It seems as if an unlocked router was responsible for sparking a recent SWAT raid in Evansville, Indiana.
How, you ask? Well, it all started when someone posted threats against local police using Topix. Law enforcement officials believed they had located the individual responsible for penning the threatening messages and took no chances.
The police even contacted the local television station and brought them along to witness the door-busting, flash-bang throwing glory of a SWAT raid.
The problem? The SWAT team and Evansville police had it all wrong. Yes, the house WiFi router wasn’t locked down, meaning, anyone could have accessed it to post the threatening comments. Unfortunately, only after subjecting an 18-year-old woman to not one, but two flash bang grenades did the police realized they had made a mistake.
Not wanting to look like a total screw-ups a second time, the police department simply sent an officer to the door of a home up the street when they determined the location of the real suspect.
“We did surveillance on the house, we knew that there were little kids there, so we decided we weren’t going to use the SWAT team,” the police chief told the paper after the second raid. “We did have one officer with a ram to hit the door in case they refused to open the door. That didn’t happen, so we didn’t need to use it.”
