In February of this year, a hoax call about an armed suspect inside Yorktown High School holding hostages triggered a lockdown, evacuations and a massive police response.
That incident is now informing one of Arlington’s legislative priorities for the upcoming Virginia General Assembly session. The Arlington County Board and School Board are calling for a law that specifically names and criminalizes false calls to police, describing a life-threatening situation, with the intent to trigger a police response. It is widely known as “swatting” because of the SWAT teams it sometimes elicits.
Swatting is on the rise in Arlington County, according to Lt. Matt Martin of the Arlington County Police Department. There have been four instances in 2022 so far, up from two in 2021 and one incident per year from 2018 through 2020. (Martin says because there is no swatting category in crime statistics, these numbers were pulled manually based on case facts and may not be comprehensive.)
In nearby Fairfax County, there were 11 such incidents in 2020 and 30 in 2021, a police spokesperson previously told our sister site, FFXnow. There were four such incidents in Alexandria this year.
“Swatting has been on law enforcement radar for 15 years,” says Martin. “The intent is to send officers to a call where someone’s life is at risk, which ups the ante, and ups our response.”
It started in the online gaming community, when people would call the police on their target in response to a slight or unpaid bet, Martin says. It has since become a nationwide problem, one where even identifying those behind the incidents can be tricky, says ACPD spokeswoman Ashley Savage.
“The person that calls in could realistically call in anywhere in the world, which leads to a challenge for identifying them,” she said.
In September, hoax calls triggered a police response at Washington-Liberty High School and several other schools across the state, including in Loudoun and Fauquier counties. W-L was previously evacuated in October 2021 after a false report of an active shooter.
A 19-year-old man from Vienna was sentenced last year for his roles in numerous swatting attacks that targeted journalists, the Old Dominion University in Norfolk and Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, which has a predominantly Black congregation.
Swatting not only applies to pranksters calling the police, but also to people who call others — schools, for instance — and describe a threat that prompts them to call 911. But Virginia law only criminalizes making a false report, which means people who spread false information but don’t make the call can’t be charged with a crime.
That is what police and elected officials would like to see changed.
“Any law that’s going to prohibit a behavior needs to define the behavior,” Martin said. “The detective who investigated [the Yorktown incident] came to me and said, ‘We looked at potential charges. Making an indirect call doesn’t violate Virginia law… It was that detective who recognized that gap in the law that started all of this.”
(Updated at 5:35 p.m.) Police and firefighters swarmed Washington-Liberty High School this afternoon after an apparent hoax about an active shooter.
A caller told Arlington’s 911 dispatch that someone shot numerous people in a specific classroom at the school, according to scanner traffic, but no such shooting was located by authorities.
Scanner traffic suggests that Fairfax and Culpeper county schools might have received a similar alarming but false report. InsideNova later reported that “schools in Spotsylvania and Culpeper counties were among several across the state on Monday to fall victim to fake 911 calls reporting an active shooter.”
A Twitter thread details other false active shooter reports at schools around Virginia today — including in Loudoun County, Charlottesville, Norfolk, Fauquier, Lynchburg and elsewhere — and in other parts of the country today and last week. the Loudoun sheriff’s office described the incident as an instance of “swatting.”
A portion of the emergency activity at W-L started clearing the scene shortly after it became apparent that there was no shooter, but police continued to sweep the high school and its annex as a precaution.
Washington-Liberty, one of three comprehensive public high schools in Arlington, was evacuated in October 2021 after a false report of an active shooter. Two people were charged in July after fireworks set off during summer school at W-L prompted another active shooter panic and large emergency response.
Here's some of the large @ArlingtonVaPD & @ArlingtonVaFD response to the false alarm (thankfully) reporting an active shooter at Washington Liberty High School. @ARLnowDOTcom #police #firefighters https://t.co/zvBhjnNa6o pic.twitter.com/bv2lHdJT3r
— Dave Statter (@STATter911) September 19, 2022
