As noted by JoeHoft.com, "Swatting" is the common term for the act of making a false emergency call to law enforcement, typically claiming a shooting, hostage situation, or bomb threat is occurring at a victim’s address. The goal is to provoke a large, armed police response, often involving SWAT teams, to that location. The caller typically uses tactics like spoofed phone numbers or voice-altering technology to remain anonymous, and these attacks are often repetitive and enacted by decentralized groups.
These attacks typically occur once a person has been "doxxed" having their personal information, i.e. work, home or school address etc., exposed to bad actors online.
Speaking with Scarano, Reyes described his own personal experience with the terror tactic that took place after his wife, an occupational therapist, was "doxxed" following an appearance by Reyes on "Fox & Friends" in which he criticized Connecticut schools for adopting transgender ideology and announced his children would be homeschooled.
“So we announced that we're pulling them, and the attacks began very quickly because I did ‘Fox and Friends,’ and Christian Broadcast Network, Newsmax. It was on Prager's show or might have been a Larry Elder Show… Like it just exploded. And so someone commented on one of these Facebook local Facebook groups, where it's basically like everyone knows what an HOA Karen is… Well, these Facebook groups are all just pretty much run by HOA Karen. So have you know they're on a power trip and they said ‘Well this guy is a horrible person,’ talking about me because, ‘He doesn't understand but there's a difference between a pedophile and a minor attracted person or a MAP,’ so they said, ‘You call yourself a Christian and you won't embrace minor attracted people.’”
He continued, “So as a result of us taking a drawing a line in the sand and my wife was doxed, she's an occupational therapist, I was doxed, they released our home address they took photos of her occupational therapy license and released it on all these black lives matter groups and said ‘someone needs to go to the house and take care of that family and get rid of them.’ So we had screenshots of everything, and then people started openly on these groups talking about how ‘Wouldn’t it be a shame if at 2 o’clock in the morning there was a phone call to local PD and a swat team came out over a hostage situation involving their kids?’”
Reyes recounted that he approached now-Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a past contributor to Law Enforcement Today, “So I called up a friend of mine Marjorie Taylor Greene she used to write for us at that moment and so I said, ‘Alright well how did you navigate this? What did you do?’ because she had been swatted a whole number of times.”
Reyes also sought advice from his friend Giovanni Rocco, a man credited with bringing down the organized crime family that the show "The Sopranos" was based on, as well as infiltrating the Black Panthers and Hell’s Angels, and gained several takeaways:
- First, investing in cameras: “If you truly believe, not like you wanna look cool and sound cool like you're a big deal, but if you truly have concerns about this you should have security cameras covering your house that don't face just the general road that could trigger false alerts by cars driving by in the middle of the night. This is important because you want to make sure that you're only going to be triggered by an alert with someone who's actually going to be approaching a point of entry to your home so you'll reduce the likelihood of false alerts. And that's important because you want these particular cameras, whether it's a blink system or there are a million security systems out there you want to make sure that those notifications do actually go to your phone and bypass your sleep or your do not disturb settings on there. And so the last thing that you want, Gary is at the beginning a million alerts in the middle of the night because every car that goes by or every you know raccoon that runs by sets it off so have very carefully they strategically located cameras.”
- Second, meet with your local authorities: “Gather up a short synopsis about why and why you believe that there's a risk reach out and ask for a meeting and in person meeting with the police chief or the sheriff. I would always encourage you to start out, and they might give you the undersheriff, which is fine, or they might give you one of the directors, SWAT director or whatever. But identify why you're concerned that there have been these swatting threats. I'm a high-profile individual or we have reason to believe that this may happen to us. The first thing that you should do is you should establish your why. Right? And then that make sure that they have the cell phone numbers for everybody in that home and that your name gets added to, if they haven't a lot of agencies now do have, lists where if someone calls in a threat at our house or concern they'll be a flag on it that says ‘This individual is at risk for being swatted.’”
- Third, Make a Plan: “Have a plan so that if there is an alert if there is a concern I would recommend that they have one location that they go to in the house.”
- Fourth, Involve your Neighbors, Create a Safe-word: “I would also establish a safe word with a neighbor. So make sure the law enforcement has the contact information for the neighbors as well. Have a conversation with the neighbor that you trust and say ‘Here's the situation: If there's ever a situation where I am in danger the word that I will use is going to be you know… Aunt Mildred, call Aunt Mildred. On the other side, if there's a… you could have a safe word to let them know that everything is legit everything's good.”
He characterized these attacks plainly as terrorism, telling Scarano, “These are liberal trolls who are just angry that they saw you on Fox. Where they're angry because you're a conservative. And they're not really thinking through how to do this.
"But this is domestic terrorism because it's totally about… It's not just about the action. Right? It's not just about the threat. How does terrorism work? Terrorism works when you blow up a suicide bomber, right? And then everybody else stops going to movie theaters or flying on airplanes. Because terrorism isn’t just the act, it's the fear that it creates. And so that's why our view is that this is much more than just the act. It's about silencing people from speaking out because you're worried about this happening to your family.”
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