A popular Twitch.tv livestreamer had some unwanted guest stars yesterday evening — the police, summoned by a troll who phoned in a report of someone threatening others with a knife. You can see it play out here.
The guy pointing the camera at the cops above is Swifty, who has more than 150,000 followers on his Twitch.tv feed and routinely streams his exploits in World of Warcraft. Yesterday, though, someone was in a disruptive mood. Swifty was trolled by a pizza delivery sent to his door and then, much more seriously, two calls that sent police to the premises.
The first police response is above; it’s hard to hear the off-mic discussion between Swifty and the authorities with the music soundtrack and the narrator playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. But he brings the cops on camera and explained what he was doing and why the sheriff’s office might have been called to his home for a bogus call.
“Every restaurant within 10 miles from us — we’re blacklisted,” says a voice, either Swifty or a production assistant. “Seriously, would you guys like a slice?” he offers.
“Nah, we’re good brother, appreciate it,” says another voice off mic, apparently one of the deputies. “Have a good one, guys.”
“They reported a police disturbance; you guys can’t do that, man,” Swifty groans, catching himself before he swears. “That’s really bad, guys; you guys can’t do that.”
That wasn’t the end of it. In this video, Swifty is disturbed by repeated doorbell rings. Again, it’s hard to pick up what is said off-mic, but Swifty asks “can you trace that call?”
“They called and said we were threatening some dude with a knife,” Swifty says, getting back on camera. The police were allowed to search the premises to determine nothing was wrong. The authorities responding to this call appear to be different from the first group, as someone re-explains the camera setup and livestreaming to them.
On his Twitter feed shortly after the incident, Swifty said he was filling out paperwork with the Sheriff’s office and cutting the streaming session with his teammates short.
.@hotted89 and I are on our way home. I am ok. I wont be livestreaming any more tonight, Im going to spend time with family and friends.
— Swifty (@SwiftyiRL) December 4, 2013
Based on whats happening right now, i can say that the person who caused all this is in some serious truble.
— Swifty (@SwiftyiRL) December 4, 2013
Then this morning he tweeted a picture of a Seminole County Sheriff’s Office vehicle and said he was on his “2nd day of filling out reports.”
“SWATting” is the slang term for this kind of troll behaviour; it’s not funny, and apparently has been such a problem in Washington state that legislators there were considering passing a law criminalizing this specific conduct. In one of the most prolific examples of SWATting, in 2011, authorities descended on the residence of an Xbox Live moderator in Sammamish, Wash., on a report that “two armed Russian males” had shot a person inside, taken hostages, and were armed with bombs. The call was false.
Let me repeat what I said last year. What makes SWATting so pernicious is the fact that public safety agencies take these reports seriously. It is their job. If they don’t and it turns out someone was being threatened with a knife and someone is hurt or killed, that’s a fundamental failure of their duty and the public trust.
Yeah, it’s a bitch Swifty had two encounters with the cops and a paperwork episode stretching two days. But if it leads to the authorities finding this troll and making an example of him, so much the better.
Comments
11 responses to “Cops Show Up Live On Warcraft Stream After Troll Phones In Fake Report”
Find him. Charge him. Lock him up for a while. Make him also reimburse the state for any lost monies spent on this. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Glad to see the cops were good natured about it and Swifty is taking it in his stride. Good level of maturity all round. Well done.
some people can be real douches
So it isn’t already illegal to file a fake police report of someone threatening someone with a knife?
Yea I was surprised to read that too.
My guess is that it counts as a summary offense and they’re looking to make it a misdemeanor or felony.
There was a law passed in Minnesota earlier this year that classes repeated SWATting as a “misdemeanor or gross misdemeanor” and as a felony if the fake call results in serious injury.
It might mean specifically doing it to harass someone, as opposed to just filing a fake report.
If they don’t rock up, it’s OK. It’s been ruled in US courts that police are under no legal obligation to protect you from anything/anyone.
There are so many reasons why it would be bad to allow people to sue police if they failed to protect you that I doubt I could list them all.
If the police get ten prank calls and one real one, and can only respond to one call at a time, which one do they pick?
If you have a lone gunman attacking a crowd, does every member of the crowd get to sue the police for any injuries or “mental anguish”?
If a police station is too busy to respond to every call do you want them *not* answering the phone because somebody could sue them for failing to respond?
If you have people suing the police under any of these situations, where does the money come from? How do they respond to future reports when the entire police budget is tied up in court cases? The phrase “feedback effect” would appear to apply here.
Yeah, when you are being raped and the police to a drive-by and everything looks OK and they don’t even stop, yeah, don’t want them getting sued.
Or when you are being attacked with a knife in a subway car and the two police retreat and lock themselves in another car, yep – waste of taxpayer money if the police could be sued.
edit – these are cases where it has been ruled that police do not have to protect you, even though their motto is “to protect and serve”.
how is something like this not already legal on a Federal level? how messed in the head would you have to be to do this and think its funny?
I really hope the dude responsible does some time in lockup so Bubba can have some quality time with his sweet meats. Shit like this is fucking pathetic.
This is why we can never have nice things :\
I wouldn’t even want to call this trolling. It’s just general dickery.