ZACHARY - The East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office found nothing criminal after spending upwards of eight hours searching the Audubon Parks Apartment Homes for an alleged barricaded subject.

The incident, which occurred last night, is called "swatting," making a fake call to emergency services to trigger a massive law enforcement response to a particular address.

Former Baton Rouge Police Chief Greg Phares says these situations can be very dangerous. 

"It is a false call to law enforcement that describes something that if it were real, would mandate a swat response. It's illegal, it's very dangerous and it puts innocent people, both law enforcement and civilians, in danger. it's just bad," Phares said. "Police are going to get there fast, they're going to have to drive fast. We’ve had a number of tragic incidents lately where people have been injured or killed in pursuit and fast driving. But if you have somebody you believe has a gun to their head and they're going to be killed, you have a moral obligation to get there fast."

Zachary Police say the call came from a blocked number. Police said the man on the other end of the line said he was holding his wife and child hostage. 

Police then turned the case over to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office which sent deputies to the scene and their SWAT unit began to sweep the complex from around 6:30 p.m. Thursday until around 3 a.m. Friday.

"It takes a long time as you said from the situation recently, to make sure, 100 percent sure that everything's okay and no innocent people are in danger," Phares said.

After checking each apartment in the complex, deputies said they found zero evidence. 

"You make all these preparations and plans to make a forcible entry and do what you have to do and it's all bogus," Phares said. 

Although they are sometimes found to be false alarms, these calls are treated as urgent and require a large response and extra resources. 

"A typical SWAT callout you're going to have to perimeter up, in other words, you're going to have officers that are not SWAT officers who are traffic or patrol officers are going to have to establish a perimeter to keep people from coming into what they falsely believe is a danger zone," Phares said.

EBRSO said they found no hostages and reported no deaths, but they are still investigating the incident.