Seattle police are grappling with a new and potentially dangerous kind of prank called ‘swatting.’ That’s where the prankster calls 9-1-1 on a friend or unsuspecting enemy and reports a fake crime like hostage situations, shootings or other acts of violence.
The idea is to scare the intended victim by sending police to their home, sometimes with weapons drawn. A Wichita, Kansas man was killed last year in a ‘swatting’ call.
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Seattle police want to make sure that doesn’t happen here so the department launched a public awareness campaign to improve how officers respond to the calls.
John Getty, a gamer and streamer who lives in Puyallup, has never been the target of a swatting call, but it is a worry, he said.
“It usually comes into your mind when you hear about it,” he told KOMO News. “I could be sitting right here streaming and the police could come through the door and I wouldn’t even know that it would happen.”
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