Swatting—a dangerous trend in which pranksters fabricate emergency reports to get SWAT teams or other law enforcement to descend on a victim's home—has had deadly consequences. In 2020, a Tennessee man swatted for refusing to sell his Twitter handle died of a heart attack when heavily armed officers arrived at his house. In 2017, a Kansas man answering police on his front porch was fatally shot after a false report of a hostage situation. Even celebrities aren't immune: twice this year, Gordon Ramsay's Los Angeles home was swatted, most recently by a caller claiming he had shot two men—fortunately, Ramsay was out of the country at the time.
Tragedies like these highlight a critical question: Should a simple call to emergency services be enough to justify sending heavily armed officers into someone's home, or should stricter safeguards be required? The U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on that issue when it hears Case v. Montana on October 15. Case centers on a Montana Supreme Court ruling allowing police to enter a home without a warrant under a "community caretaking" exception to the Fourth Amendment.
