‘This is terrorism’: Swatting, hoax threats are drain on first responders
CLEVELAND — It was a difficult decision for Cuyahoga Falls resident Sunny Park to keep her daughter home from school.
Schools statewide, including the Cuyahoga Falls City School District, received an email message threatening school buildings Monday from an account claiming to be a Russian terrorist.
“I’m pretty sure this is fake. I’m 99% sure it was just some bot or something but that 1 percent was driving me crazy. What if something happens?” Park said.
Park and her daughter Kaylan
decided together to stay home from school. Nothing happened at Bolich Middle School that day.
“You just never know what might happen,” Park said. “These kids found threats online saying ‘the blood of your children will spread’ or something. That hurt my heart. So I’d rather keep her home. She can go back tomorrow unless something else happens.”
Last week, the FBI said the threats made to more than 50 schools in Ohio and others in Texas were not credible but hoaxes, a practice called swatting. Swatting causes panic for residents and occupies first responders.
Prank calls to emergency services are disrupting communities nationwide.
Parma police Det. Scott Faulisi said swatting calls are usually made by younger people using online instant messaging sites like Discord, which make it difficult for police to pinpoint who made the calls.
Most swatting incidents in Parma have occurred at homes. In recent years, he said, officers responded 58 times to a single home. Investigators found a 25-year-old Arizona man made those calls and other similar ones across the country, Faulisi said.
“We will respond to each and every call we get,” he said. “But it’s like the boy who cried wolf. We keep going over there and every time we go over there it’s a fake call.”
Faulisi said other times the caller and the victim know each other and can be a form of retaliation.
Westlake police responded Sept. 4 to a home after a caller noticed someone trying to pry into a neighbor’s basement window, according to a police report. When officers arrived at the home, they found no break-in happened.
The same person called police the next day and reported “someone might get shot or stabbed.” The person reported hearing a loud boom at a home. The homeowner turned out to be the caller’s aunt, police said. The caller had violated a no-contact order from the Sept. 4 incident, police said.
So far this year, Westlake police officers responded to six swatting calls. In 2022, they didn’t have any.
Police Capt. Gerald Vogel said each fake call can be a huge drain on police and fire resources.
“This not only is a waste of time and money, but it really can delay response to other calls for service in the area, which of course can be very dangerous,” he said. “The bad information, often relayed as involving bombs, guns and/or threats to persons or the caller, prompts a strong response.”
He also said swatting can scare and confuse completely innocent people who are contacted by the officers responding to the scene.
Park hopes more can be done to stop the threats, which she said are terrifying.
“This is terrorism. The whole way in which people do this is awful,” she said. “Whoever drafted those emails or however it came to be is a form of terrorism. And at some point, we’re going to have to address how we navigate this world that just seems so cruel and unkind.”