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Online threat — but SWAT team raids wrong house
MSNBC
Imagine you’re sitting at home, comfortable on the couch, watching the Food Network, when all of a sudden a heavily armed SWAT team breaks down your door and storms into your living room.
That’s what happened to 18-year-old Stephanie Milan, who was watching TV in her family’s Evansville, Ind., home last Thursday (June 22), when a team of police officers broke down her storm door — the front door was already open — and tossed a flash-bang stun grenade into the room.
“The front door was open,” Ira Milan, Stephanie’s grandfather and the property owner, told theEvansvile Courier & Press. “To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive.”
Turns out, however, that the SWAT team had the address wrong.
The Courier & Press said the police had been investigating “anonymous and specific online threats made against police and their families on the website topix.com,” and had obtained a search warrant for the Milan house. An Evansville police officer said one of the threats that came from the Milan household mentioned explosives and said, “Evansville is going to feel the pain.”
Whoever made these threats, the Courier & Press said, likely remotely routed them through the Milan’s open Wi-Fi connection, which means it could have been used from an outside location. It’s possible the Milans, or specifically Stephanie, were targets of “swatting,” a particularly nasty prank by which the perpetrator — often through hoax 911 calls — tricks a SWAT team into raiding a house of his choosing.
Last July, Parry Aftab, a prominent Internet security advocate, became the victim of such an attack. Police swarmed her northern New Jersey home after pranksters placed a 911 call through a computer that cloned her number and said a man had killed four people and was holding another hostage in her house.
Doc
July 1st, 2012
Maybe we need our own form of sharia law…when we catch someone that initiates a bogus call like that we cut off their mouse hand! That should slow the little fux off for a while.
scr_north
July 1st, 2012
Her Grandad is a master of understatement.
“The front door was open, To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive”.
In any event, never ever leave your wi-fi unprotected as the result could very well be trying to explain to the cops some bad behaviour by someone else.
John F.
July 1st, 2012
Funny how none of the recently SWATted conservative bloggers were mentioned in the PMSNBC article.
SgtZim
July 1st, 2012
I vote we NOT use the word “prankster” to describe the malevolent pricks that set up such an extremely dangerous attack by the police on innocent citizens.
vinnie f
July 1st, 2012
yeah, funny, heh heh, pretty nice life ya got there, hate to see anything happen to it
Mr. Pinko
July 1st, 2012
question: are the phone lines, that are being breached, land lines or cable lines?
Cruisin' Cat
July 1st, 2012
“Whoever made these threats”
Seems to me that in real police work, there is an investigation in which people, who have not necessarily committed a crime, are contacted and interviewed.
At some point AFTER that is done, it’s then determined as to whether or not a crime has been committed, and the warrant and gestapo tactics are even necessary.
House of Kell
July 1st, 2012
Somone out there NEEDS their ass whooped!!!
moarkdave
July 1st, 2012
@Cruisin’ Cat if it had been threats to just average citizens, they probably would have done that. But since the threats were against the police, then they will go the rough route. They will do whatever it takes to solve any crime against another police officer.