NJ Anti-Swatting Assemblyman Gets Swatted

lpd swatBy Ron Benvenisti. Last week, TLS reported in an article titled ‘“Quijano Warns of Dangers of “Swatting,” Urges Parents to Talk to Their Kids to Help Prevent More Serious Hoaxes.”

On very same same day, April 9 2015, Assemblyman Paul D. Moriarty, who sponsored the anti-swatting bill introduced last November, which would increase penalties for “false public alarm” (the legalese name for swatting) was ordered out of his house where he was greeted by guns and cops in flak jackets. Moriarty told NJ.com that he was at home, working on his tax return, when he got a call from police dispatch, asking if everything was OK at his house. He said everything was fine and asked why they were concerned. The dispatcher said the police had received a report of a shooting at his address. The dispatcher asked Moriarty to describe what he was wearing and to step outside the house. He told NJ.com:

“I look out my front door. There’s six cop cars. They have the street closed off. They have helmets, flak jackets and rifles. I walk out and walk towards them. They motion me to keep walking towards them. The minute I walked out the door, I was still on the phone with the dispatch person, I said ‘I think I’ve just been swatted.’ It just then occurred to me what happened.”

In the TLS article, Assembly Homeland Security and State Preparedness Chair Annette Quijano (D-Union) warned about the dangers of “swatting” and urged parents to talk to their children about the issue after a string of recent hoax incidents in New Jersey drew large-scale law enforcement responses. Swatting is the practice of making a hoax call to 9-1-1 to draw a response from law enforcement, usually a SWAT team. The individuals who engage in this activity, many of whom are teens and twenty-somethings with ties to the online gaming community who use “spoofing”apps to make it appear that the emergency call is coming from the victim’s phone with the intent of getting armed law enforcement or other emergency responders to descend on a victim.

Chairwoman Quijano cited recent swatting incidents in New Jersey including a gaming shop in Clifton where a crowd of 30 gamers were having fun at a PlayStation tournament suddenly found themselves staring at shotguns and machine guns and being handcuffed by police in riot gear.

Following the video game store swatting, Assemblyman Moriarty told NJ.com that the penalties for this crime have got to be strengthened:

“Under current law, somebody could end up only serving probation. If you are calling out the SWAT team, and they show up, guns blazing, at some innocent person’s home, and they end up having to break the door down, I think you should go to jail for that. You’re putting lots of people in danger… I’m thinking someone read about the bill and some sick, evil person thought it would be funny to send the police to my house on one of these false reports.”

Now that Assemblyman Moriarty has first-hand experience he’s recommending upgrading the crime from third degree to second degree, boosting the current 3-5 years potential prison time to 5-10 years, and increasing the fine to a maximum of $150,000.

As always, feel free to contact me at rbenvenistiATintegrissecurity.com, a proud partner of the New York/New Jersey Electronic Crimes Task Force and FBI InfraGard. For free security tools and insights visit: https://www.integrissecurity.com/SecurityTools and http://integrissecurityinsights.blogspot.com/

 

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