SWAT team raids home of former Jaguars player Telvin Smith, 29, as he’s arrested for unlawful sexual activity with minors

• Telvin Smith was charged with unlawful sexual activity with minors Wednesday
• A SWAT team was pictured surrounding his Florida home at 2pm
• They cleared the home and carried out search as a crime scene investigation unit arrived
• He was booked into jail at 5.20pm and was held on $50,000 bail 
• According to a police record, the arrest pertains to an incident that took place between 10pm on August 31 and 12pm on September 1, 2019 at a residence 
• Jaguars told DailyMail.com they ‘are aware of the report involving former linebacker Telvin Smith’ and are ‘unable to comment further’
• Cops were seen at his home in November and towed his car away. It’s unclear if the incident is related

By Leah Simpson For Dailymail.com

Published: 18:34 EDT, 29 April 2020 | Updated: 19:46 EDT, 29 April 2020

Former Jaguars player Telvin Smith has been charged with unlawful sexual activity with certain minors after a SWAT team was pictured surrounding his Florida home on Wednesday.

The 29-year-old sportsman was arrested in Jacksonville and a video shared by a reporter appeared to show him handcuffed and taken into custody by plainclothes officers. 

According to a police record, the arrest pertains to an incident that took place between 10pm on August 31, 2019 and 12pm on September 1, 2019 at a residence.

Smith was arrested at 4pm after witnesses shared images of his property in the Queen’s Harbor gated community being surrounded by police.

He was booked into Duval County Jail around 5.20pm and was being held at on $50,000 bail. 

Telvin Smith was charged with unlawful sexual activity with certain minors Wednesday

He was booked into jail at 5.20pm and was held on $50,000 bail. According to a police record, the arrest pertains to an incident that took place between 10pm on August 31 and 12pm on September 1, 2019 at a residence

The armed team and undercover officers arrived at his home around 2pm, according to News4Jax.

The SWAT team entered the property with guns drawn as they believed there were weapons on site, someone with knowledge told News4Jax.

A crime scene unit van was seen driving into the community after Smith was detained. The SWAT team cleared the home and searched for evidence.  

In Florida anyone 24 years old and above may be be charged with unlawful sexual activity with a minor who is 16 or 17 years old. The charge is a second degree felony.

‘The Jaguars are aware of the report involving former linebacker Telvin Smith. The club is unable to comment further on this ongoing investigation,’ The Jaguars said in a statement to DailyMail.com. 

It’s currently unclear whether Wednesday’s raid was also in relation to a similar incident that took place at the home in November during which the footballer’s vehicle was towed.  

Smith had not been charged with anything in relation to that incident and there were no public records available on Wednesday evening. 

A SWAT team searched his home in the Queen’s Harbor gated community in Florida ON Wednesday afternoon

Smith is seen being arrested and taken away by plainclothes officers on Wednesday at 4pm 

A reporter pictured the scene on Wednesday. Cops were seen at his home in November and towed his car away. It’s unclear if the incident is related

Last May, Smith announced he would not be playing football in 2019 and would focus on getting his ‘world in order’.

‘It was said to me from a great coach, that in order for the man to be his best, he must get his world in order. At this time I must take time away from this game & get my world in order,’ Smith posted. 

‘I must give this time back to myself, my family, & my health. I appreciate all the support I will & will not get. I just ask y’all respect my decision to not play football this season.’

At the time the Jaguars declined to comment on the decision.

‘We will not have a comment about Telvin Smith’s statement at this time,’ the team said in a statement. ‘We need to have a conversation with Telvin to understand the situation and the circumstances. If there is a way we can support him we need to understand that.’ 

At the time he had been absent from workouts.

Last June, Smith said the Jacksonville Jaguars fined him $88,650 for missing the team’s mandatory, three-day minicamp. 

The Pro Bowl selection in 2017 and the team’s top tackler had three years remaining on deal, which averages $10 million annually in base salary.

In Florida anyone 24 years old and above maybe be charged with unlawful sexual activity with a minor who is 16 or 17 years old. The charge is a second degree felony

Jacksonville police crime scene unit just arrived at Telvin Smith’s gated community, moments after he was booked into jail. Sources say SWAT cleared house, detectives searched for evidence, now CSI technicians will document, process what they find. @wjxt4 pic.twitter.com/ZgZ8mr0dbX

— Vic Micolucci WJXT (@WJXTvic) April 29, 2020

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Earlier this week, 28-year-old Andrew Finch, a family man from Kansas, opened his door to a fully-armed SWAT team ready to defuse a hostage situation that was called in from 13,000 miles away. Shot down before he could even leave his porch, it became clear that Finch was the victim of a sick and tragic prank.

In Ventura, California, an online spat between two players on the game Call of Duty escalated over Twitter to threats of SWATing, a popular form of online harassment that involves calling in a fake hostage situation, bomb threat, or shooting to authorities who then deploy a SWAT team to the home of an unsuspecting victim.

Moronically, some successful swatters turn to social media to brag, leading the police to Tyler R. Barris in Los Angeles, who’d been linked to two dozen previous phony bomb threats. Because these raids are often live streamed, unfolding before an audience of captivated gamers over Twitch, swatting has become a notorious practice for online pranksters and hotheaded Internet rivals. Dexerto reports this particular argument erupted over a $1 or $2 wager made on Call of Duty.

But how did Finch, an innocent third party on the receiving end of this retaliatory prank, become a decoy in a will-you-won’t-you-SWAT-me taunt over Twitter? Screenshots of now-deleted tweets reveal how Finch’s address was given randomly – the product of a dare.

In light of Finch’s death, and a string of other high-profile swatting schemes including a New York Times Magazine report on the rise of serial swatters, criminal consequences are expected to reach beyond the standard reimbursement of municipal funds. Tyler R. Barris, the man behind the phone call that led to Finch’s unnecessary death, is being extradited from his home in Los Angeles to await trial in Kansas, and it has been reported that manslaughter and reckless endangerment may be on the table. Here’s everything you need to know about swatting, how it works, and why someone might do it.

It’s relatively easy to swat someone
Realistically, swatting isn’t very difficult to pull off. The victim has no way of knowing until the SWAT team bangs on the door. As reported by the Wichita Eagle, Wichita authorities remained on the phone with Tyler R. Barris during the raid before realizing there weren’t any hostages inside the house as he’d reported. According to the now-released phone call between Barris and the police, a domestic dispute rose to the level of gunshots and hostages, including a mother and child. Police are trained to err on the side of caution, and swatters figured out how to take advantage of that, often faking life-or-death situations such as shootings, hostage situations and bomb threats to ensure that action is taken.

Swatting is typically carried out from miles away, although perpetrators will still “spoof” caller-ID to make it so the call appears local, by placing calls online via Skype or using a burner phone. Another way hackers obfuscate their location is to by placing the call a through the clone of a pre-existing modem. Public databases have never been so readily available, nor users so sophisticated. A quick Google search can often be enough to find out where you live, and those savvy enough to game competitively likely know their way around a routine firewall.

Swatting has longstanding roots in the online gaming community
Live video-gamers, especially those with large virtual audiences, have become increasingly susceptible to swatting attempts since the term was first coined by the FBI in 2008. As mentioned in a report by The New York Times, “Those cameras have made them irresistible targets for swatting, as the prank is called, allowing mischief makers to indulge their voyeurism by watching the tense and confusing moments of a police raid.” Twitch, the streaming app of choice for gamers, even changed their terms of service to include a zero-tolerance policy on swatting, carrying indefinite suspension. Regardless, swatting videos litter the web, some accruing more than millions of views.

Special FBI Agent John Bennett of San Francisco said in a statement to CBS, that those who swat want to see “a tactical response” – specifically, they “want to see armed officers, they want to see a bomb, dogs, helicopters – that’s all part of the fun.” The FBI estimates approximately 400 swatting incidents a year.

Live-stream broadcasts allow swatters to watch the raid happen in real time.
The appeal of this kind of swatting, apparently, is in watching the raid unfold. Like something out of an episode of Black Mirror, the broadcast continues on as the SWAT team arrives and aggressively takes control of the unsuspecting gamer. One theory regarding the spike in these types of live swattings is that competitive online gaming fosters Internet rivalries and trolling, making them even more vulnerable to such desk-dwelling antics. Some anti-swatting experts go so far as to recommend avid gamer alert their local law enforcement that they could potentially be a target for this kind of behavior.

Celebrities have been dealing with swatters for years.
A rash of celebrity swattings occurred in 2012, including raids at the homes of Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and Miley Cyrus. Over the next year, armed forces were called to various “incidents” at celebrity homes all over Los Angeles. Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Selena Gomez and the Jenner family have all been victims of what was at the time being called “the 9-1-1 hoax.” In these incidents, the thrill comes from the media-coverage, eventually prompting The Los Angeles Times to forgo further reporting them for fear of copy cat hoaxes. Since then, public figures such as congresswoman Katherine Clarke of Massachusetts and the viral meme stars behind “Damn Daniel” have also gone public with their frightening experience of having been swatted.

Some swatters call in threats from others for cash.
A serial swatter known on Twitter solely as Swautistic recently admitted to reporter Brian Krebs that others have paid him to carry out swats for them. “Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that,” he said. “But I began making $ doing some swat requests.” Krebs then analyzed that in a statement to The Washington Post:”According to him, he’s put his shingle out there as someone who can be hired to make these false reports. It seems like he got some kind of pleasure from doing it.”

Swatting can be tried as a criminal offense, from conspiracy to reckless endangerment
Punishment for swatting used to be reimbursement of all wasted municipal funds, which can range between thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in damages. However now, the charges have risen to the likes of reckless endangerment and conspiracy to provide false information, both of which carry years of jail time. Barris is currently to Kansas and is being held in Los Angeles without bail. He has been charged with one count of creating a false alarm which, according to the Los Angeles Times, is a felony in Kansas.