Police raced to the address provided, but when they arrived, they found no one being held against their will, according to a King County Sheriff's Office report obtained by Crosscut. The couple living there had no idea who had called.

It wasn't until the next day that Roy Tate, one of the occupants of the house, called police to let them know that approximately five officers — hands on guns and flashlights gleaming — had shown up at his house at 11:30 p.m.

“I thought someone was about to burglarize my house,” Tate said, clearly still shaken by the incident.

Swatting incidents — making a false 911 call so that a police unit or special weapons and tactics team is deployed, often to an unsuspecting person's residence — are on the rise in the Seattle area, according to the Seattle Police Department. While there were only eight swatting cases reported in 2017, there were 63 in 2018 and 2019 combined, Seattle Police said.

“If all you’re trying to do is scare someone, or shut down their voice, then swatting is a terrifying and likely effective tactic,” said James Feore, director of the Seattle Online Broadcasters Association, an organization of game developers and streamers, among others.

A bill in the Legislature, unanimously approved by the Senate this week and awaiting Gov. Jay Inlee’s signature, is aimed at addressing swatting’s potentially serious consequences by making the false reporting of a crime a felony when someone is injured or killed. The new law would also give a victim of swatting the right to sue. Law enforcement or a city would also be able to seek damages.

One of the more notorious recent swatting incidents involved Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race. She was at the Boston airport last year when the King County Sheriff’s Office contacted her. Someone pretending to be her 17-year-old son — who was at home alone — had called police, claiming he had just killed two people . Luckily, Oluo had already warned King County police that she had been listed on a swatting website and was at risk.

In a less publicized incident a couple of months later, Oluo was again a victim of swatting at a speaking event in Seattle. Because of the previous incident, police responded cautiously when a person called 911 with threats of violence. Officers surrounded the building and treated the call as a serious but unconfirmed threat.

Experts say swatting first started becoming more common about a decade ago among gamers looking to pull a prank on competitors.

Anyone with a presence on YouTube or Twitch, a live streaming platform for gamers, or someone involved in podcasting can be especially vulnerable to swatting, Feore said.

“Some 13-year-old calling in a bomb threat doesn’t appreciate the gravity of what they’re doing,” Feore said, noting that some of those who participate in swatting are juveniles.

Two years ago, Seattle police received a 911 call from someone who claimed to be a suicidal teenager. When police searched for him in a library in Seattle’s Madrona neighborhood, they found 25-year-old Reymon Leavell, who is developmentally delayed and who, according to his mother, was traumatized by the event. Leavell was not suicidal.

Those who express their political views online are also likely targets. Even those involved with seemingly innocuous content, such as cooking or arts and crafts shows, have been victims of swatting. The anonymity and toxicity of the internet lends itself to the practice, Feore said.

“It’s not just dangerous to these broadcasters, but it’s unfair to law enforcement who have been put in that position,” he said.