Patrick Tomlinson and his wife, Niki Robinson, have experienced a horrifying ordeal in Milwaukee with their home being “swatted” more than 40 times and also receiving false bomb threats in three states, leading law enforcement to point guns at them. The incident seems to have increased , particularly on college campuses. For instance, within one week in April, universities like Clemson, Florida, Boston, Harvard, Cornell, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Oklahoma and Middlebury College had been targeted by swatters. The FBI has established a national database to combat this issue in May. Scott Schubert, the Chief from the bureau’s Criminal Justice Information Services headquarters in Clarksburg, West Virginia, stated that the bureau hopes to gain a “common operating picture of what's going on across the country” through this effort. He further added that the FBI is “taking every step to monitor this national problem and help however we can.”
Security expert Lauren R. Shapiro, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, explained that swatting involves individuals making fraudulent 911 calls with reports of serious-level criminal threats or violent situations like bomb threats, hostage situations, or killings—all to fool the police into raiding the home or business of someone who isn't committing a crime. Unfortunately, swatting can have deadly consequences—as shown in 2021, when Mark Herring died of a heart attack during a police response to his Tennessee home, and in 2017, when an officer killed 28-year-old Andrew Finch in Wichita due to a false report of a homicide and hostage situation. To their credit, SWAT teams are very well-trained and fatalities from swatting are rare.
No central agency has tracked swatting incidents or suspects in the U.S., but it is estimated that there are 1,000 swatting incidents domestically each year, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, and that each incident costs at least $10,000 to affected communities in fees like investigations, property repairs and counseling, before follow-up work. The technology available today can mask a caller's real voice, phone number, or IP address, or make their false report sound more credible. The new FBI database should help to give a common picture of what is happening across America, which will help to learn from the swatting cases.
Tomlinson has faced considerable difficulties ever since he tweeted his opinion about the comedian Norm Macdonald in 2018. Investigations by The Daily Beast revealed that the tweet had attracted a horde of trolls as well as stalkers, who defamed Tomlinson and his wife through a website of their own in addition to Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. The harassers also created cloned sites to quickly move to a different forum when their initial site got blocked. Since the article was published, the attacks have become even more severe, physically and digitally. Tomlinson and his wife have experienced 43 swatting incidents and the latter's elderly parents were also victims of swatting. The couple does not feel secure in their residence, citing an example when a number of officers barged in and handcuffed Tomlinson on his own porch. Aside from misusing emergency services, their natural gas provider, We Energies, had their heat cut off twice, including the most recent incident in March. False bomb threats using their name were sent to an Irish pub, an American Family Field, and the Riverside Theater, and this year, the couple had to buy home security systems and personal defense weapons to protect themselves. They even filed a lawsuit against the website owners, but the case was eventually withdrawn due to an unsuccessful subpoena sent to the web services provider, Cloudflare. This has resulted in the couple incurring more than $50,000 in legal fees, enough to possibly deplete them financially.
Despite the first recorded case of swatting happening in 2002, there is still no specific law criminalizing the act in the U.S., says John Jay's Shapiro. Without a statute, there are no designated resources or training to investigate swatting incidents, or for 911 dispatchers to differentiate between real and false reports. Due to this, most cases are prosecuted under the False Information and Hoaxes statute, Section 1038, while other related statutes such as those involving interstate threats involving explosives or communications which include extortion or threats to kidnap or injure are occasionally applied. Shapiro believes the consequence for perpetrators is usually too minimal when compared to the impact felt by victims.
The Milwaukee Police Department is now aware of the situation and during their most recent swatting incident, only left a visiting card, as opposed to pointing guns at the couple as before. According to Robinson, it is unacceptable for police officers to be unaware of swatting and for departments not to have policies and training around it. The department has since released a statement duty-bound to respond to calls for service in order to ensure that no one is in danger.
In November 2020, Tomlinson filed a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center, however, he never received a reply so he went to the Milwaukee branch of the FBI in person a few months later to file a new one. They already had a file on him due to a false bomb threat made into a hotel outside of Detroit before his scheduled presentation titled, "Elon Musk is Full of S---." The special agent assigned to evaluate his case requested more evidence from his family by email on rare occasions, but have yet to interview either him or his wife, or arrest those involved. The FBI recommends anyone who is threatened by swatting to get in touch with their local law enforcement.
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