What is ‘swatting’? The ‘prank’ terrorising US schools and baffling police

Published

2 years ago

February 12, 2023

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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.

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?

“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

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?

“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.

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

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.

US

Trump pauses tariffs on most goods from Mexico and some from Canada

Published

3 hours ago

March 7, 2025

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Trump pauses tariffs on most goods from Mexico and some from Canada

Donald Trump has announced that most goods imported from Mexico and some from Canada are to be exempt from his trade tariff regime for at least four weeks, just days after the charges were imposed.

“We are working hard, together, on the border, both in terms of stopping illegal aliens from entering the United States and, likewise, stopping fentanyl,” the president posted on his Truth Social platform after first relaxing his sanctions against Mexico.

He often gives both issues as reasons for the tariffs.

The latest climbdown came after he surprised financial markets 24 hours earlier by waiving tariffs against carmakers following pleas from motor industry bosses.

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The White House said that 62% of Canadian imports would still be subject to 25% tariffs because they were not compliant with a trade deal – USMCA (US Mexico and Canada) – struck in 2020.

News that Canadian goods which met the USMCA criteria were being spared tariffs until 2 April followed hours after the same concession was agreed between Mr Trump and his Mexican counterpart.

A tariff of 10% was to remain on potash – a fertiliser used by farmers – and Mr Trump added that the auto tariffs would definitely return next month.

The White House revealed some details. Parts due to flow into the US from Mexico and Canada as part of the manufacturing supply chain would not qualify for tariffs so long as they complied with the USMCA deal.

‘Rules of origin’ guidelines under the agreement allow goods to move between the three countries tariff-free if they qualify with a designation that they were made in North America.

US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick told Sky’s US partner network CNBC that, taken together, more than half of usual cross border trade volumes would be exempt under the expanded concessions.

He too signalled there were signs of progress in the dispute with America’s closest trading partners, saying each had worked hard to make progress in tackling imports of Fentanyl – blamed for high crime and deaths in US communities.

But Mr Lutnick explained that, as things stand, the reprieve would only last until 2 April when the Trump administration plans to impose reciprocal tariffs – on top of the 25% charges that came into force on Tuesday.

At the same time, Mr Trump is under intense pressure to relax his tariff regime permanently amid a backlash from US firms and financial market investors who fear it is self defeating.

A closely-watched forecast has even suggested that the threats of a trade war were enough to push the US economy into recession before Mr Trump took office.

The dollar has sunk in value and US government borrowing costs have risen on the back of the turmoil.

US stock markets were also feeling the pressure again with the tech-heavy Nasdaq on course to fall by more than 3% on the day.

It is widely expected that the European Union will be next to face tariffs – possibly from 2 April – after Mr Trump threatened action “very soon” just last week.

Commenting on the threat to the eurozone from such a move, the president of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde said on Thursday: “Just the threat of those tariff increases and potential retaliations are putting a brake on – on investment, on consumption decisions, on employment, hiring, all the rest of it.”

While Mr Trump has not issued a specific threat against the UK, her counterpart at the Bank of England Andrew Bailey told a committee of MPs on Wednesday that the US should work “multi-laterally” rather than bilaterally to resolve its disputes.

US

US ‘destroying’ international rules-based order by trying to meet Russia ‘halfway’, Ukraine’s UK ambassador warns

Published

3 hours ago

March 7, 2025

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US 'destroying' international rules-based order by trying to meet Russia 'halfway', Ukraine's UK ambassador warns

The United States is “finally destroying” the international rules-based order by trying to meet Russia “halfway”, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK has warned.

Valerii Zaluzhnyi said Washington’s recent actions in relation to Moscow could lead to the collapse of NATO – with Europe becoming Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s next target.

“The failure to qualify actions of Russia as an aggression is a huge challenge for the entire world and Europe, in particular,” he told a conference at the Chatham House think tank.

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“We see that it is not just the axis of evil and Russia trying to revise the world order, but the US is finally destroying this order.”

Mr Zaluzhnyi, who took over as Kyiv’s ambassador to London in 2024 following three years as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, also warned that the White House had “questioned the unity of the whole Western world” – suggesting NATO could cease to exist as a result.

It comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy scrambles to repair relations with US President Donald Trump following a dramatic row between the two men in the Oval Office last week.

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Mr Trump signalled on Tuesday that tensions could be easing, telling Congress he had received a letter from Mr Zelenskyy saying he was ready to sign a peace deal “at any time”.

But on the same day, the US president ordered a sudden freeze on shipments of US military aid to Ukraine, and Washington has since paused intelligence sharing with Kyiv and halted cyber operations against Russia.

Mr Zaluzhnyi said the pause in cyber operations and an earlier decision by the US to oppose a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine were “a huge challenge for the entire world”.

He added that talks between the US and Russia – “headed by a war criminal” – showed the White House “makes steps towards the Kremlin, trying to meet them halfway”, warning Moscow’s next target “could be Europe”.

US

Lesotho minister calls Trump ‘insulting’ for saying nobody has heard of country

Published

3 hours ago

March 7, 2025

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Lesotho minister calls Trump 'insulting' for saying nobody has heard of country

Lesotho’s foreign minister has said it is “insulting” for Donald Trump to say nobody has heard of the country.

In his address to the US Congress on Tuesday, the US president mentioned Lesotho while listing some of the foreign spending he had cut as “appalling waste”.

“Eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” Mr Trump said, drawing laughs in the Congress.

The president also appeared to struggle to pronounce the country’s name.

Lesotho’s foreign minister, Lejone Mpotjoane, said: “I’m really shocked that my country can be referred to like that by the head of state.

“Lesotho is such a significant and unique country in the whole world. I would be happy to invite the president, as well as the rest of the world, to come to Lesotho,” Mr Mpotjoane told the Reuters news agency.

He later told The Associated Press: “It is surprising and disappointing that he claimed no one knows Lesotho, especially given that the US has an embassy here.

“He should speak for himself and not generalise.”

The Trump administration has cut billions of dollars in foreign aid worldwide as part of the president’s America First policy.

Lesotho, which has a population of around 2.3 million people, has received American assistance for nearly 20 years through USAID, which gave it more than $44m (£34.1m) last year.

Mr Mpotjoane said while civil society organisations funded by the US embassy in Lesotho did work to support the LGBT+ community, the US also provided important funding to the country’s health and agriculture sectors.

The cuts have forced Lesotho’s HIV programme to lay off at least 1,500 health workers – about 7% of the country’s health staff – in what the government has described as a severe blow.

US aid has been credited with helping Lesotho provide life-saving treatment to more than 200,000 people living with HIV.

Mr Mpotjoane said the government was looking at how to become more self-sufficient.

“The decision by the president to cut the aid… it is [his] prerogative to do that. We have to accept that. But to refer to my country like that, it is quite unfortunate.”

This wasn’t the first time Mr Trump has reportedly been disparaging about Africa. During his first term, it was reported that he referred to African nations, as well as Haiti and El Salvador, as “shithole countries” – though Mr Trump denied this.

Elon Musk, a key adviser to Mr Trump and proponent of the foreign aid cuts in his role as head of the new department of government efficiency, has been trying to do business in Lesotho in recent months.

Mr Musk’s Starlink internet satellite service, a subsidiary of SpaceX, has applied for a license to operate in Lesotho. It is one of several African countries where the company is bidding to win contracts.

The Lesotho Communications Authority said last month it recently received Starlink’s bid for a 10-year license.

Prince Harry also co-founded the charity Sentebale to support children who live in extreme poverty or suffer from HIV/AIDS in Lesotho.