SCHOOL SHOOTING HOAXES

An active shooter hoax at the end of November shut down as many as 20 schools across Georgia, including in Savannah. It came just weeks after a similar string of incidents in South Carolina. This week, after the much-publicized tragic school shooting in Nashville Tennessee on Monday, March 27, 2023, numerous 911 calls were made to schools in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Two private Catholic High Schools were put on lock-down while police and SWAT responded, with nearby University of Pittsburgh briefly shutting down as well. After the schools were cleared and no evidence of an active shooter was found, law enforcement concluded that the series of 911 calls were part of a hoax.

A NATIONAL PROBLEM

Hoax calls about school shootings have been occurring around the country in recent months.

In many hoax cases, 911 audio reveals the caller sounds like the same person. The swatting calls also describe similar circumstances. In Iowa, calls at three separate schools all said students were shot in the bathroom. Several schools in the Cincinnati area have also gotten swatting calls. In one case, the caller said, "He opened fire on students and students got injured in the classroom.” Georgia has also seen a rash of fake school shooting threats. In one of them, the caller said, "I was teaching in the biology class. The suspect came to the classroom. Shot seven students there in the biology class, second floor.”

Schools in Pennsylvania were the latest targeted by so-called swatting. Computer-generated calls on Wednesday made claims about active shooters, but it was all a hoax. One day earlier, nearly 30 Massachusetts schools received fake threats. Schools in Utah were also the target of swatting hoaxes on Wednesday. It's part of a nationwide pattern plaguing schools and police departments.

The calls appear to come in waves, and once one school gets one, it seems dozens of others in the same area begin getting similar phone calls that don't turn out to be anything. In Massachusetts, 28 schools reported being targeted by hoax calls recently, and nine in Missouri. Fourteen others were reported in Rhode Island, the caller stating there was a shooter at the school. "The swatting calls appear to be part of a nationwide pattern," said Missouri Highway Patrol Sergeant Mike McClure. Other states include Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, which all report getting calls just this month.

WHAT IS SWATTING?

The fake calls are a category of a dangerous practice known as “swatting,” or making hoax 911 calls to provoke a large-scale law enforcement response. Hundreds of cases of swatting occur annually, with some using caller ID spoofing to disguise their number. The goal is to get authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to respond to an address. An FBI official said in November that they believe the wave of false threats focused on schools may be coming from outside of the country. Officials said at the time that they had identified calls to about 250 colleges, 100 high schools and several junior high schools just since early June falsely reporting explosive devices being planted at the schools or saying that a shooting was imminent. The FBI in Pittsburgh acknowledged the risk that these calls present, noting in a statement about the school threat cases that it “takes swatting very seriously because it puts innocent people at risk.”

WHAT CAN BE DONE

Researchers with The Educators School Safety Network say this school year there's been a 250 percent nationwide increase in swatting incidents where someone reports an active shooter and it turns out to be someone outside the school calling it in. Social media threats are the other issue seeing a huge spike.

“I think part of the reason that we see this continual increase is that by and large we continue to focus on the wrong things," one school administrator stated. "We work on active shooter, and that's it. But yet, we know that it's much more likely that you're going to have a threat like this, that you're going to have a violent fight. You can have non-custodial parents. You're going to have a medical emergency, you're going to have a weather emergency. We call it an all-hazards approach to school safety, a comprehensive all-hazards approach instead of the vast majority of teachers in the United States get [sic] active shooter training, and that's it.” Experts conclude that the entire school staff should be trained on all hazards and parents and staff should be included in the discussions.

The Educators School Safety Network offers a free online on-demand school safety course called School Safety 101.

RECENT ACTION TAKEN

U.S. authorities on Thursday said they arrested a Washington state man who made more than 20 "swatting" calls around the country and in Canada last year, prompting real emergency responses to his fake reports of bombs, shootings or other threats. Ashton Connor Garcia, 20, of Bremerton, used voice-over-internet technology to conceal his identity as he placed the calls last year between June and September — and he treated them as entertainment, broadcasting them on the social media platform Discord, federal prosecutors said. He faces 10 felony counts filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Washington, that could bring up to a decade in prison. Court records did not immediately indicate if Garcia had an attorney who might speak on his behalf. His charges are not related to swatting calls in the Pittsburgh area on Wednesday. 

Garcia is not accused of having sent SWAT teams to schools. Instead, prosecutors say, in several cases he collected personal information about his victims and threatened to send emergency responses to their homes unless they turned over money, credit card information or sexually explicit images. Garcia placed the calls to agencies in California, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oho, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington and Edmonton, in Alberta, Canada, the indictment said. Authorities have warned that such hoaxes can prove deadly. In 2017, a police officer in Wichita, Kansas, shot and killed a man while responding to a hoax emergency call. This month, the city agreed to pay $5 million to settle a lawsuit, with the money to go to the two children of 28-year-old Andrew Finch.

CONTACT A PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEY

If you or someone you know has been injured due to or been threatened by a fake 911 call, contact Dave Thomas at The Thomas Law Firm for a free evaluation of your legal claim.