For those who’ve never heard of “swatting” before, it’s when someone calls the police and lies about a horrible crime taking place in the hopes of seeing a SWAT team descend on an unsuspecting target, usually someone they don’t like. In the last few years, it’s become a fairly common occurrence in the gaming scene. Just two months ago, professional Fortnite player Kyle ‘Bugha’ Giersdorf was swatted during a livestream. Unfortunately, he’s not the latest Fortnite pro with that questionable distinction anymore.
This week has seen the warmup rounds for next month’s Fortnite Champion Series, the first since Fortnite’s major Chapter 2 relaunch, and several of the game’s best players have been hashing it out in preparation. On Saturday, 14-year-old Cody “Clix” Conrad was livestreaming his team’s matches, playing the game like he normally did. Then, in the middle of an intense late-match shootout, he all of a sudden told his team that he had to go, saying “Police are here. Yo, I just got swatted.”
This naturally led to a great deal of shock and confusion from both the livestream’s viewers and Conrad’s teammates, who had to keep playing while he was away. Thankfully, however, no one was hurt during the incident, and Conrad’s team even went on to win that match (he had already been eliminated when the police arrived, so his sudden departure didn’t impede them at all).
Everything turned out okay in the end, but the incident still left Conrad shaken, leading him to condemn swatting on social media, writing, “Swatting is so disgusting, what’s the point of it.” It’s an understandable reaction since not everyone who’s been swatted has been as lucky as him and Giersdorf. In one of the most infamous and tragic swatting incidents, police shot and killed Andrew Finch, a 28-year-old father of two, after a $1.50 bet between serial-swatter Tyler Barriss and another Call of Duty player got out of hand and led to him calling the police. Worst of all, Finch had nothing to do with the bet, as Barriss had supplied police with the wrong address.
This has resulted in anti-swatting legislation being passed in Finch’s home state of Kansas last year, and this year Barriss was sentenced to twenty years in prison for his role in it. One would have hoped that would have dissuaded any other potential swatters from trying anything, but if Giersdorf and now Conrad are any indication, it might be a while before this dangerous prank becomes a thing of the past.
Source: Dexerto
