Swatting is a “prank” that’s anything but funny. For those unfamiliar, basically it involves one person calling the police pretending to have hostages, killed someone, or is having their house robbed. They provide the address of their victim, and minutes later, an entire SWAT team (hence the term swatting) will arrive guns cocked and ready, only to stumble across an innocent victim.
This isn’t funny because you have a group of armed officers ready to open fire, so imagine making the wrong move only to be shot. We have seen this happen many times in the past which like we said, isn’t funny. While it is considered illegal to make false police calls, states have had to deal with it individually, but now Rep. Katherine Clark is trying to make swatting an illegal issue federally across all 50 states in the US.
Clark has proposed a bill called Interstate Swatting Hoax Act and according to the text, “Whoever, with the intent to cause an emergency response by any law enforcement agency, in the absence of circumstances requiring such a response, uses a telecommunications system, the mails or any other facility of interstate or foreign commerce to knowingly transmit false or misleading information indicating that conduct has taken, is taking or will take place that may reasonably be believed to constitute a violation of any state or federal criminal law, or endanger public health or safety.”
It also lists out the punishment if one is caught committing such an act. This includes a fine or jail time not more than 5 years, or both. If someone gets injured during the course of swatting, a fine and a jail time of not more than 20 years is applicable. If death occurs, one could face life in prison. Hopefully this will dissuade people from performing such “pranks” in the future.
In the meantime you can check out the video above which is a compilation of what happens during swatting.
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