Man, times sure are changing. When I was a kid, a good prank was calling someone and asking for Seymour Butts or Anita Mann, which either makes me sound like I grew up in the ’50s or I’m a character from The Simpsons. These days, shit is getting serious – there’s apparently something called “swatting” that’s all the rage at the moment. Basically, kids (and unemployed adults with no common sense) call authorities to report a serious crime, hoping it’ll get a SWAT team on the scene. That’s it. There’s nothing else to it. I once called 911 accidentally as a kid and nearly shit myself, so I can’t imagine doing this deliberately, but that’s exactly what a 12-year-old did… to Ashton Kutcher.
From The Los Angeles Times:
A 12-year-old who allegedly made prank calls to police that in one incident sent officers rushing to actor Ashton Kutcher’s home was charged Thursday with making false bomb threats and other counts related to “swatting.”
The term “swatting” refers to prank calls reporting a violent crime with the aim of earning a tactical police response that may include a SWAT team.
The incident at Kutcher’s home on Arrowhead Drive occurred in early October. Police received the report through a TTY device, generally used by deaf people to type text over the telephone, and responded as if it were a true emergency.
They briefly held some workers there at gunpoint before reaching Kutcher and concluding it was a hoax.
The 12-year-old, whose name is not being released because of his age, also allegedly made a prank call to police about a week after the Kutcher incident, saying there was an emergency at a Wells Fargo Bank on Wilshire Boulevard, according to a news release from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
The boy is scheduled to be arraigned in Eastlake Juvenile Court on Friday and will face two felony counts each of making false bomb threats and computer intrusion, the district attorney’s office said.
When I was in 7th grade, some girl named Courtney called in a bomb threat to our middle school and we got to spend all afternoon out on the bleachers behind the football field while firemen combed the building. Nothing turned up and Courtney was expelled, and we never heard anything about her since. Let this be a lesson, pre-teens. No good comes from crime!
In all seriousness, swatting is stupid as hell and so pointless, I can’t even fathom how it became a thing. Not to mention that emergency workers have actual jobs to do and don’t need to put up with idiots who have nothing better to do than report fake crimes. Still, it’s kind of hilarious that this happened to Ashton because of the whole Punk’d thing and because he’s a toolbox who probably shit himself when the police turned up. I wonder if Mila was there at the time?
I know this kid is to young to pay for the states time but he should have to do community service until he is 18 !!!! If he does not complete community service like “Chris brown” they should keep track and on his 18th birthday all the time he did not do he should go straight to jail and do the remaining time !!!! Do not pass go do not collect $200 !!! Simple !!!! It will give him something to think about for along while !!!! My husband is a police officer and they don’t have time for nonsense !!! This is a serious matter and it happens more and more everyday !!!! It’s in the news a couple times a week of it happening to a bunch a people !!!! It’s like a game now !!!!! Time to send a message to this punks !!!!
I totally agree with the community service.
The best prank call I ever pulled off (and I was a pranker) lasted for over half an hour–I called this friend of a friend and told him, “You’re cat is on my ence.” Low and behold, he had a cat, he was a little weird, and was very upset by this accusation. W went through for a while; I told him my husband was going to be very upset if he saw his cat on our fence again. I’d ask him what the cat’s name was and then I’d tell him, “well, that’s what this cat responds to.” asked about the cat’s appearance, etc. etc. Finally, I told him to go stand in front of his living room window and “hold up your cat, so I can see it.” he put down the phone and a few minutes later returned and asked, “did you see me?” I told him no, so this time I told him to stand in front of his living room window w/o a shirt on…he was stunned, confused. Me and my friends were near to roaring. I hung up.
It still makes me crack up.
It loses something in translation. :l
Ha. I grew up in Spain, where my college (high school) shared the building with a police station and when I was doing my final two years there it was around the time of the Madrid bombings, plus Spain had its own domestic terrorism at the time (ETA). Everyone was on high alert which meant all bomb threats were regarded as true and high priority (we couldn’t use our mobile phones either because they had a phone frequency deactivator or something along those lines)… I can’t count the amount of times we had a bomb threat in the building go off ~~mysteriously~~ before an exam.