The day after Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows stripped Donald Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot, a person called police on Dec. 29 to report a fake burglary at her home in Manchester, Maine. Two days earlier, a man called police, with a false report that he had shot his wife and gave police the address for Republican Senator Rick Scott's home in Naples, Florida.
On Christmas Day, a caller to a state suicide hotline invented a fake shooting to try to to get a SWAT team sent to raid Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's home in Rome, Georgia. Separate fake calls that same day sent police to the homes of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, and Rep. Brandon Williams, a Republican from Upstate New York.
A rash of so-called swatting calls, in which pranksters make illegal and dangerous fake emergency calls in hopes of sending armed police to raid a person’s home, have targeted political figures from across the political spectrum, raising concerns that the dangerous practice will be increasingly being used as a weapon of political retaliation and intimidation as the 2024 political season kicks off. Here’s what you need to know about swatting.
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