‘Swatting’ call sends Beverly Hills police to room at Peninsula Hotel
LOS ANGELES—A Beverly Hills police SWAT team was dispatched to the historic Peninsula Hotel on Thursday morning in response to a bogus emergency call, police officials said.
Police received a call about 6:30 a.m. from a man saying "there were men with guns in his hotel room and they weren't letting him leave," said Capt. Lincoln Hoshino.
Police considered it a "suspicious circumstances" report and officers went to the hotel in the 9800 block of South Santa Monica Boulevard. But when they tried to reach someone inside the room, no one responded, Hoshino said.
The department's SWAT team was called in and eventually spoke with the room's occupants and determined there was no emergency, Hoshino said. The people in the room had not made the call and, in fact, might have been asleep through much of the emergency response, he said.
"It was a hoax call," Hoshino said. The incident was winding down by 8 a.m. while officials worked to identify the man who placed the call.
The incident is reminiscent of other so-called swatting calls—false reports intended to provoke an emergency response as a dangerous prank—that have drawn national attention in recent weeks.
Earlier this year, a Los Angeles man was charged with manslaughter after he allegedly placed a hoax phone call to police in Wichita, Kan., claiming he had shot his father and was holding other relatives hostage. The call led to a fatal clash between Wichita police and an unarmed man at the house. The caller, 25-year-old Tyler Rai Barriss, allegedly placed the call after an online dispute over a video game.
The deadly incident reignited concerns about swatting. The FBI estimates roughly 400 swatting cases occur each year.