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BEYOND BERGEN: SWAT team members, police and other emergency responders descended on a video game store in a Clifton shopping complex tonight for a purported hostage-taking that turned out to be a “swatting” hoax, authorities told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
No arrests had been made as of just before 10 p.m. as Clifton detectives conducted an investigation, William Maer, a Passaic County Sheriff’s spokesman said.
The call for assistance to Digital Press Videogames on Piaget Avenue off Route 46 just after 7 p.m. was apparently from a gamer, claiming that “men with shotguns were holding numerous hostages,” some of whom were wounded, a Passaic County law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the incident told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Local police notified other agencies, and the sheriff sent a SWAT team and hostage negotiators, while New Jersey State Police also dispatched reinforcements.
Ron Bombaro produced a video from the scene:
The commercial shopping strip was surrounded and Route 46 was closed in both directions, while police told people to remain in their vehicles.
Before long, they were escorting people out of the video store.
Route 46 was reopened.
In “swatting,” hackers fool emergency responders into deploying SWAT teams to unsuspecting victims’ homes and businesses.
Authorities say this can often put people in danger.
The owner of the video game store told police tonight that he had no idea what was happening when they contacted him.
Forty or so customers were in the store and there were no signs of any trouble, he told them.
CLIFFVIEW PILOT photo
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