A spate of high-profile swatting incidents in the US recently forced the FBI into action with its latest awareness campaign about the occasionally deadly practice.
The feds issued guidance on how members of the public can protect themselves from swatting, describing the action of making hoax phone calls or emails reporting serious crimes to law enforcement, giving an innocent person’s name, address, and other info to the authorities in the process.
The tactic is used by criminals of many flavors – from pranksters looking to cause mischief to those with the intent to seriously harm or intimidate.
Although the Feds didn’t specify any swatting incidents, referring to them only generally, it can be assumed that among them are recent attacks on conservative media pundits as well as on the family home of a murdered Texas athlete.
Podcasters Nick Sortor and Shawn Farash both reported swattings at their own or family members’ homes in March. Farash and his wife’s home was swatted the day after Sortor confirmed his father and sister were both targeted.
“This is literal fucking terrorism,” Sortor claimed via X. “And the FBI should treat it as such.”
“This is nothing short of attempted murder,” he alleged. “They wanted the police to kill my father.”
Reports from multiple US outlets also confirmed the family of Austin Metcalf, a 17-year-old stabbed to death at an athletics event on April 2, had been swatted three times since their son passed.
The case quickly attracted interest from outsiders. The teenaged suspect who police arrested for allegedly stabbing Metcalf – 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony – and his mother allegedly received multiple threatening calls shortly after Anthony’s release on house arrest.
According to The Independent, a group of racists led by a Capitol riot defendant (Anthony is Black and Metcalf is white) also held a demonstration outside Metcalf’s school, the location of the track meet, sparking a culture war over the killing.
The judge overseeing the case, who reduced Anthony’s bail bond from $1 million to $250,000, was also doxxed after the decision, with the assumption that the doxxers did it to incite harm.
However, FBI director Kash Patel assured that the crackdown on swatting wasn’t politically motivated.
“Swatting is not a prank – it’s a crime that puts lives at risk,” he posted on X.
“My team and I are already taking action to hold perpetrators accountable. This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with public safety.
“We won’t tolerate the weaponization of law enforcement.”
Swatting and the law
Swatting typically involves phoning emergency services and reporting a bogus threat so severe that it triggers a robust, often armed, response.
Such calls typically claim fears of active shootings, bombings, or other events that could cause an immediate threat to life. They often target public figures, internet streamers, schools, hospitals, and places of worship, and various cases in recent years have led to the unjust killings of innocent people.
According to the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International, the first killing related to a swatting call was in 2017. Wichita police officers responded to a call claiming an individual had shot his father. After he was apprehended, the suspect, father-of-two Andrew Finch, at one point lowered his hands slightly – a gesture misinterpreted by armed officers who shot and killed the man.
The swatting was called in by a man who lost a $1.50 bet with a friend playing military first person shooter game Call of Duty, with the loser having to swat the other, who in this case provided their previous address instead of their own.
Tyler Barriss, who called in the hoax that led to Finch’s death, was sentenced to 20 years in prison back in 2019.
This isn’t an isolated case. Three years later, 60-year-old Mark Herring from Tennessee died of a heart attack after he was swatted by Shane Sonderman, who wanted Herring to give him the Twitter handle “@Tennessee.” Sonderman was sentenced to 60 months in prison.
More recently, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) was swatted by a fake bomb call in December 2024. A local SWAT team responded to the hoax, which was reportedly traced back to a Russian IP address, and one of the members traveling in a personal vehicle to the scene was involved in a road accident i