Swatting

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Swatting is a criminal harassment act of deceiving an emergency service (via such means as hoaxing an emergency services dispatcher) into sending a police or emergency service response team to another person's address. This is triggered by false reporting of a serious law enforcement emergency, such as a bomb threat, murder, hostage situation, or a false report of a mental health emergency, such as reporting that a person is suicidal or homicidal and may be armed, among other things.^[1]

The term is derived from the law enforcement unit SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics), a specialized type of police unit in the United States. It is not related to the verb "to swat".^[2] SWAT teams are equipped with tactical gear and weapons that differ from patrol units, and are called to situations that are deemed high-risk. A threat may result in the evacuations of schools and businesses. Advocates have called for swatting to be considered terrorism due to its use to intimidate and create the risk of injury or death.^[3][4]

Making false reports to emergency services is a criminal offense in many jurisdictions, often punishable by fine or imprisonment.^[5] In March 2019, a California man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for carrying out a fatal 2017 swatting.^[6] Swatting carries a high risk of violence, and causes resources of about $10,000 per incident to be wasted by a city or county that responds to a false report of a serious law enforcement emergency, as well as liability if things go wrong.^{[7]: 1 [8][9][10]} In California, swatters bear the "full cost" of the response, which can lead to fines of up to $10,000 if great bodily injury or death occur as a result of the swatting.^[11][12]