The FBI has launched a national database to track swatting incidents, a dangerous sort of prank call that has become more and more common in recent years.
Chief Scott Schubert with the bureau’s Criminal Justice Information Services headquarters told NBC News that the national online database was formed in May in response to a rise in swatting incidents. The collaborative effort — supported by hundreds of police departments and law enforcement agencies nationwide — will provide the bureau with “a common operating picture of what’s going on across the country.”
Schubert added, “We’re taking every step to monitor this national problem and help however we can.”
It marks the first time a central agency has tracked swatting incidents.
Swatting is a form of cyber harassment that typically involves a caller alerting law enforcement to an active shooter situation or some other sort of immediate danger that does not actually exist. The goal is to illicit a large police response which often includes the arrival of a SWAT team.
Though often described as a prank call, the results can be potentially devastating.
In 2021, Tennessee man Mark Herring died of a heart attack after a horde of heavily armored law enforcement officers descended on his home. Authorities were responding to a report that Herring killed a woman on the property. He was targeted in the swatting attack over his refusal to sell his Twitter handle, @Tennessee, police said.
And years earlier, in 2017, Andrew Finch was fatally shot by a Wichita police officer, who believed Finch had shot his father and was holding his mother and younger brother hostage. Tyler Barriss, an online gaming enthusiast, made the prank call, but mistakenly gave police Finch’s address thinking it belonged to a person he had feuded with over a $1 or $2 Call of Duty wager.
Celebrities like Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Tom Cruise have also been victims of swatting.
