SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

What is swatting? You've probably seen it in the news recently - famous celebrities in Los Angeles like Chris Brown , Miley Cyrus ,  Justin Bieber , Ashton Kutcher , Simon Cowell , Tom Cruise , and the Kardashians have been targeted. Swatting is when a hacker pretends to be someone by hacking their phone line, cal\lling 911, and reporting a fake emergency to the victim's address - normally a kidnapping/hostages, bombings, shootings, or murders - which requires heavy police presence to respond to the home, sometimes with guns drawn, only to have police show up to find that the call was a hoax. It seems to be an evolution of ' phreakers ' who gained notice in the 1970s when they would hack into phone companies computers and make free long-distance calls. These calls are very dangerous because they are similar to calls departments receive about real shootings  or murders. The police show up ready for a crazy person, possibly armed, only to find i...

The Los Angeles Daily News reported yesterday that several rewards were offered for crimes that have been committed yet the criminal remains at large. Being unable to find one of the incidents, I decided to add one of the crimes using SpotCrime's "report a crime", a function that allows you to report crimes and once inputted will display on SpotCrime's interactive map (once you click "user reported" crimes). This is one of the ways we help citizens fight crime by allowing them disseminate information and report crimes themselves.