Probably.
By James @ Worry+Peace
It's a fad for gamers to prank each other in the US, but this dangerous branch of angst could cause some serious problems for an already overstretched UK police service.
If you're not familiar with Swatting, it might be worth listening to the Reply All podcast by gimlet media. It all spawned from the new channel know as 'live streaming' - you might recognise the company that championed this, Twitch TV, Amazon acquired them for a large chunk of cash.
Turns out, there are celebrities in the World of lifestream gaming. And some of their followers have decided the opportunity is too good to miss. Their goal is to capture a police raid - by SWAT teams, as they are known in the USA - on the little second screen which is recording the gamer's own face as they play, say, Call of Duty.
They do it by calling up the emergency line and acting out a confession of murder, hostage situation or threat of gun-crime violence. They are of course, pretending to be gamer they're playing the prank on. Police, having a responsibility to check out mass-murder and gun crime, naturally charge in tooled up for the raid. The joke, though, is usually on the cops.
Whilst it's a prank culture that's already taken root in the United States, it's yet to be noticed here in the UK. Either we don't have the gamers-with-ego celebs, or, heaven forbid, the kids just haven't thunk of it yet. Our guess, is it's the latter.
With police already over-stretched hunting for terrorists and other dastardly fiends, can they handle the potential drawn of armed response pranks? Unlikely.
Sadly, the question isn't now a matter of "when" Swatting will arrive on UK shores, it's more a question "how frequently". British police forces quietly notified the internet, this January, that a perp of Swatting was, in fact, an 18-yr-old from these very shores. Southport no less!
If you're a British gamer that likes to stream their head shots to the World, be careful next time the doorbell rings, you just never know when Swatting will come-a-knocking.