Have You Heard of Swatting?
By celticeagle
@celticeagle (191530)
Boise, Idaho
July 19, 2026 7:19pm CST
I heard this story on YouTube. Pete Buttigieg, a politician and was our Secretary of Transportation from 2021 to 2025, is a what I would term as a good man. He lives with his husband in Michigan, and they have four-year-old twins. Here is what happened to him and his family:
A CPS worker knocked on his door one day. He was told that he might pose a threat to his children. He had to have his children that he shares with his partner, Chastain, removed from the home. The two had to have their relatives come and get the children because he couldn't be alone with them until there was a forensic interview with them as well as Pete and his husband.
Later police said they had received an anonymous tip and had to follow up on it. They found the accusations to be false. This is called 'swatting' and is "a form of criminal harassment that involves deceiving an emergency service (it means as hoaxing an emergency services dispatcher) into sending a police or emergency response team to another person's location. This is achieved by false reporting of a serious law enforcement".
The LBGTQ community, as of August of 2025, had about 12,000 hate crime incidents. Crimes like this have gone up 14% from prior years. There have been 10 deaths.
I think these people have a right to live as they wish. If others are so biased and ignorant that they can't abide having gays living near them then they need help. I have known several in my live and none of them had any meanness in them. All were kind and loving people. Why can't others leave them alone? Why is it that people who might be different have to be chastised?
I hope they find the anonymous caller.
8 people like this
8 responses
@celticeagle (191530)
• Boise, Idaho
20 Jul
Someone has too much time on their hands.
3 people like this
@NJChicaa (127400)
• United States
20 Jul
@celticeagle The building principal said that the FBI or whoever tracked the calls back to Ethiopia but that's as far as they got.
4 people like this
@DaddyEvil (175973)
• United States
20 Jul
Yes, I know what swatting is and why gamers get swatted. They play better than the hater can so the hater calls the police and tells them somebody has killed somebody else in the home. There were three or four incidents like that in Missouri last week? I think. All were proved falso but the police are tracing the call back through the cell towers trying to find the person that called in the report. When/If they find the person, they sue them for the cost of the wasted police/fire/ambulance time and resources. One guy had to pay for his swatting of another gamer...
The problem is that kids are getting smarter and used a cellphone that was disconnected except it could still call 911 to report a crime. Literally, anyone could have made the call from those phones so there isn't anyone to sue to recoup the losses.
We give our old phones to the police who make sure I've blanked all the personal information off them and then turn the phones over to the directors of "safe" houses. The phones aren't set up to make any calls except to 911 and can't receive calls.
2 people like this
@celticeagle (191530)
• Boise, Idaho
20 Jul
It's horrible what happened to Pete and his family. I wish they had a way to find these swatters.
2 people like this
@DaddyEvil (175973)
• United States
20 Jul
@celticeagle Me, too. It's a pain for everyone in the house when it happens and wastes so much money!
1 person likes this
@sissy15 (13266)
• United States
21h
We had that issue at my son's school recently. My son messaged me that he was scared and that they were under lockdown because of a bomb threat or something similar. They actually found that the person who made the threat was actually in a state across the country. That same day, I guess the same person made the same threat to several Ohio schools. Our local zoo has also had a few of these calls. My husband had a coworker who got swatted a few years ago when a kid who didn't like his daughter decided to swat the family. It's frustrating and a misuse of emergency services. It makes me so mad. My kid had to go through a whole scary experience because of someone who thought it would be funny to swat several of our schools, schools that were nowhere near them. Maybe they thought they'd be more likely to get away with it from across the country, I don't know.
2 people like this
@celticeagle (191530)
• Boise, Idaho
3h
We used to get bomb scares all the time when I was in school.
1 person likes this
@FourWalls (87809)
• United States
13h
It’s funny…my dear mother of blessed memory said that she saw someone dumping trash and called to report it. The police department insisted that she come down, give her name, address, phone number, etc etc etc…to report a litterbug! I don’t know why people can accuse others of horrible crimes anonymously if you have to give a blood sample to report someone tossing a gum wrapper out the car window. 
I also have a question about “anonymous caller.” I’ve accidentally called 911 before (“butt dial”), and they’ve CALLED ME BACK saying they had a hang-up from my number.
I also have a question about “anonymous caller.” I’ve accidentally called 911 before (“butt dial”), and they’ve CALLED ME BACK saying they had a hang-up from my number.2 people like this
@JudyEv (385143)
• Rockingham, Australia
2h
This would have been an absolute nightmare. What a terrible thing to do to someone.
