Two days ago, this happened at Villanova University. Now it is happening in multiple locations.
USA Today reports:
Swatting mayhem: Universities scrambling to respond to hoax active shooter reportsWhen students of at least five universities across the U.S. should have been getting ready for their first day of class, they were running, hiding, and barricading themselves in rooms because of reports of an active shooter.Active shooter reports hit the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Villanova University on Aug. 21 and the University of South Carolina on Aug. 24. And Northern Arizona University received a report of a person with a gun at Cline Library on the Flagstaff mountain campus.Although they turned out to be hoaxes, such reports typically terrify students and their parents and wast millions of dollars in first-responder resources. The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville on Aug. 25 is also looking into an active shooter alert that may prove false.The fear and panic is exactly what the people who make such so-called swatting reports want, said Gary Cordner, a former police chief and professor of police studies who is now updating a guide on the misuse and abuse of 911 for the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing at Arizona State University.”The words active shooter are probably just about as fear-inducing as anything you can think of,” he said. “So make a false report of one of those, until it can be completely dispelled, it certainly induces a whole lot of fear.”And because real active shooters strike in the U.S. from time to time, universities and police departments have no choice but to deploy every available resource.”It can’t be ignored, it can’t be dismissed, just because the consequences could be so dire,” Cordner said. “College campuses, they’re quite large, there are lots and lots of buildings, so it’s a big task to check it all out just to determine nothing was going on.”
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