Things can get dark when artists rise in popularity. Learning this is singer, dancer and media personality, Jojo Siwa, who was forced to hire security after her safety was compromised earlier this month.
To promote her new EP, Guilty Pleasure, the former Dance Moms star was on E! News on Monday night, where her interview began with being asked about the new "attention and fanfare" on her. Admitting that "it's different," Siwa then shocked viewers with news that she encountered a SWAT team.
"It’s interesting—okay, I guess we’ll get really right into it: I got swatted two nights ago," Siwa, 21, said around the 45-second mark of the video below. "I haven’t told anybody about this yet. But basically, I showed up to my house, there was four police cars outside."
"The police asked me, he was like, 'Why do you not have security with you in this moment?’” she continued. "And I was like, 'Cause I haven’t needed it yet.' But now, I do really need it every day with me. So, it definitely has changed in the last month, two months, three months, I guess, since 'Karma' came out. It’s been fun, to say the least."
Swatting is a dangerous prank call practice where emergency services are notified to send the police or another emergency service response team to a person's house. Results can occasionally be deadly, like the 2017 Wichita swatting, where Andrew Finch was fatally shot by police after an online argument between Call of Duty gamers Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill. Finch was uninvolved with the two men.
An artist who's been repeatedly targeted in swatting incidents is Nicki Minaj, who claimed to have found the caller's information and threatened to file an arrest warrant against them.