SWATting -- A Deadly Game
I've posted about this previously here -- "Patterico: 'THE NIGHT I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED BECAUSE OF MY BLOGGING'"

Simone Wilson writes in the LA Weekly about the horrible thing that was done to Patrick Frey -- Deputy DA Patrick Frey, aka blogger Patterico -- in the wake of his blog items about Anthony Weiner:

The deputy DA believes his widely followed revelations about Weiner's online escapades made Frey the target of a dangerous, unnerving hoax: a false 911 call that put Frey, his wife, Christi --a high-end sex-crimes prosecutor for the District Attorney -- and his two young children in the crosshairs of armed officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

On July 1, 2011, Frey, in his nighttime blogger role, was talking to a source over his cellphone just after 12:30 a.m. -- his wife and kids fast asleep upstairs in their Rancho Palos Verdes home -- when he heard a thunderous pounding at his front door.

"I was sitting right here in this chair," he says, re-enacting the haunting experience as he sits at his kitchen table, the South Bay harbor gleaming up through hot glass.

"I jumped up to the counter ... and peeked around the corner," he says. Five or six armed deputies on his porch were barking, "Come out with your hands up!"

As he opened the door, Frey, afraid to set down his cellphone -- any quick move could be deadly -- prayed they wouldn't mistake the device for a gun.

But the cops were cautious, and no shots were fired. Deputies handcuffed the longtime deputy DA and hustled him into a patrol vehicle. His stunned wife, Christi, was patted down against the garage wall. The couple's two young children tell L.A. Weekly that police burst into their bedrooms with flashlights to make sure they were safe. The Freys' neighbors, awakened by the spectacle, watched the dramatic midnight raid play out.

"People can turn other people's lives upside down just sitting in front of a keyboard," Frey says. "There's just something strange and disquieting about that."

Frey knew, even as the scene unfolded, that he'd just been SWATted -- a dangerous game being played by provocateurs who falsely report to cops a murder or violent attack supposedly committed by someone they hate.

In Frey's case, a man pretending to be Frey called the L.A. County Sheriff's station in Lomita, declaring: "I shot her -- my wife!" Frey has obtained the call, which he labels "one of the most bone-chilling pieces of audio you will ever hear."

Almost a year later, in May 2012, he posted the call on YouTube. It has since been played more than 40,000 times.

Frey says that the week before the incident, he'd received a disturbing, anonymous email warning: "Stop digging into [Rep. Weiner]. I cannot insure [sic] your safety if you continue."

Special agent Kevin Kolbye in Dallas, the FBI's point person for the SWATting phenomenon, says SWATters manipulate technology in order to mimic the caller ID of their targeted victim, the goal being to "incite fear and intimidation into the person that they're SWATting."

The hoax call: