Hoax puts schools into lockdown

A hoax caller claimed there was an active shooter inside Sundance High School on Monday morning, prompting a lockdown and a call to action for Crook County Sheriff’s Office.

But as deputies responded, the Sheriff’s Office was already aware that the threat was unlikely to be real.

“As my office notified me of a threatening call to the Sundance High school, I had just read messages to me from multiple sheriffs across the state that they had received similar calls and had already classified them as swatting,” says Sheriff Jeff Hodge.

Swatting is defined as a criminal harassment tactic in which an emergency service is deceived into sending a response team to a person, business or school.

It is triggered by false reporting of a serious emergency, such as a bomb threat, active shooter, murder, hostage situation or mental health crisis.

In this particular instance, there was plenty to suggest the call was an example of swatting.

“The Crook County Dispatch Center received the call on a normal administration line and not a 911 line, which is an important indicator that it is a possible swatting call,” says Hodge.

Crook County’s 911 line can only be called in the immediate surrounding areas of the county. I

t would not be possible, for example, to call 911 from New York City and get through to Crook County’s 911 line.

Meanwhile, the caller did specifically name Sundance High School and gave its address.

However, the call appeared to have been prerecorded or read from a script and the speaker had a foreign accent and immediately hung up the phone after delivering the message.

The same call was received at numerous sheriff’s offices in Wyoming within the space

of about half an hour. Newcastle, Gillette, Rock Springs, Lincoln County, Casper and Buffalo are among those also received hoax calls.

“Everything pointed towards swatting,” Hodge says. “It’s happened in Utah and most of the surrounding states, we’ve been getting updates on it and we’ve been notified that it’s going on.”

Though no information has been released as to where exactly the calls are coming from, Hodge says it’s known that, in the past, the I.P. address origin has been overseas.

““The sheriff’s office take all threats seriously, but there were multiple agencies getting the same call in the state and we know this just happened in Utah, it just happened in Montana – it just hadn’t happened to us yet,” he says.

Deputies were made aware of the situation before arriving at the school. Nevertheless, Hodge says, they still responded appropriately and both the high school and Sundance Elementary School next door did an “excellent job” of implementing a lockdown.

The threat was not real, but the response occurred as if it was. If nothing else, Hodge says, this was good practice for law enforcement, faculty and the students.

“We can all learn from this,” he says, mentioning a couple of areas such as communication in which the response to the hoax call was able to reveal possibilities for improvement in each school’s unique location and situation.