Presented for your viewing pleasure is the shocking live feed footage of 10 incidences of streamers being raided by SWAT teams, being Swatted. 10 examples of people’s lives being invaded by the heavy hand of the law in response to fake 911 calls.

Swatting (or being swatted) is the practice of calling in a fake emergency call to police in order to provoke a reaction from the authorities, generally leading to a Swat team being dispatched upon your target. This disturbing practice has been given an even more sadistic twist in recent times, watching the swatting happen via your victims live feed.

People streaming video game footage with a webcam insert of themselves, a streamer, seem to be the favoured target of swatters at the moment. In one case the perpetrator of the swatting even rubs salt in the wound by displaying the message ‘F The Police’ on the targets screen while the police are there looking at it.

The last half of 2014 saw a surge in the incidence of Swatting, especially streamer swatting which allows the unfolding SWATTING to be seen as it happens. Since mid-2014 WhiteBoy7thst, Kootra, coL.n0thing, celebhart42, Jagrawrr, FaZe Jev, BigFoltz, Zlippay, Laxboyyy and an unnamed Bungie executive have been swatted in this way, with most of the streams of the events still available to watch on YouTube.

In 2013 celebrities seemed to be the swatting target of choice with Miley Cyrus, Simon Cowell, Ashton Kutcher, Justin Beiber, Tom Cruise and the Kardashians all being swatted within a couple of months.

With the FBI reporting that there are 400 swatting attacks a year authorities (around the world) are taking swatting very seriously. TeAM Crucifix or Die member Mathew Tollis was arrested Sept 3 2014 and now faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. January 14, 2015 saw 35 year old Jason Allen Neff sentenced to five years in prison and he has been ordered to pay $79,440 in restitution’s for swatting.

Possibly one of the scariest impressions given when you see the 10 swatting incidents together is just how serious the Swat teams take these incidents. Seeing all 10 incidents also makes us wonder if there is more to this phenomenon than simple pranks perpetrated by random trolls. Is there more to the Swatting phenomenon? Could it be a tool for people with really very bad intentions?

Reference: Swatting – Wikipedia