Active swatting threat

Get the family to a known room.

Pick the room everyone goes to in any home emergency. Phone with you. Door locked.

Call your local dispatch directly.

Not 911. Your dispatch supervisor or watch commander — or for non-LE, the local PD non-emergency line and ask for the watch supervisor. Tell them you have a credible swatting threat at your address and to flag any inbound call as suspect until cleared.

Document the source.

Screenshot any threat post, message, or call log. URL, timestamp, account name, full text. Save copies before anything gets deleted.

Loop in your chain of command.

Supervisor, CO, chief, court security, hospital security — whoever runs threat response on your side. Most agencies have a threat-assessment liaison or watch supervisor for exactly this. Get them on the phone.

Notify household members at other locations.

Spouse at work. Kid at school. Parent across town. The same data that found your address can find theirs.

Put the platform on notice.

If the threat came from a social-media post or forum, file the takedown immediately citing the specific policy violation. Most platforms act on documented swatting threats within hours.

File a formal report.

Even if you are on the job yourself. The report creates the paper trail that supports federal charges later. Federal prosecutors have started taking swatting cases more seriously when the documentation is clean.

Get the dispatch flag in writing.

A "watch for swatting" entry tied to your address that requires confirmation before any SWAT-level deployment. Confirm it is logged.

Tell the kids' school and the spouse's workplace.

They need to know to flag unfamiliar callers and pickups. Most school offices and HR departments will document any unfamiliar contact on request.

Run a free scan on the household.

See the free scan. The result tells you which broker pages currently carry the address — the same pages a swatter pulled from. Your name, your spouse, your parents.

Start the broker cleanup.

Either DIY across the major brokers or have us run continuous coverage. Either way, the address-removal step is the upstream protection that breaks the chain.

For NJ residents, file Daniel's Law demands.

See Daniel's Law. $1,000 per violation in statutory damages if a broker fails to remove within ten business days.

Loop in federal prosecutors.

Swatting is a federal crime under several statutes. The local US Attorney's office or FBI field office is the right channel when the original local report is not producing movement.

Move temporary if the threat is sustained.

Some departments and agencies have a relocation protocol for personnel under sustained credible threat. Use it without shame. If yours doesn't, a hotel for a week is on you but worth it. The data trail does not follow you there.

Continuous broker cleanup.

A one-time opt-out is a delay, not a fix. Most brokers re-list within 3-6 months. We re-check every two weeks across 200+ broker sites and re-file the same day you reappear.

Sweep the household.

Brokers link you to spouse, parents, and adult kids on the same page. Closing one address closes the others. Family swatting (call placed to a sibling's or parent's address) follows the same data trail.

Keep the dispatch flag current.

Annually confirm with your dispatch that the watch entry is still active. If you move, update it.