US Rep. Katherine Clark has for a few years now been on a crusade against shitty behaviour on the internet, from death threats made against women to hoax calls that send armed police to a victim’s home (also known as swatting). On Sunday night, Rep. Katherine Clark’s home was swatted.
The Boston Globe reports that while the Congresswoman and her husband were at home watching TV police blocked off their street, the flashing lights alerting Rep. Clark to the presence of “multiple officers, some with long guns, on my front lawn”.
The report says police told Rep. Clark “they had received a report of an active shooter at her house, where her 13- and 16-year-old boys had just gone to bed”.
For what it’s worth they were regular cops, not a SWAT team, and after speaking with Rep. Clark it became clear it was a hoax and everyone went home.
I’m thankful no one was hurt & grateful for the timeliness and professionalism of the #Melrose Police Dept. https://t.co/Zq2LYfdGTE
— Katherine Clark (@RepKClark) February 1, 2016
While swatting a Congresswoman is dumb at the best of times, this is a particularly notable example because last year Rep. Clark sponsored a bill that would make swatting a federal felony.
Hey, kids. You want to make swatting a federal felony? This is how you make swatting a federal felony.
Comments
16 responses to “Anti-Swatting US Congresswoman Gets Swatted”
Make it a federal felony already!
If some little douchebags go to juvie for a decent amount of time it will stop this nonsense once and for all.
Kids these days are so lame, back in my day we just put ourselves in danger for fun.
I like this.
I love your comment. Consider this worth 10 upvotes.
I thought I was at least a few more years off from agreeing with a “kids these days” comment, but here we are.
I personally believe they should get more than just Juvie…how about no internet usage for a period of time spent in juvie except for educational purposes? Would be hard to control I realise but you know…might make them see people as people rather than just voices or text over the internet.
Don’t give them internet at all, if them want to learn while they are in jail for ten years give them books!
Ah, everybody’s favourite hate group. Was the bill passed or at least moved along in a positive fashion?
Other media, and entertainment mediums can (and have shown to) distance and disengage themselves enough from the ‘dark web’ (though I hate that term) in ways that indicate they don’t want anything to do with it.
Gaming however, again and again and again, keeps stepping on more rakes than Sideshow Bob in how it totally capitulates to the absolute worst elements of the Internet. I’d be less angry about how the industry as a whole can’t seem to escape online hooliganism (cos it sure as hell looks like it doesn’t want to) if I wasn’t so passionate about games and how games MATTER.
The US recently, and especially this year, has been a sewer as far as ‘hey I can be dangerous and remain anonymous’ goes. It’s an election year over there as well, remember. American politics is on blast everywhere you look, it’s like living there.
I loathe how tethered gaming has become to America, this is yet another way it has.
Yeah, that’ll learn her, you fucktards.
Swatting is now like, a felony or something isn’t it? The perpetrators are going to be severely punished, right?
Probably not…
Swatting yourself seems dangerous to me, at least in the US.
When someone busts down your door they are going to be quick on the trigger and if they think you look like a threat you could end up dead.
Not yet a felony but in the process of approval which takes months to years.
I would be glorious justice if someone passed the laws which allow these losers to be prosecuted the harshest possible way. This happens often enough that something must be done about it.
Cue the false flag calls stating that she did this to herself
Australia had laws that covered this. Sedition (section 4): any act causing government, law, constitution, sovereign to be held in hatred and contempt. It covers the use of powers of government, law, constitution, sovereign in a way that passes people off.
I always thought dumb emergency services calls here could get you in trouble anyway, just to stop people doing dumb shit. I wonder what’s different in America, or if they just want to have a more serious charge for swatting compared to what laws they’ve already got.
In SA at least, I found this (www.lawstuff.org.au/sa_law/topics/article8):
That’s a bit outdated, there might be more current sources, but eh.
Fucking Americans. Seriously they should start putting call logging that they will only dispatch if the call is from registered landline or mobile.