Why do people keep swatting “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” alum Garcelle Beauvais?
On Saturday, Jan. 24, police “stormed” the 59-year-old actress and reality TV star’s home in Los Angeles after receiving a call from a man claiming to be her ex inside the house with a shotgun, NBC Los Angeles reported.
Law enforcement sources told the outlet that, upon arrival, the alleged subject refused to meet with them. After eventually gaining access to the Porter Ranch home, police found no man and no weapon. Authorities have since deemed it a swatting call — when emergency services are deliberately sent to a home under false pretenses, often to cause disruption.
The practice, which is illegal and can carry serious consequences, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is most often carried out by rival streamers and gamers looking to cause chaos and disrupt opponents. However, the level of impact can increase significantly when those targeted are Black.
It’s unclear whether the “Survival of the Thickest” actress — a mother of three sons: Oliver Saunders, whom she shares with her first husband Daniel Saunders, and twins Jax and Jaid, whom she shares with ex-husband Mike Nilon — was home at the time.
Even more bizarre, this marks the second time Beauvais has been targeted. Back in the summer of 2025, authorities were similarly summoned to her beach home in Oxnard, California, shortly after she had been hosting nearly a dozen of her sons’ friends, whom she noted, with the exception of just one, were all Black teenagers. After returning to her Los Angeles home, she received a call from a neighbor.
“It’s my neighbor and she goes, our street is shut down, and there’s FBI cars in front of your house. And she goes, they want your number. And being Black, I’m like don’t give them my number,” she explained during an appearance on the Sirius XM show Radio “Andy’s Smith Sisters Live.” “So about 20 minutes later, she calls me this time, and she said that my house was swatted.”
“The Jamie Foxx Show” alum said she didn’t even know what swatting meant at the time and had to call her son to understand what was happening.
“And he’s like, ‘Mom, they do it to YouTubers or streamers or somebody calls and says there’s something crazy at your house. So FBI shows up — I have video of, like, rifles with lights on them,’ ” she recalled.
