What is ‘swatting’? The ‘prank’ terrorising US schools and baffling police
Jenna Kochenauer was heading to lunch with colleagues when a police car sped past her.
“Then I saw a second one heading in that direction and I thought, huh, I wonder what’s going on,” she says.
“I reached over and turned on my police scanner, which I carry with me, and I started hearing about a possible shooting at the school that my kids go to”.
Jenna said she didn’t panic straight away but instead just focused on finding out if her children were safe.
Southridge High School was the target of a hoax school shooting in December. Pic: Kennewick Police Department
Kennewick police department, in Washington state, had received a call about an active shooter at Southridge High School, which Jenna’s children attend.
There were gunshots, the caller said, and a man wearing all black and carrying a rifle was on the premises.
The school was quickly placed in a lockdown. Nobody could enter or leave. Police arrived within minutes.
Jenna’s youngest son was sheltering in a Spanish classroom. The teacher closed the blinds, barricaded the door and tried to keep the students calm as police swept through the school in search of the gunman.
But there never was a shooter. The call to the police was fake.
And Southridge High is not the only school in the US where this has happened.
What is swatting?
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 turn up with no emergency in sight.
The term was first used by the FBI in 2008 and stems from the highly trained SWAT teams that often attend serious crimes like school shootings. The phenomenon is not distinct to the US. The UK has also recorded its share of swatting incidents, notably Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts who woke up to armed police at her door after a fake report of a gunman nearby.
It became a popular prank or harassment tactic amongst online communities, often in a way to escalate arguments, and occasionally with deadly consequences. In 2017, Andrew Finch from Kansas was shot dead at this home by police after a swatting prank between gamers went wrong.
While sometimes ending tragically, they are often one-off incidents, targeting an individual because of a grievance or some other motive.
The spree targeting US schools is being conducted on a huge scale and seems to be without a clear pattern or motivation.
Swatting calls have targeted a majority of US states
Mo Canady, head of the National Association of School Resource Officers, says the school swatting spree is ‘bizarre’
Schools have occasionally been swatted by students playing a prank.
But the latest spree, which started in the US in September 2022, has been so coordinated and affected so many states that the FBI has 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 to law enforcement officers based in schools.
“We’ve been used to dealing with [bomb threats] and schools have become pretty good at it. This phenomenon of calling in an active shooter event is quite new.”
NASRO estimates this spree has so far affected 40 states, a figure that is based on based on their tracking of local news coverage.
And some of these hoaxes are even happening on the same day. On 14 September 2022, at least two schools in Texas were sent into panic after calls reported active shooters. By the end of the week, schools in Kansas, California, Illinois and Missouri had all experienced the same.
Since then, dozens of schools have been targeted, many of them being swatted within hours of each other.
In the case of Southridge High, three other high schools in the area also went into lockdown after similar calls, and eight schools in nearby Montana were forced to do the same.
“It’s your worst day, right? Those types of calls, mass shooting. We train for them, and we’re prepared for them, but we hope they never come,” says Christian Walters, commander at the Kennewick Police Department.
He tells Sky News that 24 similar “incidents” were recorded within an hour of the call in a “coordinated effort” along the West Coast, ranging from California to Alaska.
Why are schools being swatted?
James Turgal is ‘baffled’ by the swatting spree despite over 20 years experience in the FBI
“It’s not just kids making prank phone calls,” says James Turgal, a former FBI assistant director who worked in its information and technology branch.
“If you listen, and I listened to the actual caller, it’s clearly an adult who’s doing this,” he tells Sky News.
“What’s the motivation? Why would somebody do this? Are they just trying to terrorise 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,” he says.
Turgal served in the FBI for 21 years and still finds these calls baffling and sinister.
“Somebody could be utilising this technique to do the swatting calls because they’re sitting back and looking at how fast [the police] actually respond. What is the number of officers that respond? How do they do it? But that possibility doesn’t make a lot of sense given the randomness of the states.”
There doesn’t seem to be a specific state or school district the caller is trying to gather information on.
Police in the US have been grappling with a school shooting hoax sweeping the nation
Hoax calls ‘are like putting gasoline on the fire’
While the incidents only last a few hours, the impact on the students, staff and parents caught up in them can be long-lasting.
“We’re already dealing, worldwide, with a lot of mental health issues, especially among adolescents. This is a bit like putting gasoline on the fire,” says Mo Canady, a former police lieutenant.
Canady’s organisation, NASRO, issued guidance to schools in September to deal with swatting, including being aware of the needs of vulnerable students who may find the ordeal more stressful.
The police and firefighters attending to these hoax calls also experience real emotional trauma.
“This takes a tremendous toll on officers who think they’re walking into what could be the most horrific thing they’ve ever seen in their careers,” Canady says.
Plus, these callouts are a huge drain on resources, pulling in police, firefighters and paramedics from local and state level, and leaving other areas vulnerable to crime.
Schools and communities remain defiant
Okemos High School in Michigan was a victim of swatting this week. Credit: Cody Butler/ WILX-TV
After a period of quiet over January, this week multiple schools across Michigan, Vermont and California were the latest victims of the swatting calls.
Vermont State Police said the calls are reported to have come from “VOIP phone numbers or potentially spoofed 802 numbers” and appear to be part of an “ongoing nationwide hoax”.
VoIP numbers are real phone numbers but they operate over 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 stay vigilant of any suspicious behaviour.
While the motive behind the calls is a mystery, the drain on resources and emotional impact is a real issues local communities must grapple with.
Sanford High in Maine is another school to have been rocked by a hoax call. A week after the incident, students wrote an article for their online newspaper, the Spartan Times, titled ‘November 15 wasn’t a hoax to us’, referring to the day SWAT teams filled their school hunting for a shooter and students barricaded themselves inside classrooms.
“To us it was real,” it reads, “to us, our lives were in danger”.
The piece ends with a defiant statement: “We are not broken. Our community will continue to come together and thrive in times of need.”
It seems clear the US will continue to be unsettled by these random attacks, but the schools, and the services that protect them, are determined not to be defeated.
The UK and US have agreed a trade deal, with Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump confirming the announcement during a live televised phone call.
It is the first trade deal agreed after Mr Trump began his second presidential term in January, and after he imposed strict tariffs on countries around the world in April.
Sir Keir said the “first-of-a-kind” deal with the US will save thousands of jobs across the UK, boost British business and protect British industry.
Politics latest: Trump and Starmer say trade deal just the start
The deal includes:
• Lowering 27.5% tariff on British car exports to the US to 10%, affecting 100,000 vehicles each year
• UK steel and aluminium industries will no longer face any tariffs after they had 25% duties placed on them
• Beef exports allowed both ways
• UK to have “preferential treatment whatever happens in the future” on pharmaceuticals, the president said.
However, there is a still a 10% tariff on most UK goods imported into the US after Mr Trump imposed that duty on most countries’ exports last month.
Mr Trump said the “final details” of the agreement were still being “written up”.
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Watch full call with Trump and Starmer
Trade minister Douglas Alexander told parliament the UK has “committed to further negotiations on tariff reductions”.
MPs will be able to debate the deal and any legislation needed to implement it, he added.
Sir Keir said “this is a really fantastic, historic day” that will “boost trade between and across our countries”, while Mr Trump said the agreement would be a “great deal for both countries”.
The president said the deal will make both the UK and the US “much bigger in terms of trade” as he thanked Sir Keir, who he said has been “terrific for his partnership in this matter…we have a great relationship”.
Sir Keir said it was achieved by not playing politics, and insisted the UK can have good trade relations with both the US and the EU.
Red lines on beef and chicken
The PM said the UK had “red lines” on standards written into the agreement, particularly on agriculture.
Mr Alexander told the Commons: “Let me be clear that the imports of hormone-treated beef or chlorinated chicken will remain illegal.
“The deal we’ve signed today will protect British farmers and uphold our high animal welfare and environmental standards.”
Read more:
UK and India strike ‘historic’ trade deal
Starmer faces rebellion from Labour MPs over welfare reforms
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Sky challenges Trump on trade deal
‘American beef is the safest’
US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said the deal will “exponentially increase our beef exports”, and added: “To be very clear, American beef is the safest, the best quality, and the crown jewel of American agriculture for the world.”
On whether the UK will have to accept all US beef and chicken, Mr Trump said: “They’ll take what they want, we have plenty of it, we have every type, we have every classification you can have.”
Hinting the US will move towards higher welfare practices, he said US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr “is doing a tremendous job and he’s probably heading toward your system with no chemical, no this, no that”.
‘A Diet Coke deal’
Previous UK governments have attempted – and failed – to secure a free trade agreement with the US, but Sir Keir had made it a high priority.
Conservative shadow trade secretary Andrew Griffith chastised the deal, saying the UK is still in the same category as Burundi and Bhutan.
“It’s a Diet Coke deal, not the real thing,” he told the Commons.
US
Man accused of harassing Jennifer Aniston for two years before crashing car through gates of her home
Three former police officers in the US have been found not guilty of murder over the death of motorist Tyre Nichols.
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith were acquitted by jurors following a nine-day trial at Tennessee state court.
The former Memphis officers were also found not guilty of aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.
Mr Nichols, a father of one, died three days after officers punched, kicked and hit him with a baton in January 2023 as he was just yards from his home.
The defendants hugged each other after being acquitted of the charges. Pic: Commercial Appeal/USA Today Network/AP
The 29-year-old’s death and a video of the incident – in which he cried out for his mother – sparked outrage in the US including nationwide protests and led to police reform.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Nichols’ family, described the verdicts as a “devastating miscarriage of justice”. In a statement, he added: “The world watched as Tyre Nichols was beaten to death by those sworn to protect and serve.”
Memphis District Attorney Steve Mulroy said he was “surprised that there wasn’t a single guilty verdict on any of the counts” including second-degree murder. He said Mr Nichols’ family “were devastated… I think they were outraged”.
Former police officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith were accused of second-degree murder. Pic: Memphis Police Dept/AP
But despite the three defendants being acquitted of state charges during the trial in Memphis, they still face the prospect of years in prison after they were convicted of federal charges of witness tampering last year.
Two other former officers previously pleaded guilty in both state and federal court. Desmond Mills Jr. gave evidence as a prosecution witness, while Emmitt Martin was blamed for the majority of the violence.
Sentencing for all five officers is pending.
Tyre Nichols’ death sparked street protests in January 2023 in Memphis and across the US. Pic: AP
Video evidence showed Mr Nichols was stopped in his car, yanked from his vehicle, pepper-sprayed and hit with a Taser. He broke free and ran away before the five police officers caught up with him again, and the beating took place.
Prosecutors argued that the officers used excessive, deadly force in trying to handcuff Mr Nichols and were criminally responsible for each others’ actions.
They also said the officers had a duty to intervene and stop the beating and tell medics that Mr Nichols had been hit repeatedly in the head, but they failed to do so.
The trial heard Mr Nichols suffered tears and bleeding in the brain and died from blunt force trauma.
The defence suggested Mr Nichols was on drugs, giving him the strength to fight off five strong officers, and was actively resisting arrest.
In December, the US Justice Department said a 17-month investigation showed the Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and discriminates against Black people.
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