Swatting (true story)

He was driving home from work one evening and when he pulled onto his lazy suburban street he saw at least a dozen local police department and Swat tactical vehicles parked haphazardly surrounding his home. The house lights were blazing and the front door was bashed wide open. Officers were crawling everywhere.

His mind immediately tracked where his three children would be at that moment...

When he pulled up the officers immediately started questioning him. After some time everything was beginning to sort out.

Someone had called in a 911 call stating that that there had been shots fired and someone was laying on the floor bleeding at his home.

It’s called “swatting”—making a hoax call to 9-1-1 to draw a response from law enforcement, usually a SWAT team.

He started making phone calls to insure his children were safely at their mother's house & found everyone there was in turmoil since the neighbors had already contacted them about the craziness that was happening at his home.

It was a harrowing night and the aftermath took months to work through.

The person that perpetrated the hoax, did wind up in psychiatric care & there is now a restraining order in place protecting him and all his extended family.

While this happened a couple of years ago, this man is an average Joe. Nice neighborhood. This incident changed his (our) world. He is my younger brother. What made me think about this again? This week he & his family got caught in the middle of yet another harrowing experience. which I will share next week. We are still processing everything.

We talk about situational awareness, but there is no way we can even begin to imagine all the possibilities of “what if”.

The most we are able to do and work through the scenarios we can think of. It's the same with preparing. We try to think through the most likely situations.

But the reality is we don't really know. We can only be as prepared as we possibly can be. Whether it is economic collapse, a pandemic, EMP or vampires we do the best we can.

More on “swatting” from the F.B.I. "The Crime of Swatting Has RealConsequences”

What you see here on my blog and on facebook is original work (and pictures) that I (Perky Prepping Gramma) actually do myself. I simply share my journey on preparing. If you liked this article, please feel free to like me (Perky Prepping Gramma) on facebook & keep up to date on things I post. I appreciate the support. Thank you.