, and it's better for you to only share that with people that you know in real life, not somebody that you met on network. If you're a gamer, do not use Discord and share information, because Discord is not a protected network. You should use a virtual network so that you can protect who you are and people will not be able to trace you and find your address and make you a victim of swatting.

Dana Taylor:

Lauren, thank you so much for joining me on The Excerpt.

Lauren Shapiro:

You're welcome.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks for our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for production assistance, our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.