Someone had a mean-spirited idea to target Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Christmas day.

A Boston Police Department spokesman told the Herald that the department received information that a violent shooting had taken place at an address matching that of Wu’s Roslindale home Monday.

The shooting was a hoax.

A spokesman for the mayor declined to comment on the incident.

Such calls reporting serious crimes that demand a police response that are placed only to harass or possibly endanger the resident of a home are known as “swatting.”

“To ‘swat’ someone is to falsely report a dangerous situation that provokes a police response,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s website, which adds that the act is “malicious and harmful.”

The harassment trend has been reported by various news outlets to cost tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars for each incident and has at times resulted in the death of the target who had been falsely accused of a violent crime like a homicide, a hostage situation or a bomb threat.

The scourge has become prevalent enough that the FBI took an unprecedented step of forming a Command Center in May 2023 for all federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies to share reports of swatting incidents.

The FBI’s National Swatting Virtual Command Center, which does not appear to share statistics publicly, “is the first time ever that the federal government has created a centralized command center for law enforcement agencies across the country to exchange, track, and share information related to swatting incidents and is a key step towards being able to better understand the nature and prevalence of these crimes,” according to a report issued by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.