Teen behind hundreds of swatting attacks pleads guilty to federal charges

I'd be interested to know if any actual SWAT operations happened from these calls. I know that it does happen sometimes.

Swatting people has gotten people killed… by swat

This is a very sad read.

Swatting is pretty common:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting#Injuries_or_deaths_du...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting_of_American_politicia...

I don't think there are any numbers published about the % of swatting calls result in a visit from a SWAT team, but I would wager it's higher than you are imagining. The police would be foolish to advertise the efficacy of swatting, so of course the real numbers are not out there AFAICT.

It feels like between this and the prevalence of scam calls, the FCC has been asleep at the wheel for 20 years. There's some signs of the "sleeping dragon" waking up, but I fear all that will get walked back under the next administration.

Bonus good read on the topic:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/02/why-arent-police-doi...

"Love of the game", Jesus Christ.

The video of the Wichita shooting was, to me, the most clear cut example of how poorly police can respond to a swatting call. Guy comes out to his porch, having no idea what's going on, and within only a few seconds of time and 2 commands to show hands and walk toward the police, is shot and killed.

I should have been more clear about the question. I am wondering how many of the calls made by THIS GUY resulted in actual swat deployments, how many got someone shot or killed, etc. That gives a scale of the severity of the crime. Like if you fatally shoot someone, that is murder. If you shoot them and they survive, or if you shoot and miss, that's attempted murder and you tend to get a lighter sentence than if you kill the person. It's not an extraneous detail.

The guy in the article obviously belongs in jail. The question is how far up the scale he went in terms of actual damage and injury caused. It's just like if I read an article about Joe pleading guilty to shooting Fred, and facing 20 years in jail, but the article doesn't say whether Fred survived the shooting. I'm not out to make a big moral judgment either way, and I have no stake in it, but it's a natural question for a reader to ask.

Lol they charged the indended swatting victim but not the police officer.

Even if nobody died, it depends how you want to classify intentionally swatting someone. 50 counts of attempted murder? 50 counts of inciting violence? 50 counts of assault?

Well, the prosecutors would decide that, and preferably announce what they decided along with the underlying facts. Then people reading the news article would weigh the info for themselves. That's at least part of why we have news articles in the first place.