Advances in technology allow prank callers to mask their voice, phone number or IP address (also called “spoofing”), or make their false 911 calls sound more credible.

Advances in technology allow prank callers to mask their voice, phone number or IP address, or make their false 911 calls sound more credible.

Author Patrick Tomlinson and his wife, business owner Niki Robinson, have been “swatted” at their home in Milwaukee more than 40 times, often resulting in police pointing guns at their heads. Their tormentors have also called in false bomb threats to venues using their names in three states. Yet law enforcement hasn’t been able to stop the prank calls.

The couple’s terror comes as these incidents appear to be on the rise in the U.S., at least on college campuses. In less than a single week in April, universities including Clemson, Florida, Boston, Harvard, Cornell, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and Oklahoma, as well as Middlebury College, were targeted by swatters.

To combat the growing problem, the FBI has begun taking formal measures to get a comprehensive picture of the problem on a national level.

  • Flaky_Fish69@kbin.socialEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    probably far more often than you or I hear about. I know in our local city they’re hitting warrants up on a weekly basis (“Warrant Wednesdays”. They fuck it up it’s going to be national news for months. they do their job the way it’s supposed to be… nobody even knows they really exist, right? except the bad guys and the courts and other cops.

    I don’t know how often the whole “barricaded subject with hostages” happens… but I do know about that one time where I had a belligerent guy waving a knife around- they probably saved his life compared to what other cops would have done. (i work in contract security. this was years ago when I was still sitting a post.)

    I’m not saying they’re perfect… but there’s always going to have to be somebody, armed in that way. utopian societies don’t come from dystopian societies. Utopian societies frequently become dystopian.