ICE Poseidon Gets Iced Thrice, But It Isn’t as Nice
I love a good prank. But fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice – you get swatted in public and there are no suspects and it becomes a burden on your life and daily routine. That’s what happened to ICE Poseidon AGAIN in Los Angeles. Supposedly he was doing a public event that allowed his viewers to participate in one of his livestreams. Unfortunately, someone rained on the parade.
As revealed by ICE Poseidon online, someone called the police on him, claiming he was involved in a robbery. ICE Poseidon isn’t a stranger to swatting, with his popular swatting on an actual airplane, this has to be about the third time the police have been called on him. About a month ago, someone called the police on ICE Poseidon and a friend as they were boarding a plane, claiming they had a bomb. The whole experience was captured on video, and resulted in ICE Poseidon’s banning from Twitch.
Swatting has been around since the Counterstrike days (circa 2009), where someone calls in a prank police report that results in SWAT or police swarming in to arrest the victim. More recently and frequently, livestreamers are the targets of most swatting cases – such as this hapless CS:GO player here.
A few years ago, Bungie was the target of a prank call, which resulted in police storming the developer’s building on a hostage rescue mission. Penalties for swatting are very strict, and especially in California where ICE Poseidon was swatted: in 2011, California State Senator Ted Lieu, proposed a bill to increase penalties for those who engage in “swatting,” and was himself a swatting victim.
ICE Poseidon and his friend were surrounded by police, Poseidon decided to take out his $7000 camera which could have been a fatal mistake. They were later released. Afterwards Poseidon tweeted ”
im embarrassed, this is not what the streams are supposed to be about…” The replies and discussions are full of alt-right Pepe The Frog memes, so anyone could be suspect. Police have no leads on who placed the call.