Letts: Leftists Are Using a Dangerous New Tactic to Target Their Political Opponents
While President Joe Biden claims that Trump supporters are a threat to the country, leftists are seemingly trying to get a sitting congresswoman killed.
Leftist activists have “swatted” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene three times since the last week of August.
According to the FBI, swatting is the term applied for “making a hoax call to 9-1-1 to draw a response from law enforcement, usually a SWAT team. … It is a serious crime, and one that has potentially dangerous consequences.”
Greene’s first swatting incident, which was arguably the most dangerous since police did not know what to expect, began with a 911 to Rome, Georgia, police at 1 a.m.
The call “led them to initially believe a man who had been shot multiple times [was] in the bathtub at Greene’s home. The caller also stated there was a woman inside the home and possibly children with her. When officers responded Greene assured the officers there was no issue at the home,” The National Pulse reported.
Swatting is not a prank. It can lead to fatalities.
In 2017, Andrew Finch of Wichita, Kansas, was shot by law enforcement responding to a fake hostage threat. He wasn’t even the target of the swatting.
The following year, Mark Herring, a 60-year-old man in Tennessee, had a heart attack and died after being swatted by someone who was upset Herring wouldn’t give up control of a Twitter handle the swatter wanted.
The disturbing thing about this is that people are turning police into weapons. No one can argue that the police have suffered from an image problem over the last few years. However, in this case, the police are trying to do their job with only a portion of the information they need to react properly, and the information they do have is incorrect.
It is bad enough when police are used by politicians to carry out unpopular and often illegal mandates. Now, citizens have started doing the same thing, and the police are caught in the middle.
It’s only a matter of time before a police officer is shot entering an innocent person’s home because he believes someone inside is in danger. That is just one reason that police need to be equipped with the proper personal protective gear. Their jobs are more dangerous than ever.
Luckily, in Greene’s case, the police were cautious, knowing who lived in the home. They later “received a call from the suspect, claiming responsibility for the incident and explaining his/her motives,” the police report stated. “It was a computer generated voice. They explained they were upset about Ms. Greene’s stance on ‘trans-gender youth’s rights,’ and stated they were trying to ‘swat’ her.”
Since that first incident, Greene has been swatted twice more, although police responded to those calls knowing they were most likely false.
Biden has already shown he is willing to weaponize the FBI against his political opponents with the raid on Trump’s home. Now, his followers are showing they will weaponize the police against those they disagree with.
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