01/03/2024

Swatting Hoaxes Are Targeting Elected Officials From Both Parties

Here is what to know

The day after Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows stripped Donald Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot, a person called police on Dec. 29 to report a fake burglary at her home in Manchester, Maine. Two days earlier, a man called police, with a false report that he had shot his wife and gave police the address for Republican Senator Rick Scott's home in Naples, Florida.

On Christmas Day, a caller to a state suicide hotline invented a fake shooting to try to to get a SWAT team sent to raid Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's home in Rome, Georgia. Separate fake calls that same day sent police to the homes of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, and Rep. Brandon Williams, a Republican from Upstate New York.

A rash of so-called swatting calls, in which pranksters make illegal and dangerous fake emergency calls in hopes of sending armed police to raid a person’s home, have targeted political figures from across the political spectrum, raising concerns that the dangerous practice will be increasingly being used as a weapon of political retaliation and intimidation as the 2024 political season kicks off. Here’s what you need to know about swatting.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.