Pamela Harris says she has been swatted nine times over several years in South Fulton, Georgia, and she is done waiting quietly for it to stop. The calls have brought officers to her door in the middle of the night, she says, and now she fears for her own safety and that of her 92-year-old father, Reggie Collins, who lives with her.
According to WSB-TV, Harris showed Channel 2 Action News several incident reports documenting the calls, and her most recent encounter with police came on October 11. She also shared Ring camera footage showing an officer responding to one of the calls at her home. Harris says officers have repeatedly shown up after false reports, and she reported being swatted two or three times in 2026 alone.
A separate account from 11Alive describes the pattern differently, with Harris saying she experienced five instances in which officers came to her home after 911 calls, three of them in the middle of the night. In one of those visits, around 1 a.m., three South Fulton police officers arrived at her home believing they were responding to a genuine emergency.
A Multi-Agency Investigation
The calls have drawn in more than one agency. 11Alive reports that the FBI, the GBI and South Fulton Police have been investigating, and South Fulton Police Chief Keith Meadows said investigators reached out to a Google representative because the numbers involved appeared to be routed through Google numbers. Harris, for her part, says she does not know who is making the calls or exactly why she has been targeted.
She has her suspicions, though. Per 11Alive, Harris believes she may be targeted because she is a former city council candidate who still speaks out on social media, and she told WSB-TV she believes her involvement in the South Fulton community may be part of why she keeps getting swatted — possibly as an attempt to intimidate or silence her. Harris first contacted the FBI in 2023 while she was running for office, and she says the calls stopped for a time before starting back up again. She now says she plans to contact the FBI again on Friday.
'The Police Department Is Supposed to Protect Me'
WSB-TV reports that the South Fulton Police Department had not responded to reporter Eryn Rogers's inquiry about what is being done to investigate or prevent the repeated calls at Harris's home. Harris says that is not good enough. She wants police to do more to stop the swatting, telling the station the department is supposed to protect her.
Her father feels the toll just as sharply. Reggie Collins, 92, has said the incidents are scary, aggravating and make him angry. Despite the fear, Harris and her father say they will not leave their home because of the calls.
Why Swatting Is So Dangerous
Swatting involves false reports intended to trigger an emergency law-enforcement response at someone else's home, according to WSB-TV. The FBI has warned that such hoaxes can drain law-enforcement resources and create dangerous, stressful encounters for everyone involved, and the bureau advises people who find themselves targeted to follow responding officers' commands. The FBI separately describes swatting as a malicious tactic involving hoax calls or reports to emergency services that typically feign an immediate threat to life.
Federal officials say public figures can be targets, but anyone can become a victim, and the bureau identifies publicly available or data-breach-exposed personal information and phone numbers as risk factors. In a related case, the FBI's Philadelphia field office described a swatting call as a hoax made to draw a response from law enforcement — specifically a special weapons and tactics team — after announcing charges against a member of an online group accused of placing such calls to universities.
A Pattern Playing Out Across Georgia and Beyond
Harris's experience is not isolated. In Hart County, Georgia, deputies investigated multiple emergency calls after fake reports of a double murder and a pipe bomb at the same home, according to WRDW. Investigators there said the incidents began after a child refused another online video game player's demands, and deputies received two more false pipe-bomb reports at the same home shortly after 2 a.m. the following Saturday.
In Texas, a Baytown family told ABC13 Houston that false emergency reports have repeatedly triggered police responses at their home, including one incident involving three heavily armed officers. Baytown police said officers must act on the information available to them when a report indicates someone may be seriously injured or in immediate danger. And in Milwaukee, the city agreed to a $575,000 settlement after months of heavily armed police responses to 911 calls that officials knew were hoaxes, according to The New York Times.
Georgia lawmakers have taken note of the growing problem. Following numerous reported swatting incidents across the state and the country, the legislature passed Senate Bill 421 on April 23, 2024, according to the Georgia House Budget and Research Office. For now, Harris says she and her father are simply trying to hold on in the home they refuse to abandon, waiting for the agencies investigating her case to find answers she still does not have.
