Jenna Kochenauer was on her way to lunch with colleagues when a police car drove past her.
“Then I saw a second one heading in that direction and I was like, huh, I wonder what’s going on,” she says.
“I reached out and turned on my police scanner, which I carry with me, and started hearing about a possible shooting at the school my kids go to.”
Jenna said she didn’t panic right away but just focused on finding out if her kids were safe.
Southridge High School was the target of a school shooting hoax in December. Photo: Kennewick Police Department
Kennewick Police Department, in Washington statehe had gotten a call about an active shooter at Southridge High School, which Jenna’s children attended.
There were gunshots, the caller said, and a man dressed in black and with a rifle was at the scene.
The school was quickly placed in lockdown. No one was allowed in or out. The police arrived within minutes.
Jenna’s youngest son was taking refuge in a Spanish classroom. The teacher closed the shutters, barricaded the door and tried to keep the students calm as police searched through the school for the gunman.
But there has never been a shooter. The call to the police was fake.
And Southridge High isn’t the only school in the United States where this has happened.
What is swat?
The FBI told Sky News it ‘takes swatting very seriously’
“Swatting” is when a person calls the police, pretending to report a crime, only for officers to show up with no emergency in sight.
The term was first used by the FBI in 2008 and comes from the highly trained SWAT teams who often witness serious crimes such as school shootings. The phenomenon is not distinct for the United States. The UK has also had its share of swatting incidents, in particular Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts who woke up to armed police at her door after a false report of a gunman nearby.
It has become a popular joke or harassment tactic among online communities, often in a way to escalate arguments and occasionally with deadly consequences. In 2017, Andrew Finch of Kansas was killed in this house by police after a prank between the players it went wrong.
While they sometimes end tragically, they are often one-off incidents, targeting an individual because of a complaint or some other reason.
The madness targeting US schools is being conducted on a massive scale and appears to lack a clear pattern or motivation.
Swating calls targeted most US states
Mo Canady, head of the National Association of School Resource Officers, says school spree is ‘bizarre’
Schools have occasionally been hit by students playing pranks.
But the latest spree, which began in the United States in September 2022, was so coordinated and affected so many states that the FBI deemed it worthy of investigation.
“It’s pretty bizarre,” says Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), which provides training for school-based law enforcement officers.
“We are used to confronting each other [bomb threats] and schools have gotten pretty good at it. This phenomenon of calling into an active shooter event is fairly new.”
NASRO estimates this spree has hit 40 states so far, a figure based on tracking local news coverage.
And some of these hoaxes are even happening on the same day. On Sept. 14, 2022, at least two schools in Texas were sent into a panic after calls reported active shooters. By the end of the week, schools in Kansas, California, Illinois AND Missouri they had all experienced the same thing.
Since then, dozens of schools have been targeted, many of them within hours of each other.
In the case of Southridge High, three other high schools in the area were also locked down after similar calls as well as eight nearby schools Montana they were forced to do the same.
“It’s your worst day, isn’t it? Those kind of calls, mass shooting. We train for them and we’re prepared for them, but we hope they never come,” says Christian Walters, commander of the Kennewick Police Department.
He tells Sky News that 24 similar “accidents” were recorded within an hour of the call in a “coordinated effort” along the West Coast, from California to Alaska.
Why are schools being squeezed?
James Turgal ‘baffled’ by dunking spree despite more than 20 years FBI experience
“It’s not just kids who make prank calls,” says James Turgal, a former FBI deputy director who worked in its computer and technology branch.
“If you listen, and I’ve listened to the real caller, it’s clearly an adult doing it,” he tells Sky News.
“What’s the motivation? Why would anyone do this? Are they just trying to scare people? Are they being paid to do it?”
Turgal, now vice president of cyber risk and strategy at Optiv Security, says the caller seemed calm, despite the terrifying situation they were supposed to be in.
“You could tell it was staged,” she says.
Turgal served 21 years in the FBI and still finds these calls baffling and sinister.
“Someone might use this technique to make dunk calls because they’re sitting and looking at how fast [the police] actually answer. How many agents are responding? How do they do it? But this possibility doesn’t make much sense given the randomness of the states.”
There doesn’t appear to be a specific state or school district that the caller is trying to gather information about.
Police across the United States have been grappling with a school shooting hoax sweeping the nation
Hoax calls ‘are like adding fuel to the fire’
While incidents only last a few hours, the impact on the students, staff and parents involved can be long-lasting.
“We’re already dealing, all over the world, with a lot of mental health problems, especially among adolescents. It’s a bit like adding fuel to the fire,” says Mo Canady, a former police lieutenant.
Canady’s organization, NASRO, in September provided guidance to schools on addressing swatting, including awareness of the needs of vulnerable students who may find the ordeal more stressful.
The police and firefighters who participate in these hoax phone calls also experience real emotional trauma.
“This takes a huge toll on agents who think they’re walking into what might be the most horrific thing they’ve ever seen in their careers,” Canady says.
Additionally, these calls represent a huge drain on resources, attracting police, firefighters and EMTs at the local and state levels and leaving other areas vulnerable to crime.
Schools and communities remain defiant
Okemos High School in Michigan was swatted this week. Credit: Cody Butler/WILX-TV
After a quiet period in January, several schools in Michigan, Vermont and California were the latest victims of the calls this week.
Vermont State Police said the calls were from “potentially spoofed VOIP phone numbers or 802 numbers” and appear to be part of an “ongoing nationwide hoax.”
VoIP numbers are real phone numbers but they work on the internet and can be used to hide the caller’s location.
The calls were an “act of terrorism,” according to Vermont Governor Phil Scott in a statement.
The FBI told Sky News it is urging the public to remain vigilant of any suspicious behavior.
While the reason behind the calls is a mystery, the drain on resources and emotional impact is a real issue facing local communities.
Sanford High in Maine is another school that was rocked by a hoax. A week after the incident, students wrote an article for their online newspaper, the Spartan Times, titled “November 15th Was No Joke For Us,” referring to the day SWAT teams filled their school chasing a shooter and students barricaded themselves inside classrooms.
“For us it was real,” it reads, “for us, our lives were in danger.”
The piece ends with a provocative statement: “We are not broken. Our community will continue to come together and thrive in times of need.”
It seems clear that the United States will continue to be shocked by these random attacks, but the schools and the services that protect them are determined not to be defeated.
