South Florida faux shooter calls happening across nation

One after another the 911 calls came in last week, each nearly identical to the last:

“Hello, there is an active shooter at Pompano Beach High School,” a man with an accent said in one of them, breathing heavily, as if he had been running. “I repeat. Hello, there is an active shooter at Pompano Beach High School. Twelve students have been injured.”

The calls came into dispatch centers not only in South Florida but across the state Oct. 11, locking down schools from Naples to Orlando. They join a recent spate of false active shooter calls across the country over the last few months, the recordings of which sound identical to the ones South Florida dispatchers received. The FBI is investigating the incidents, but the organization has not indicated who or what might be behind them.

Each caller shares the same pattern of speaking and conveys the same information each time, but slightly tweaked.

In the call for Boca Raton High school, the fictional shooter was Hispanic and shot 15 students, though later on the caller reports only 10 students were injured. And for Dillard High in Fort Lauderdale, the shooter was wearing a gray shirt and body armor, not a blue shirt.

Each time, authorities must treat the call as a credible threat. On Oct. 11 all high schools in Broward County went into

“secure” status, or lockdown. Police cars, fire trucks and ambulances arrived. Parents waited outside, texting their kids goodbyes.

“You have to take it seriously,” said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers.

“Because the first time we choose not to, the first time we hesitate and allow ourselves to think this is just another false call, that kind of hesitation can cost lives.”

Growing national problem

The national scale of the calls is unusual compared to past “swattings.” The original swattings began in the online gaming community in the early 2000s. Viewers would call in false threats on gamers as they streamed themselves playing, then watch live as a SWAT team burst into the room.

“You’d be gaming with somebody, and someone would get mad at you and call and say, ‘There’s a hostage situation and someone’s going to kill someone at this address,’ and they thought it was kind of funny,” said Stacy Arruda, a former FBI director who ran the cyber squad in the middle district of Florida.

“It happened for a while and it kind of waned off. And now I guess somebody’s found a new use for it with active shooter calls and is basically controlling how law enforcement is deployed.”

Fake active shooter calls have targeted at

least a dozen states this fall alone, a stark rise from years prior, and on a much broader scale. On Thursday Wisconsin became the latest state to receive them, with calls for at least 14 schools.

The recordings of calls that have been made public in other states sound strikingly similar to the ones targeting South Florida: A man with the same accent repeats the same few phrases and breathes heavily into the phone. The only difference seems to be the name of the school and a few other details.

“Where exactly in the school?” the dispatcher asked the person who called about Pompano High School on Oct. 11.

“In the classroom.” “What’s the classroom?” “One zero one. Number one zero one.”

“What’s the phone number you’re calling from?”

“The suspect is a white male armed with a rifle wearing a blue shirt and black pants. He came to the classroom, shot a few students. Hello.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“He’s still there, trying to shoot more students. He’s trying to open the classroom. The classroom is locked. He’s still there.”

“How are you getting this information? Are you there?”

“We’re locked in the classroom. We cannot get out of the classroom. Twelve students have been injured.”

Who’s calling?

The Miami-Dade police department told the South Florida Sun Sentinel last week the calls seemed to come from a foreign number. However, it is possible the caller could be “spoofing,” or disguising the source of the phone call with a different location.

The caller appears to have been using a text mail subscription, according to the audio recording of the call regarding Pompano Beach High, meaning a phone number that is assigned on the internet rather than a mobile or landline number.

The seemingly random targets of the calls and the possibility they are coming from a foreign country suggests something other than a student playing a prank on his or her school, leading many to speculate about the motivations of the person or organization behind them.

Canady wondered if it could be a nefarious actor “testing ” law enforcement response systems, but Arruda described the perpetrator as someone with a “God complex.”

“Some individual is sitting and watching, and they think it’s funny,” she said. “They think if they call from a pay-to-go phone or call through Google voice or one of those anonymizing apps on the internet, nobody’s going to be able to find out who they are.”

One possibility is that someone is paying a foreign caller to make these calls, telling them what to say. James Turgal, a former executive assistant director for the FBI Information and Technology Branch, told The 74 he thinks teenagers might be using “swat-for hire” services and “foreign actors” that make false emergency calls for money.

Local police are continuing to investigate each of the Oct. 11 calls individually, rather than jointly. The Broward Sheriff ’s Office, which is investigating the call for Pompano Beach High, has referred the investigation to its threat management team, said Carey Codd, a spokesperson for the office.

“The case remains an open and active investigation and no further information is being released at this time,” the office said in a statement. “The Broward Sheriff ’s Office Threat Management Unit has and will investigate each incident to the fullest extent, using all available resources when necessary.”

The FBI has stated it is investigating the calls but has not revealed any additional information.

“While we have no information to indicate a specific and credible threat, we continue to work with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to gather, share, and act upon threat information as it comes to our attention,” the FBI said in a statement it has issued in response to multiple incidents, including South Florida’s.

“We urge the public to remain vigilant, and report any and all suspicious activity and/or individuals to law enforcement immediately.”

Arruda is optimistic the perpetrator will eventually be found, either through investigative efforts or by giving themselves away.

“The main way these guys get caught, they tell on themselves,” Arruda said. “I promise you, whoever’s doing this is bragging about it somewhere.”

She encouraged young people who might know something to come forward.

“You have a fair amount of kids that are highly techsavvy and spend a lot of time on the internet,” she said. “They may have an inkling, an idea, a thought about what’s going on. They need to share that thought.”

Calls may be fake, but trauma isn’t

Besides catching the perpetrators, there doesn’t seem to be a way to prevent the calls from happening, or avoid responding to them.

Even if it seems likely that a call is fake, law enforcement and schools must act as if each one is real until they can confirm otherwise.

The calls also present real dangers. Past swatting incidents have led to deaths. After a hoax active shooter call in Ohio, a father showed up with a gun.

Then there is the emotional toll for students, staff and their families, particularly in Broward. Last week’s active shooter calls locked down schools the same morning as the closing arguments in the Parkland school shooting trial, adding to the confusion and fear.

“The trauma is still there,” Canady said. “Because in initial phases students and staff at the moment really don’t know if it’s one of these fake calls or not.”

For each call, law enforcement must direct resources to respond as if it’s the real thing. If multiple calls come in at one time, that strains resources further.

“This guy might be calling in saying, ‘Hey, there’s an issue at this school,’ when someone else calls in and says there’s issue at another school,” said Arruda. “One might be real, one might not. What if all the resources have already been deployed to an area where it’s not real?

“It’s a dangerous game and when they do catch whoever they catch, they’re going to face real time.”