Anaheim Police Descend Upon Disneyland Resort in Swatting Incident, No Real Emergency

Disneyland was the victim of what appears to be a Swatting call, prompting a large police presence at the parks for no real reason as someone appears to have called in a false emergency.

What's Happening:

• A large amount of police officers descended upon the Disneyland Resort on the evening of Wednesday, March 11, after receiving calls of a mass shooting at the iconic destination.
• While details are limited and specifics are unclear, KTLA was told by Anaheim Police Department Sgt. Matt Sutter that he believed the incident was a "swatting."
• A swatting is a dangerous and illegal prank that involves calling in a false report of a serious emergency like an active shooter or a bomb threat, usually via 911, that will trigger a heavily armed SWAT team response to a target's address.
• In most cases, a "swatting" typically targets a home address, a business, or a school as a form of harassment used to create fear, intimidate, and in (sadly) a lot of cases - provoke a response on streaming video platforms.
• The Swatting of the Disneyland Resort is a far cry from where this hoax grew to fame - targeting online video game streamers and other public personas who would be embarrassed on camera when the event occurred.
• In the case of Disneyland, Sutter said the police showed up and cleared out the scene out of an abundance of caution, but despite reports of a mass shooting and the large law enforcement presence, the park was not evacuated.
• The event occurred mere hours after a lockdown was called at a mall in nearby Los Angeles County, where a person claimed to be armed and making specific threats against a patron inside the mall. The police did not confirm the target of the threats, however, two well known social media personalities were livestreaming from a shoe store that officers showed up in in tactical gear.
• As for the Disneyland situation, no injuries were reported and no arrests have been made as of press time in connection with the event.

The Evolution of a Dangerous Prank

• Before the term "swatting" even existed, false emergency calls have always been a problem, in most cases to harass others.
• With the ever-growing internet, people can now find an address online with ease and trigger a police response from anywhere.
• The problem really grew - and got the name "swatting" with the advent of online live video streaming, spreading widely in competitive online gaming.
• Players would get angry during matches or games (Counter-Strike and Call of Duty communities were particularly notorious for this), and would partake in online arguments. Someone would dox (another term for revealing personal information like a home address) another player, and then someone would call in an emergency, typically a violent crime of some kind, to prompt a response at the player's home.
• As the players would use a platform like Twitch or YouTube to stream their gameplay, their video would then be interrupted (usually quite violently) as law enforcement or sometimes even SWAT Teams (hence the term) would force their way inside, unbeknownst to the player/victim.
• With large amounts of viewers watching and the player getting (at minimum) embarrassed or arrested, it gave the trolls who called in the false report a bit of notoriety. As such, harassment groups formed and started using the practice of swatting as a weapon.
• As for what the endgame was with the Disneyland incident, we may never know. But knowing the large amount of livestreams that take place from the park on a single day, it might just be the thrill and attention that the trolls get from these kinds of pranks.
• Swatting is a serious felony, with charges like false reporting, wire fraud, conspiracy, and even worse depending on how the situation unfolds. While we have elaborated on what the practice is, we do not condone the practice of swatting in any way.