No joke. It happened around 6 p.m. Eastern. I briefly talked with one of the police officers at the scene, who confirmed that someone had called saying he had shot his wife, and sent officers to Aaron’s address.
I just got off the phone with Aaron and he and his wife are a little shaken up but OK. The officers had machine guns but did not point them at Aaron. They were quickly able to determine it was a hoax.
Aaron plans to post about it later.
This happened within hours of Aaron winning in court a modification to the “peace order” — Walker is now free to speak about Brett Kimberlin.
The chutzpah of the supporters of Brett Kimberlin, convicted domestic terrorist, is mindboggling.
*****
Jeff’s update: I Tweeted about this, and I worry that this has all the makings of a set-up. Be careful who you accuse and who you blame here.
That’s my advice. Take it or leave it.
*****
UPDATE directly from Aaron Walker
I writing when there was a knock at the door. A second knock came and it was very insistent. I went to the door and looked through the peep hole and there was nothing. I said something like, “hello?” and someone firmly said, “open the door!”
I opened up to find two cops hugging the front of the house. They had M4’s as I recognized from video games (see?! They are good for something!) and they later confirmed. They were not pointed at my face like it had been with Patrick. They were pointed at the ground.
(When I told my mother that, she said not to minimize it. No, obviously whoever it was doing their best to get me killed. Fortunately the police were not so easily tricked.)
I can’t quote them, but they said something to the effect that they got an emergency call. I actually said, “let me guess, someone claimed I shot my wife…?” One officer confirmed it, and I said, “this is a hoax.” I think I even said the word “swatting.”
So someone had tried to make law enforcement falsely think I committed a crime. […]
I believe the SWATting started around 5:44 p.m. I say this because the last “opened” tweet in my contacts list was this one and I was checking them pretty often.
Anyway, to the police officers’ credit, they recognized a hoax was a real possibility. I would describe what they did next as just due diligence. They had me stand out in the yard and talk to an officer about who my list of suspects were, in my bare feet and everything, and they swept the house and verified my wife was safe and no one else was in danger. As I became more aware of my surroundings, I saw around 5-6 cop cars at the corner, and a number of officers waiting. No, it wasn’t a SWAT team. One weenie-ish SWATting apologist thinks that if they don’t bring out the SWAT van it doesn’t count, failing to understand that like many slang terms, it is not utterly literal.
My wife came out a bit later and she appeared to be okay and I gave her a hug. She later told me when the officer woke her up, she said, the same phrase, “let me guess, someone called and said my husband shot me…” She says the cop was surprised that she wasn’t surprised. Then I spent a good hour or two talking to the police and contacting people with vital information. […]
And then it started to catch up with my wife, and she started shaking and getting a little upset.
I will say emphatically that I do not believe Brett Kimberlin made any of the prior SWATting calls himself and I would be very surprised if he made this one.
But on the other hand, Occam’s razor tells us this was done in retaliation against me for having won today in court against Kimberlin. Which doesn’t mean Kimberlin has anything to do with it, but it suggests a motive for whoever did.
Much more at the link, I excerpted Aaron’s story to get at the incident itself.
I wonder what Aaron’s lawyer is going to do about this?
so what’s kimberlin’s address again and isn’t sumthing wrong there?
– Ok, tell me again how ANY law enforcement wouldn’t have seen this 5 miles away, and at least made a single phone call before acting?
As I’ve said before, people are going to die before this shit is over. And when they die, the Feds will take that opportunity to crush our liberty even more, while coddling the people who are actually breaking legitimate laws.
leigh
This is a criminal act… it needs to start at local level and, if state lines were crossed by use of telephone, Fed involvement needs to start.
To me it’s all of the same piece. This shit is the same as the occupy shit which is the same as the global climate change shit. Progressives have no concept of liberty or honor or rule of law. Progressives game the system much like the terrorists do. They should be treated in kind.
Fed involvement needs to start.
oh my a good laugh that
newrouter
Attention at Congress has been grabbed.
Congress will be looking for another baseball player to mess with before you know it.
They have a collective attention span of a crack-addled gnat is my point.
Personally, I looks to me that ice-picks are in order.
Attention at Congress has been grabbed.
eric the commie will do nutting
are there any “allan ackbar dudes” looking for some action?
What Jeff said in his update …
There is absolutely nothing to tie Brett Kimberlin to any of the SWATtings.
It’ll be interesting to hear the voice on the 911 call … from what I’ve heard of the tapes of the other SWATs, it really sounds like the same voice on all of ’em.
It may be a set up. I suspect the ties will not go back to Kimberlin or Rauhauswer (at least not directly). Whether they are behind it remains to be seen. But the timing is awfully suspicious.
All Republicans, from what I recall. Democrats were too busy recruiting more dark-skinned Jew-haters for Congress.
And, honestly, as long as they continue to play the “this isn’t a partisan matter” BS, the targets have lost 90% of my sympathy. The left despises free speech — for others — and make that quite clear every day. Appealing to them on that basis will be as successful as appealing to a CBC member in the name of fighting corruption.
This is a political movement that adores violence. They’re not disgusted by Kimberlin and Krew — they’re taking notes.
Set up who for what? Are you suggesting the dude maybe SWATed himself? Seems unlikely, what am I missing?
– Yes, the timing. But even more, there is no wat that law enforcment nation-wide is not fully aware of this situation, and a call to them of this nature, under any circumstances, much less with this timing, would be checked for the name of the owners of the subject residence immediately. I’m not buying they wouldn’t be suspicious as soon as they saw Aaron;s name as the owner or resident.
– Something smells.
Ya’ll really think law enforcement in general is aware of this?
Sorry, but why should they be? It involves maybe a dozen people in as many jurisdictions, and there have been FOUR of these calls. Plus, any Democrat aware of it will tell them it’s just an “online feud” started by right-wingers going after a peaceful musician/activist.
Yeah, there are four local departments pissed at it — but that will go away in a few minutes when they have to once more balance their lives against the likelihood of being called “racist” and losing everything they’ve worked their whole lives for.
I’m wandering who the Merry Pranksters are and if these were interstate calls.
It depends, whether the PD is suspicious or not they HAVE TO respond to all 911 calls, regardless.
Even as Aaron’s own attorney has alerted his local pd to this, I guarantee you they WILL roll on a 911. They may only do it with a couple of squad cars, but they wont ignore the call, regardless of any prior notification.
While this may be a set up of some kind, I don’t think it was Aaron or any of our side that would do it. This is either the “fuck you guys you can’t catch me” kind of ratcheting up or it is deep layer upon layer intent to frame Aaron’s supporters as the swatter.
Really, if someone can fake VoIP to make the call seem like it’s coming from Aaron’s house, how hard is it to lay a fake trail to someone else as originator in order to discredit Aaron/Stacy/Pat et al?
Apparently the calls aren’t to 911, but to a non-emergency line. Still, a claim that multiple people are dead in a shooting will bring out the police regardless.
law enforcement has done a piss-poor shameful shameful job of investigating these incidents
they like getting decked out in swat gear but actually catching the bad guys is beneath them
American cops are piggy piggy union whore sub-par intelligence lame-asses anymore
I’m not sure why you care, ‘feets.
Mr. Aaron is a good pickle
Why would that matter?
Crawford
When my eldest was a paramedic (she is now an ICU RN) she rolled on a really bad part of town. There was a time when a teen gangbanger struggled with a police officer over the officer’s gun and the gangbanger lost. As in fatally shot.
The gang (a pretty notorious one) put out word they were going to hit the pd, and their tactic would be to call in emergencies then take responders – paramedics or firefighters hostage then kill responding police.
There was of period of a few tense weeks that no ambulance or firetruck responding to a call went out without an armed police escort.
Somewhere along the line, the gang stood down and things went back “to normal”
I can’t tell you how glad I was when my daughter became a RN.
good pickles are hard to find Mr. bh and Mr. Aaron is one
unlike this Shai Le Boueuff character
Good pickle is something less than a defensible principle.
Sorry about that. He’s just gonna have to suck it along with the rest of us, I guess.
well obviously yes he is sucking it but rather more worser than the rest of us lately
school bus lady got half a million dollars and all she did was sit there and show off her purse
video makes a huge difference in these things
He falls under the 1st Amendment, right? I’m sure you don’t only conditionally support such things.
the judgetard in his case was an idiot coot Mr. bh
even for the Maryland what tried to ass-rape Linda Tripp
Non-responsive.
well obviously he fell under amendment numero uno but he had an incompetent judge
so he slipped through the cracks for a time, and I think a lot of people got a wake-up call on account of it
I wasn’t one of those who blamed him for representing himself btw – idiot coot judge owns this whole fiasco I think
Have you had a wake-up call because of his good picklement and the crack falling?
yes I am more aware that geezer judges can strip people of their civil rights in America with a terrifying nonchalance
So, no, you haven’t.
In some cases you perceive friends and in other case you perceive opponents.
so I did it wrong you should see me make an omelette
– Ole Jimmah sweater pants just never misses a chance to jump the shark.
– Possibly the one and only thing that Bummblefuck got right. and Cahtah pisses on his shoe for it.
– Once that senile old sumabitch is dead they can start writing the truth about him, and how he almost single handedly started the Middle East wars, and hastened the return of the Crusades.
Why does anyone engage the griefer? You realize his goal is the “soft” suppression of speech by pissing everyone off, right?
I think what’s interesting is how your disappointment with the way Aaron’s case was handled mirrors how progressives will feel about the Obamacare decision later this week.
Is that how this is done?
– feets has a lot of pressure. He’s got friends in Gay places.
law enforcement has done a piss-poor shameful shameful job of investigating these incidents
true, happyfeet, I agree. If socialists were getting swattered there would be a raucous Hue and also a raucous Cry, conjoined with liberal accusations of racism
they like getting decked out in swat gear but actually catching the bad guys is beneath them
this is tendentious, l’il pikachu but yes, it’s arguably true
American cops are piggy piggy union whore sub-par intelligence lame-asses anymore
are you suggesting they used to be different?
do you have a link to back up that idea?
Dropped on my head as a baby, Crawford.
To be slightly more honest, it seems to me that ‘feets wasn’t always arguing in bad faith earlier.
I could be wrong. Often been wrong, really.
Anybody know if the various bits of evidence already on hand (in the four SWATting cases we know of: voice recordings, internet communications alleging prior knowledge pending SWATting events, taunts, etc.) amount to enough to empower the police to seek communications tap warrants on a couple or handful of the likeliest suspects, in an attempt to catch them in the act by grabbing the spoof as it leaves the suspect’s house/machine/computer-phone/whathaveyou?
I’m reading Locke at the moment, sdferr.
Second Treatise. Probably for the third time, tops. Fuck me if it’s not appropriate once more.
Me, I’m gonna re-read a treatise on sword sharpening techniques.
XIX Of the Dissolution of Government.
That’s a good ‘un.
“Chuse” and “misuse” spelling rhymed way more better back then.
Here’s a link.
And here’s another, though all pdfs, but with other matter included. (But I like yours better for the reading online.)
You’re missing that Kimberlin tried to get other bombs set while he was under suspicion to take suspicion off him, and provide an alibi.
The setup would be that whoever did this/these swatting[s] is hoping to provoke a response from someone on the right that can be used as a pretext for more and more effective legal, both in the lawsuit and law enforcement sense, action.
They know that this is a very difficult crime to get an effective response to as it involves multiple jurisdictions, evidence that can be hard to sort out and might even disappear before a warrant can be served to obtain it.
It is being done to achieve several goals. Intimidation of online political opponents is only one. Provoking a retaliatory action in word or in deed is another.
I also believe that they are tracking all responses online to these events and attempting to construct a database to identify connections between various people on the right, both ones who are “out” and those who use handles online, trying to gather enough information to “out” more people and also to see if they can find a “Dodkin“, someone who wields power and influence without suspecting it themselves or it being suspected by others. A bloggosphere fulcrum point from which to move mountains if one exists. Even though it likely doesn’t they are poking/pinging the online right to gather information to analyze for use at some later time.
This is going to be long but it’s not so long really:
Sec. 222. The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who. have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here, concerning the legislative in general, holds true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the legislative, and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust, when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly preengages the electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he has, by sollicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs; and employs them to bring in such, who have promised before-hand what to vote, and what to enact. Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security? for the people having reserved to themselves the choice of their representatives, as the fence to their properties, could do it for no other end, but that they might always be freely chosen, and so chosen, freely act, and advise, as the necessity of the common-wealth, and the public good should, upon examination, and mature debate, be judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, is easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that he, who has once attempted any such thing as this, cannot any longer be trusted.
That’s the one. We should maybe urge newrouter to sprinkle it throughout the blogosphere.
If that’s “too long; didn’t read” you’ve forsaken your birthright. You fool.
Kimberlin might be a person who likes to take increasingly bizarre risks. He certainly has a history of it. If that is the case, hopefully he self destructs and/or gets arrested before he ends up hurting or killing someone.
Or this may be some follower acting on his own or to give him cover.
– Expect much more of this, not less, as the Proggressive Utopia wagon starts to collapse in the coming months.
Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security?
See also “gerrymandering” and “majority-minority districts”.
We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.
Set up who for what? Are you suggesting the dude maybe SWATed himself? Seems unlikely, what am I missing?
Timing, motivation, some really weird ass behavior (IMO), group drama, and a bone to pick. All in all, I’d wait until Stacey McCain digs up the Rosicrucian responsible and stay the hell out of it.
A part of me agrees with this sentiment, but it is also a seriously bad idea even to joke about such a thing. And anyway a good redneck ninja never pisses away the element of surprise.
A very nice statement from one of Walker’s lawyers, Bruce Godfrey.
Kimberlin has already claimed to have been swatted, though the bit falls apart when it turns out the cops don’t know about it, that knowledge being sort of a prerequisite and all.
The part I consider a bad idea has to do with publicly revealing his address, or even that one knows it. Especially that one knows it.
Anyway, if you need to do something about somebody who’s doing things to you, don’t do the same thing to him that he’s doing to you.
Yes, when he’s proven a willingness to invent such offenses against him, it would be idiocy to hand him actual offense. Better to run his ass down with the law and get him back home where he belongs; prison.
I see ‘feets has undergone another manic phase.
Far OT, but will make your gorge rise in choler.
Micheal Walsh, one of the few good guys left at National Review, reminds us of just who the establishment Republicans really are. Democrats. All from the same mold: The ruling class.
http://bit.ly/KKvyoa
I’ve been wondering why the spineless life forms known as the “GOP leadership” have been so darn quiet about the Obama administration’s increasingly lawless, in-your-face attitude toward what used to be known as the American political system, and now I know — they’re all in it together.
One thing that comes through with Walkers account is that the police, in his case, seem to have a “little boy who cried wolf” attitude toward this incident.
The fools perpetrating this crap are going to get someone killed, either through the police not taking a call seriously or by the cops being over-zealous.
The fools perpetrating this crap are going to get someone killed, either through the police not taking a call seriously or by the cops being over-zealous.
I just hope that a competent investigator gets involved before it comes to that. When the wrongful death suits start coming in, you’d better believe that the investigations will start in force.
Ideally, one or two of these morons will brag about their exploits in a non-secure venue, and the dismantling can begin from there.
Its insane the police don’t have a better way to track/investigate this. I got the impression from reading Patterico’s record of his Swat-ing that tech on a local level is too limited to actually track a swatter using a burner phone or using an internet relay. I thought the feds could at least trace the phone location and maybe see where it was when the call was made and maybe track it back to where it was purchased but its unlikely they’d get involved. You would think the city/county would have a pretty significant interest in finding and prosecuting the Swatters, considering the cost to the city/county in terms of manhours, as well as the potential liability and bad PR which closely follows a bad shooting.
This stuff blows, really blows. Arguing on the internet, nowadays, could get you killed.
“You would think the city/county would have a pretty significant interest in finding and prosecuting the Swatters, considering the cost to the city/county in terms of manhours, as well as the potential liability and bad PR which closely follows a bad shooting. ”
Totally agree. They are the ones being defrauded, after all.
Time and other constraints come into play when you’re trying to track those kinds of things, TV and movies to the contrary notwithstanding. A skilled techie might be able to pounce on them in real time if he’s forewarned, but afterwards your talking probably multiple search warrants, with the accusation of “fishing expedition” being a very real problem.
Or so I would imagine.
To be sure McG, time and resources have to be proportionate to the harms committed or potential harms which may reasonably be supposed to be potential to be done, if in the latter instance an example for deterrent purposes is wanted. And I’m in no position to judge those practical (say budgetary) considerations for any of the local jurisdictions involved, nor for the Feds. Still, it seems to me the potential to deluge or overwhelm a police force with frauds, frauds demanding their attention, coupled with a concerted attack at right angles to those diversions might easily be supposed to constitute just such a case, possibly justifying those expenditures (and this attack by actors or terrorists from whatever background, not at all limited to the assholes plaguing the anti-Kimberlin people). But I don’t know. Could have just been a movie script. The fakery just looks dangerous as all get out from here.
Rest assured, if AG Holder finds a reason to set a multi-agency task force on the trail of someone using a prepaid cell phone or VoIP phone to tip off Rep. Issa as to incriminating documents regarding F&F, they’ll track that sucker down before he can take a breath.
heh
McGehee, sdferr, don’t forget, the kind of technical people who can track a spoofed call are very much in demand and command large dollars.
They are, and they do. They are a scarce resource.