Law&Crime Sidebar - Former SWAT Officer Reacts to Swatting Incident That Targeted YouTuber

Episode Date: September 24, 2022

Cincinnati YouTuber “IShowSpeed” was placed in handcuffs after someone called 911 in his name to falsely report threats. Former SWAT commander Chad Ayers breaks it down with the Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy.GUESTS:Chad Ayers: https://twitter.com/ayerscg497LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael Deininger & Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Relax. Relax. Yo, get my phone, though. Get my phone. Get my phone. My phone is right there, right there. Police slap the cuffs on a YouTuber from Cincinnati following a call to 911. But the streamer, Darren Watkins Jr., says he was the victim of swatting. Now listen to me. Someone called a 911 center and said with your name that you wanted to hurt your family and hurt yourself. So we came to make sure you're okay. I'm Ann Janette Levy and welcome to Law and Crimes Sidebar Podcast. This video that we are going to show you is pretty incredible.

Darren Watkins has more than 10 million subscribers on his YouTube channel and he goes by the name I show speed. Here's some of what happened back on August 8th when Cincinnati police received a 911 call saying that Watkins was making threats. Well, apparently someone called a help center out in Iowa and said, to address and I want to kill myself, my family. Well, he's lying. It's obviously a lie. It's a lie. Well, we're here to make sure, right? Oh, yes. Because of school shootings, right? Yeah. Be on my side. Yeah. Work with me. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine if like you have a son, hear me out. Imagine you have a son. You love him so much. And then someone calls your house, says, my son's, they said you have a Glock, an AR-15, I want to shoot everybody.

Oh, yes. All right, well, let's put you in the car. And joining me to talk about this is Chad Ayers. He is a veteran SWAT team member. He actually oversaw a full-time SWAT team in Greenville, South Carolina for many years. Chad, welcome to Sidebar. Thanks for coming on. That's great to be here.

Thanks for having me. First up, let's talk about what swatting is. Explain to the listeners and the viewers what exactly that phenomenon is. Right. So actually swatting goes back to, you know, There's some documented cases back in 2008 where this was taking place. So, and we saw it a lot in the gaming aspect, which kind of, you know, brings us to what happened up in Cincinnati. But what happens is these, these gamers get mad at each other about whatever game they are trying to play at the time.

And a spoofed call, a fake call is placed to the 911 dispatch center. And we have seen a variety of different types of scenarios play out. The most frequent one is as a hostage type situation where this person's calling saying, you know, I've killed my parents, and I've taken my siblings hostage, which at that point is the Calvary's coming. So you're drawing the most tactical units into a residence or to a residence to try to find out what's really taking place. Lo and behold, the whole time, this is all just a fake thing. The person that residents that they're being called to has no idea what's going on when law enforcement shows up. Swatting is a crime. It's illegal. It's waste law enforcement resources.

This call apparently appears to have come from Iowa, according to the body camera video. So talk to me about the illegality of swatting. Right. I mean, you're basically placing a false 911 call in. We have documented cases across the country. A big one is, you know, in December 2017, a gentleman by the name of Andrew Finch lost his life because law enforcement showed up thinking that he had killed his family. And the officer arrived on scene, thought he had, saw him reaching for a gun. Turned out he didn't.

And then we had in April 2020, another gentleman, Mark Herring, lost his life. I think that was in Tennessee, where he had a heart attack when all these law enforcement officers arrived. So like you said, it is illegal to basically falsifying a police reporter or calling it a false 911 call to dispatch. So when the police show up, they cuff Watkins and they start asking questions, things like that. So let's take a look at a little bit of that portion of the video. Please, they prank in my house. Are you his mom?

Yes, they prank our house all the time. Well, let us figure it out. Oh, my God, y'all were concerned. We were concerned. This got to stop. No, y'all taking my son over people to keep breaking my son. Y'all got them in handcuffs right now. Well, we're going to make sure he doesn't want to harm ourselves.

No, he ain't going to harm himself. All right. People keep prank in my house. Well, you need to explain it to me so we can investigate it properly. Please, come here. I'm on your side. I got five kids. Okay, calm down first.

Because you got my son in here and called for no reason. Well, because people were calling saying he wanted to kill you, I don't know if you know. Now, Chad, the police said, look, we're on your side, that type of thing. What strikes you about this video in the way that the police handled it? You know, honestly, initially, we do have to do an investigation. There's that initial, you know, part where we have to detain people initially to we completely determine this is not a true call. This isn't a true hostage situation. So initially, yes, detaining the parties involved to find out because I think they actually utilized his name in the 911 call.

Obviously, there's a lot of stress on both parties and a lot of confusion when law enforcement arrives. But for the safety of the individual there at the house and law enforcement, an initial detaining is not, you know, something that is unheard of. You know, honestly, I think that he was probably left in handcuffs a little bit longer, you know, than we probably would have to determine the situation. But, you know, initially I think that law enforcement did an excellent job, you know, working out what actually took place and getting all the facts. Watkins complied, which is always a good thing. I want to talk about that because I know there are instances in which people who are being detained or who are being talked to by the cops are fearful. They sometimes resist or they run away. I know that it's particularly in Cincinnati, there's been efforts to kind of talk to young people about how to, how to respond if this happens to you because it's a hit it's a city that's had a history of officer involved shootings and things like that and it's it's gotten ugly in the past but there have been a lot

of reforms that have been implemented so tell me if you would um for our listeners and our viewers what should you do if a police officer comes to you and starts asking questions you know i say it all the time i don't care if it's a traffic stop a situation where law enforcement comes to your house or an encounter on the streets uh if you've not done anything wrong which this gentleman hadn't comply don't have anything in your hands don't reach and say hey I'm just getting my cell phone because like we said the facts aren't known yet so if you can comply just like this gentleman did and of course he was a little upset and rightfully so there's he doesn't understand why there's 1520 law enforcement officers at there at his house but give them

the opportunity to work through that the the idea that law enforcement is just going to come up and and rough you up sure have there been cases across the country there is very far and few between So if you comply, let them work through their investigation. This is going to turn out just fine. And the body cameras, many officers around the country now wear those. Those capture and are supposed to be activated in capturing basically everything that the body camera can hear and see. So there is a record of that. There is.

And I think body cams are a great thing. It shows full transparency. You know, I was talking to Dan Abrams a few weeks ago about this is, is the, the benefits of body cameras that if you do the right thing, then, you know, whether there's allegations on the other side, that body camera is there to protect you. So if you're doing the right thing, hey, kudos, you have your body camera on. It shows, you know, that everything worked out well. One other thing, you know, I didn't really like how the one guy, the one gentleman said, oh, I'm the photographer. I'm his cameraman or whatever he said. And he's holding up the camera

and the officer kind of put his hand up. As a reporter, I didn't really like that because, you know, you're a citizen, you can be filming whatever you want. I mean, am I right there? Am I wrong? No, you're absolutely right. That's your right. But in a situation like this where law enforcement just got called about a hostage situation or shooting at a house, again, the stress on law enforcement arriving is high. And so I think initially at that point, you know, let them do their job. Don't interfere in their investigation. Now, if you're filming at a distance, again, that's your right. When you start saying, hey, you know, I want to film. And again, law enforcement hasn't even entered the house yet to determine, is this an actual crime scene at that point?

So, again, knowing, you know, absolutely you're right, but also knowing the right time to do that. What do you expect to come of this? Because I can't imagine that police take something like this lately. There are two officers, it appears, who were sent to this scene, to this call. They're amped up, I'm assuming. They're, you know, the neck on the, the hair on the back of the. next might be standing up a little bit. They're thinking this could be somebody who's threatening to harm people and himself to kill people. So they're going to be on high alert. And then they show up and

they have to look into this. So I think that this could have been a very dangerous situation. You just talked about some instances in which some really awful things had happened based on false 911 calls. And he's talking about how he was on YouTube and Twitch and stuff like that. These or live events. So, and there were a lot of people saying, oh, this is fake because he was acting like he was calling 911, but there was an explanation for that. He wasn't actually the person who called 911. Right.

I absolutely expect charges to be filed at some point in the near future on this case. The, the Andrew Finch case from 2017, I think it was in 2020, where the gentleman that actually made that call was sentenced to 20 years in prison for that situation. So, you know, you have the criminal aspect of that where people were, charges will be fired, but you know, you mentioned it earlier. It's pulling all these resources, the time of law enforcement, away from people that really do need help in that situation. We had a situation in Greenville. I can't remember exactly what year it was. I would say probably 2015 swatting incident where you had the majority of patrol officers in that area there.

They, you know, request the assistance of the SWAT team. So now you've got a full tactical unit there. You've got command staff there. So unfortunately, if something real, a real emergency situation had it kicked off. You've got all your resources on this team, and so you've got a delayed response time for law enforcement getting to people who really need help. Well, Chad Ayers, a veteran of law enforcement and a veteran of overseeing SWAT teams. Thanks so much for coming on to talk with us about this. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. It is produced by Sam Goldberg, Michael Dininger, and Logan Harris. Bobby Zoki is our YouTube

manager, Alyssa Fisher, handles our bookings, and Kiera Bronson is in charge of our social media. You can listen to Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. Also, you can watch Sidebar on the Law and Crime YouTube channel. I'm Ann Janette Levy, and we'll see you next time. Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.