Two More 'SWAT' Calls in California -- One Involving a 12-Year-Old Gamer (ktla.com)

In January an online gamer in California was arrested after at leat 20 fake emergency calls to police, one leading to a fatal shooting in Kansas. But this week in California there's been at least two more fake calls:

• A 12-year-old gamer heard a knock at his door Sunday -- which turned out to be "teams of Los Angeles police officers and other rescue personnel who believed two people had just hung themselves." The Los Angeles Police Department "said there's no way to initially discern swatting calls from actually emergencies, so they handle every scenario as if someone's life is in danger," according to the Los Angeles Times. The seventh-grader described it as "the most terrifying thing in my life."

• 36-year-old David Pearce has been arrested for falsely reporting an emergency at a Beverly Hills hotel involving "men with guns" holding him hostage. A local police captain later said that the people in the room had not made the call and in fact might have been asleep through much of the emergency. The Los Angeles Times reports that there's roughly 400 'SWATting' cases each year, according to FBI estimates, adding that "Some experts have said police agencies need to take the phenomenon more seriously and provide formal training to dispatchers and others to better recognize hoax callers."

Meanwhile, in the wake of a fatal shooting in Wichita, Kansas lawmakers have passed a new bipartisan bill increasing the penalties for SWAT calls. If a fake call results in a fatality -- and the caller intentionally masks their identity -- it's the equivalent of second-degree murder. "The caller must be held accountable," one lawmaker told the Topeka Capital-Journal.

Comments

Stupid; the POLICE are responsible for a shooting

[Anonymous Coward]

You should NOT rely on data from UNCONFIRMED and potentially unreliable sources to initiate violence against another human being. This is a training issue- not an issue with someone placing a fake 911 call. What this does is it misplaces blame and diverts responsibility for shooting someone to that other than the shooter. The person who placed the fake call should be held responsible for abusing resources- not a murder committed by a poorly trained or over-reactive officer. But no, we can't ever hold the people with guns responsible for there own poor decisions, officers in blue can't ever make mistakes. They're our "heroes". The sad fact is government kidnaps and murders more people every year than all the serial murders and terrorists combined. The problem isn't prank calls or terrorism. It's poor training and an excessive number of police and military personal.