Someone tried to draw police and a hostage negotiator to the Delano home of U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer over the weekend by claiming a murder had taken place inside, the Wright County Sheriff’s Office says.
Hoax email prompts Wright County sheriff visit to Rep. Tom Emmer’s Delano home
A man who falsely claimed he lived at the residence tried to draw a hostage negotiator there.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 29, 2024 at 10:38PM
The five-term Republican posted about it on X Saturday. “Tonight my family and I were the target of a ‘swatting’ incident involving a 911 prank call that wrongly diverted a police presence to my home,” Emmer wrote. He noted that other elected officials around the country have been similarly targeted recently.
A person who claimed to live at the house emailed the Wright County Attorney’s Office to claim he’d killed a man with whom his wife had been cheating. He requested a hostage negotiator and said he had her tied up inside, according to a copy of the police report.
A Wright County deputy identified the residence as Emmer’s home. Emmer was not in the state at the time.
“Thankfully, no one was home or injured,” Emmer wrote on X. “I condemn this illegal abuse of police resources.”
A Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said U.S. Capitol Police are investigating the incident.
The call came about a month after other high-profile Republican lawmakers reported having police summoned to their homes amid fake reports of violence. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, reported a similar incident on Christmas.
Several Minnesota schools and Jewish facilities were also the subjects of fake bombing and shooting threats in early December.
The term “swatting” came into prominence over the last decade as fully kitted out police departments and SWAT teams made headlines by responding to fake reports of shootings across the country. Those encounters sometimes turned deadly.
A St. Cloud man was held by police at gunpoint in 2015 when someone called local law enforcement with a fake tip. Nearly two dozen officers from six agencies responded to a hoax call at a Minnetonka man’s home in 2019 — Edina had even sent an armored vehicle.
A Kansas man was shot and killed in one such incident in 2017 after police were summoned to his house after a game of “Call of Duty” ended badly. A man suspected of making that and similar calls in 17 other states was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2019.
Republicans across the country benefited from favorable tailwinds as President-elect Donald Trump resoundingly defeated Democrat Kamala Harris. But that wasn’t the whole story in Minnesota.
