As students are returning to campus, authorities are investigating false reports of active shooters at more than a dozen universities across the country, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Around 11:20 a.m. Monday, the Dane County 911 center received a call on its non-emergency line, reporting that a person with a rifle fired two shots near the entrance to Memorial Library.
University police responded immediately, said Marc Lovicott, a spokesperson for the UW-Madison Police Department.
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Officers quickly confirmed there was no threat. They also reviewed security cameras in and around Memorial Library, which showed normal activity, Lovicott said.
Because the report was determined to be false, the campus did not need to activate the campus emergency alert system, Lovicott said.
UW police are actively investigating the source of the false report.
The incident mirrors similar hoaxes, known as “swatting,” happening across the country.
The string of swattings, which now includes at least a dozen other schools, started Aug. 21 with a false report at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The incidents not only take up time and resources of police departments, they instill fear in students, parents and the community because actual school shootings have become too prevalent, said John DeCarlo, a criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven and a former chief of police in Branford, Connecticut.
“There is very often the case that fear travels faster than facts,” DeCarlo told WPR on Wednesday. “So all of a sudden comes this hoax call. And whether it be a bombing or a shooting, by the time the truth gets out that it’s a hoax, people are frightened to death because it is a hoax dependent on fear.”
Since 2018, there have been 229 K-12 school shootings that have resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an analysis by Education Week.
On Wednesday morning, two children were killed and 17 other people were injured when a shooter opened fire during Mass at a Minneapolis Catholic school before killing himself, officials said.
DeCarlo said the swatting perpetrators can cause mass disruption with low-stakes consequences.
“It’s easy to do. There’s little chance of getting caught unless you keep doing it. There’s a big return on a very small investment,” DeCarlo said.
In 2023, a Washington Post investigation found more than 500 schools across the United States were targets of a coordinated swatting effort that could have originated abroad.
DeCarlo believes the latest swath of swatting is being done by individuals who are likely copying one another.
“With one phone call, you create a hoax that brings police running, that brings fire departments running, there’s a lot of people being mobilized. And of course, then you get the added benefit of frightened parents and students,” DeCarlo said. “And of course, it takes resources away from real events. And that’s the dangerous part of it.”
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