“Please don’t shoot my wife.”
That was Chad Caton’s desperate request as he stood in front of his garage at 3 a.m., staring down the barrel of a rifle.
His wife had hung back inside their home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to secure their dog in a bathroom. As she exited with her hands up, another gun trained on her face.
Caton pleaded again for his wife’s safety with the anxious police officer at his side. He could see the officer shaking and knew that, in tense situations, misunderstandings can quickly devolve into tragedies.
Although frightening, the March 17 incident did not come as a surprise to Caton. As an outspoken conservative and a friend to many previous swatting victims, he’d known there was a chance he could be next.
In fact, just days prior, he’d voiced that concern to his wife.
“I said, ‘I don’t think I’m big enough [on social media], but a lot of our friends are getting swatted, so we need to talk this through,’” Caton told The Epoch Times.
Swatting is a crime that involves making a false police report to trigger a heavily armed response, often a SWAT team, at a target’s home. The perpetrator will often call 911 claiming armed intruders are inside the target’s house, shooting at them and their family members.
These hoax calls have been on the rise in recent years. The targets all seem to have one thing in common: their politics.
Caton spearheads national operations for the Veterans for Trump coalition and served as a surrogate for the president’s 2024 campaign. Other swatting victims have included Republican politicians and conservative media personalities who have amassed significant social media followings.
With just under 50,000 followers on social media platform X, Caton had hoped he was still “small” enough to fly under the radar of the political swatters, but they had nevertheless made him a target, and after watching a swarm of heavily armed police officers sweep his home, he realized how close he had come to losing his life.
“This is an absolute attempted murder,” Caton said, noting that such hoaxes have killed others in the video game streaming community.
Fortunately, recent attacks have not resulted in any injuries or deaths. But both survivors and law enforcement experts warn that could change if the culprits of such dangerous hoaxes aren’t apprehended.
‘Murder by Proxy’
Just one hour and some 500 miles separated the incident at Caton’s home from an attack on conservative writer and commentator Larry Taunton at his Lay Lake, Alabama, residence.
At around 1 a.m. local time, Taunton was lying awake, unable to sleep because his German shepherd, Ranger, had gone on high alert.
“His ears are up, the fur on his shoulders is up—he’s in attack mode,” Taunton recalled to The Epoch Times.
“I’m thinking he maybe is hearing a dog outside, or a deer, or maybe there’s a rodent in the house—I don’t know.”
But then a flashlight’s beam appeared on Taunton’s bedroom door and Ranger advanced toward the house’s entryway. Pulling out his Glock, Taunton headed into his darkened kitchen, where through the window he saw the silhouettes of three men in body armor toting AR-15 rifles.
He did the math and realized he was at a major disadvantage. Unsure if his unexpected visitors were “baddies” or police, he took a calculated risk and flipped on the kitchen lights.
At that point, the men identified themselves as police officers and Taunton proceeded to explain that he was likely being swatted.
He later learned that the police received a phone call from someone claiming to have been shot inside his home and that three armed men “were executing everybody.”
Footage from Taunton’s home security system captured one officer’s observation that the scene did not match those claims.
“This really ain’t none of my business, but it don’t look like there’s been three or four guys in here who’s shot everybody,” the officer says as he peers through the glass of Taunton’s front door.
The caller also encouraged officers to enter the house—a fact Taunton points to as evidence the caller wanted more than to simply inconvenience him.
“This is attempted murder by proxy,” he said. “Police are not trying to murder me. The police think they’re coming to try to save lives. But this is cowardly terrorism by people who are weaponizing local law enforcement as proxy assassination squads.”
Both Taunton and Caton expressed the concern that, had they not guessed correctly what was happening, they might have engaged their local police officers in a shootout.
Caton noted that he is vigilant about securing his home because of death threats he has received in the past. If he had grabbed his gun, he said he “more than likely would have been injured, if not police.”
A Smart Move
Conservative talk show host Joe Pagliarulo, better known as Joe Pags, took a different approach when police surrounded his home near San Antonio on March 12.
Pagliarulo said he was sitting in his office when he received the 2:21 a.m. notification from his cameras that motion had been detected outside.
“I thought that it might have been my wife taking the dogs out,” Pagliarulo told The Epoch Times. “I thought it might have been a branch moving because anything will set it off, really.”
But when he checked the security footage, he saw a man clad in tactical gear and holding a long gun by his front door.
Although Pagliarulo had his guns stored nearby, a bit of quick thinking told him that his best move was to call his local sheriff’s office.
“I called 911, which I think was a smart move … and I said, ‘Are you at my house right now? This is my address. This is who I am,’” he recounted.
The dispatcher confirmed his suspicions. She advised that someone had called claiming that three gunmen had burst through his front door, shot and killed his dogs, and that he, the homeowner, was hiding in a closet upstairs.
Pagliarulo assured the dispatcher that was not the case. He asked her to relay that information to the officer outside, whom he soon realized was not alone but joined by six other armed deputies.
Remaining on the line with the dispatcher, Pagliarulo negotiated his safe exit from the house. As he stepped outside, an officer recognized him, further diffusing the tension.
The prank caller, meanwhile, was still on the phone with the sheriff’s office.
“I said, ‘Well, keep him on the line, get his phone number, track him down, and find out what’s going on,’” Pagliarulo said.
He believes the culprit wanted him killed that night. “And they may have even wanted me to take a couple of [officers] out with me.”
A Public Safety Threat
The National Police Association now recommends that others follow Pagliarulo’s example and contact local law enforcement if they think they are being swatted.
“If you see the police surrounding your property, call 911 and advise the dispatcher of the situation. Follow all directions by law enforcement until the incident has been declared over,” retired Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith, spokesperson for the association, urged in a March 19 statement.
Smith also urged potential targets to let their local law enforcement agency know an attack could be forthcoming.
“‘Swatting’ is an act of violence against both law enforcement and those being targeted,” she stated. “It is designed to not only physically harm people, but to drive a wedge between police officers and the citizens they are trying to protect.”
The hoax calls are also a drain on police resources and draw first responders away from real emergencies, endangering public safety, noted Gene Petrino, a retired SWAT commander.
“I think that’s something that the public needs to realize—that there’s more damage being done than just causing what is perceived to be an inconvenience to the person that’s receiving the swatting call,” Petrino told The Epoch Times.
The possibility of more fatalities is what worries Petrino the most about the latest trend. To prevent future tragedies, he recommended that law enforcement agencies send a patrol officer to confirm a call’s authenticity before sending out a SWAT team.
“That’s the question that I had every time I responded, was, ‘Is this a legitimate incident where we need to be there?’ And sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t,” he said.
Petrino also noted that, in most legitimate critical incidents, police will receive multiple calls, not just one. “So, from a law enforcement standpoint, dispatch needs to be aware of that.”
An ‘Untouchable’ Crime
All three swatting victims The Epoch Times spoke with were confident they were targeted for their political views.
As for what they might have said to put themselves in the perpetrators’ crosshairs, they weren’t sure.
“The only theory I have is … all of us have had something to say about not sending more money to Ukraine,” Caton said.
Pagliarulo echoed the theory. He noted that he was “very critical” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s behavior during his February visit to the White House and the amount of money the United States has spent on Ukraine’s war with Russia.
Taunton also cited an article he wrote criticizing the recently shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development as another possible reason he was targeted.
Whatever the case, all agreed that the attacks must be coordinated.
Caton noted that unsolicited pizza deliveries have plagued nearly all recent victims, with most receipts bearing the same message: “From Ray Charles Green, AKA Poodle.”
The calls were also placed via the internet rather than using a mobile network or landline.
Pagliarulo said an FBI agent told him investigators “have some leads” on his case, but Caton remains unconvinced that anything will come of the investigations.
“I mean, I believe in this administration. But here I am, what, three weeks [later], and I’ve not spoken to an FBI agent yet,” he said.
Caton added that he’d like to see harsher penalties adopted for the crime of swatting, which may only be charged as a misdemeanor in some states.
Caton said legislation is certainly needed, but unless someone is held to account, the calls will likely continue.
“If we could perp-walk this guy and make him an example, people would probably stop,” he said. “But if it looks like this is going to be an untouchable crime, then more people are going to do it to try to make their point across.”
