In a letter to students and staff, the University of Oklahoma president says the fake calls of an active shooter on Friday came from outside the United States.
The call prompted alerts on social media urging people to shelter in place and “run, hide, fight.” 90 minutes later, OU police determined there was no shooter.
Tulsa police captain and Special Operations Team commander Mike Eckert says these types of dangerous pranks known as “swatting” have been on the rise for years.
“The term swatting relates to the fact that the call is, by design, created to be so high level that not only multiple officers are assigned to it, but the desire is to get the SWAT team involved,” said Captain Eckert.
Eckert says detecting a bogus call is difficult. The call may lack detail or have story gaps, but as a first responder, that’s not a big enough indicator to delay a response.
“That’s the challenging part and frustrating as well,” said Eckert. “Nobody wants to be that person who stands up and says, ‘hey, let’s slow down a bit, that doesn’t sound right.’”
However, that challenge is also his biggest concern, because Eckert says slowly reacting with less urgency to a “boy who cries wolf”-type situation is, to some extent, human nature.
“If we start getting so many swatting calls—10, 15, 20, 30 a month---when that 31st call comes in, it would be foolish to think the 31st response would have the same urgency as the first one.”
Swatting is currently a misdemeanor in Oklahoma, unless an injury, loss of life or other felony was committed as a result of the call.
A new law just took effect in April in Ohio that increased the penalty of swatting to a felony. Lawmakers in other states, like New York and Maine, have recently proposed similar legislation.
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