The news is abuzz with a story about “swatting.”

What is swatting? I figured it had something to do with flies or, perhaps, it was a new street lingo euphemism for something disgusting (sexual) done in bed. I was wrong on both counts. Like everything important in life, Wikipedia provides illumination:

Swatting is the tricking of any emergency service (via such as a 9-1-1 dispatcher) into dispatching an emergency response based on the false report of an on-going critical incident.

Source: Wikipedia – Swatting

A particularly nasty version of swatting is when you hoax the police into sending a SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) response to the home of your sworn enemy and kicking in their door, possibly shooting them while they reach for their salad fork and generally ruining their day. This is the sort of thing kids consider to be trendy these days.
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