Posted on 04/23/2015 3:08:56 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Officers in Framingham, Mass. swarmed a home Tuesday morning with guns drawn, shouted for its residents to come out, searched inside — and then realized the bust was a bust.
This home was the latest victim of "swatting," a prank where an anonymous caller tricks police into sending a heavy presence to a quiet home that has no crime happening inside.
In this case, Framingham resident Irandi Waighe and her 96-year-old mother-in-law — who is a double amputee in a wheelchair — were the ones awakened to a false alarm.
The call came in around 8 a.m. from a blocked number. The caller, who identified himself as "Peter," spoke in broken English while telling police he was holding his family hostage and was going to shoot himself, the MetroWest Daily News reported.
Police rushed to the home, prepared to handle a hostage situation. A confused neighbor filmed the scary scene, in which some officers were holding machine guns.
Waighe and her mother-in-law awoke in a panic and were as confused as everyone else in the neighborhood.
"'Wow, so many police. Wow, so many cops. What's happening?'" Waighe told MyFoxBoston, recalling her thoughts when she saw the officers outside.
But once she stepped out and let the officers come in for a search, everyone realized it was a prank.
"Of all places, why'd they pick this?" said Waighe's bewildered mother-in-law, who didn't give her name.
t's unclear how many officers overall responded to the ersatz emergency.
Framingham Police have no idea who pranked the home or why, according to MyFoxBoston. A spokesman for the department was not available for comment.
Framingham Police received another swatting call earlier this month, in which officers handcuffed a suspect who supposedly threatened to harm cops before they realized it was a hoax, the MetroWest Daily News reported.
In recent years, the homes of Tom Cruise, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Rihanna and several other celebrities saw swatting situations.
Someone gathering intel on how SWAT teams operate call this one in?
How easy is it for an ordinary prankster to hide their phone number or email address from the police? Doesn’t that require some sophistication?
I see a couple of clues there. Could someone dig into their pockets and buy them for the Framingham Police Dept.?
if you buy one of those throw away phones, paid for with cash, how can they know who you are?......
It’s not hard to block your caller ID at all. Any SWATtable action phoned in from a blocked caller should alert the thugs with badges to maybe do a little investigating before terrifying innocent people in the middle of the night.
What clues?
Swatting is not a prank, it is attempted murder-by-proxy
I understand it is easy to spoof a phone number with Vonage.
The SWATTing incidents I’ve read about before this one usually involve someone with a high profile that has angered the wrong people, AKA leftists.
This incident seems to be out of the ordinary which suggests to me someone with bad intentions, like jihadis, did this in order to gather some intel.
What do you bet the sons of bitches didn't even check to see who lived at the address.
I guess a simple knock on the door is just too 1950's
Thanks for the picture of a quarter, but I still don’t see any clues.
One possibility, to be sure. Others would be to get the police into a bad shoot for the purpose of pumping the bad press sure to follow, or for declaring another 'racial incident' depending on the race of the victims.
And Irandi Waighe and her 96-year-old mother-in-law — who is a double amputee in a wheelchair.
I remember when Framingham was...oh, nevermind. It was always a degenerate dump with a couple of nice areas.
Nah, if the perpetrators were looking for a bad shoot, they’d have picked someone who had a couple of good size dogs. (Okay, that’s sorta not a joke, is it?)
While many of us might revile the practice, shooting dogs seems to be standard fare.
Thank YOU.
Someday soon, somebody’s going to get killed with this ‘prank’. Then it’ll be ‘murder by cop’. If someone sets up a situation so that an officer has no choice but to shoot him, it’s ‘suicide by cop’. I don’t see the difference.
I’m shocked that we don’t already have a rash of dead dogs and burned houses from this BS crap.
I really hope that cops are starting to get worried about this, too.
bump
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