Popular Apex Legends streamer and pro player Phillip ‘ImperialHal’ Dosen was swatted live on stream, causing concern among his fans and teammates.
Popular streamers, YouTubers and other internet personalities are often the most common victims of swatting – when someone makes a hoax call to law enforcement in order to make the police force dispatch a number of armed officers to a certain place, commonly said personalities’ homes.
On December 23, we saw Tfue get swatted live on stream and the hysteria that caused, and despite the dangers of it, it appears some still think it’s a fun idea to swat streamers.
Late in his January 5 broadcast, ImperialHal became the latest victim of a swatting incident, and it was captured on camera for all of his viewers to hear exactly what was going down.
Just got Swatted , Nice, everything is fine tho
— ImperialHal (@TSM_ImperialHal) January 6, 2021
Randomly between ranked matches, viewers heard a loud banging at ImperialHal’s door, followed up by a call of “Sheriff’s office,” making it clear almost immediately exactly what was going down.
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Dosen quickly gets up from his chair after registering the sound outside of his game and you can hear him talking to the armed officers as they explain to him what he needs to be doing.
You can hear Hal complying with the police in the clip below, with them telling him to raise his hands and get on the ground for what they believe to be a serious crime to have been committed, with the streamer himself coming back a little while later, very calmly, explaining that he got swatted.
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Here is the entire incident from the start and when he returns, glad he is ok. Thats some real dirtbag shit to do. Someone can get seriously hurt, luckily Hal is calm as a statue before and after.. dont know how he does it. pic.twitter.com/VWwz8v8Ep4
— iLootGames (@iLootGames) January 6, 2021
He said the officers were “pretty civil,” and that despite kicking down the door they “didn’t do anything crazy,” although they “did have pistols and sh*t.”
It does sound as though the officers had an idea about what was going on, realizing that Hal was streaming and playing video games online and suggesting he set up a VPN to try and prevent this from happening in the future.
Needless to say, the potential dangers associated with swatting are absolutely incredible. Lives have been lost due to this and people jailed for up to 20 years, so the sooner this ends the better.
