Usually, the worst you can expect a Call of Duty opponent to do is to be a little salty after losing a match — maybe they will curse a little, maybe they will rate you badly on Xbox Live or something. But calling a SWAT team on you? Dang, bro.
The New York Post reports that a prank caller used Skype to lie to the police, claiming that he was 17 year-old Rafael Castillo — and that he had just killed his mother and might kill more.
The cops took this supposed threat seriously, and they sent in more than 60 officers with weapons to Castillo’s home in Long Beach. There was even a special operations unit there, along with choppers and fire trucks. But during the two hour stand-off, the police found that the mother was alive. It became obvious that something was amiss.
The police tried to call down Rafael Castillo for twenty minutes, but he was too engrossed in his game to hear them. (Of course he was.) Eventually Castillo did come out and police could see there was no danger, thankfully.
This is a small taste of what this mess looked like:
Police say that the disgruntled gamer who called the prank in probably tracked Castillo’s IP address to figure out his home address. Earlier, Castillo had received threats from his Call of Duty opponent, who was upset that he had lost against Castillo.
The prank pulled by the Call of Duty player over Skype may sound familiar, as “swatting/” — calling the police on someone — is an old griefing method that unfortunately uses up a lot of valuable resources. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.
(Image via New York Post)
Call of Duty loser calls in SWAT team hoax on kid who beat him [New York Post]
To contact the author of this post, write to patricia@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter @patriciaxh.
Comments
12 responses to “Call Of Duty Player Loses Game, Calls SWAT Team”
Bloody Squeakers
That’s hilarious! But yes, very irresponsible. Hahaha.
Nothing hilarious about it. How many thousands of dollars were wasted getting 60 officers, helicopters in the air for no reason? Or what about how indirect cost of keeping these people from doing real police work, or preventing another concurrent violent crime?
Swatting transcends the usual juvenile bullshit. Say what you will about the American police state, but it just one light gun or a twitchy cop to put a bullet in a civilian. The CoD kids who pull shit like this need to get strung up or they get emboldened seeing their handiwork given front page stories like this.
Thanks Dad.
Well, as a Finn, I have a wild idea, kinda like thinking “outside the box”:
How about if Americans wouldn’t send three hundred thousand battalions of police officers with fully automated RPG launchers and Sherman tanks to every phoned in threat they get? Just sayin’.
Is it a huge over reaction to send 60 people?
Still, swatting is a massively dick move.
American SWAT teams are getting deployed far too often these days, I’ve seen some worrying statistics. They even respond to non violent events sometimes.
It’s one of those things, the threat says he will kill more so police dont know if there are hostages inside. The need to respond forcefully and treat all threats like a mass killing spree because unfortunately, the kid could have been armed to the teeth and willing to kill officers.
Yep, I think it’s actually quite responsible to send in a strong police force over something this big.
I mean, if you worked at the the police department and actually received a message like this at work, you’d take it quite seriously. Even if real every 1 out of 10 times it happens, that 1 time which it actually does happen are real lives and real people at stake.
Thing is, this particular ‘prank’ can get people killed if there’s any kind of misunderstanding to how they respond.
Remember only a few months ago in the US an officer shot a kid who answered the door with a gamepad in their hand. The officer thought it was a gun. And they were just there to talk to a guy about his parole or something, not respond to a violent offender threatening to kill.
‘Swatting’ needs to be punished with jail time at a minimum.
I blame this on the competitive nature in recent years that suggest you can’t lose and you have to win. Anything less should result in torture.
People need to learn you can’t win all the time and really need to learn ways of dealing with the loss in a better manner.
It might be hyperbolic, but the person calling the cops should be charged with something akin to attempted manslaughter. It is only a matter of time until someone dies due to this sort of crap.
I should hope they catch that person and make him pay for the lost resources. Perhaps he should be shown the error of his ways by being taken to the crime scenes of actual victims that police were not able to get to in time because of his actions.
People have to realize that those FPS games are terrible and not really even games. They are statistics generators. You WILL die x amount of times in a deathmatch. You are simply establishing the ratio, and you are conned into thinking you are playing a game. silly people.
In proper FPS games you get a ‘choice’ of whether or not your going to die, as a proper FPS provides arenas that are bigger than a bathroom.