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False calls about active school shooters are rising. Behind them is a strange pattern

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Smokin Joe:
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/07/1127242702/false-calls-about-active-shooters-at-schools-are-up-why

False calls about active school shooters are rising. Behind them is a strange pattern

--- Quote ---When Emmi Conley first heard in September about a rash of hoax calls reporting active shooters in schools, she dismissed it. Conley, an extremism researcher who studies groups and people behind public displays of violence, said she found no indication that these calls were connected to fringe online spaces where these pranks often originate.

But as the number of these reports swelled over time, Conley said she began to discern some very strange patterns
--- End quote ---

Posting this because High Schools across the State (ND) have had this, the closest large town today. According to some accounts, there were claims of hearing gunshots, but that has yet to be confirmed.

Of course, this sort of disruption this close to an election where the Democrats (gun banners/anti-police) are desperate to hold on to power in the face of electoral defeat, simply stinks on ice.
Use of panic and fear is a totalitarian hallmark, and this has the added 'bonus' of maybe getting some kid shot over a false report and propping up both agenda items.
That today's incident happened on the day the Parkland shooter was sentenced may be  one of those 'rule 39' things...

Kamaji:

--- Quote ---But as the number of these reports swelled over time, Conley said she began to discern some very strange patterns — including the possibility that the calls may have come from overseas, and perhaps specifically from Africa.

"The scale and the timeline of the events is highly, highly unusual," she said. "The calls are consistent. They are coordinated. They are grouped state-by-state and district-by-district, and they're also sustained. So somebody is putting significant effort to keep these going."

--- End quote ---

Smokin Joe:
IP addresses and phone numbers can be spoofed, so it's hard to say where this is coming from, but the level of coordination indicates that someone is being systematic.

The fundamental trauma for parents of kids at any large school (likely leaning more liberal, the larger the city) is the goal, as far as I can see, with softening up resistance to gun bans part and parcel of that.

But to have such an event at a High School where I recall seeing the pickups parked (well, at the old school, this building is newer) with loaded rifle racks in the windows and no worry of theft, either, is a real change, and will register even with the parents who grew up in the area first as fear for their kids, and possibly as misdirected anger toward people who own popular firearms instead of those who perpetrated the hoax and possibly placed lives in jeopardy--even though those pickups with the rifle racks full back when may have belonged to them.

The idea that 'it won't happen here' is being chipped away at.

Hopefully, here, at least, after the inevitable relief their kid is OK, people will just get angry because some jerk cost their kids another day of school and endangered them to pull a 'prank' that may have more diabolical roots.

Ghost Bear:
From the linked article:


--- Quote ---The hoaxes are called "swatting," a term that refers to calls that falsely report an act of violence in progress or about to occur. They are intended to set off a massive and immediate deployment of armed law enforcement to a specific target, including SWAT teams. The results can be quite dangerous, as they were in a fatal incident in 2017, when police swatted a man in Wichita, Kansas.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---In audio obtained by NPR of some calls in Ohio and one call in Minnesota, the person reporting an active shooting breathes heavily and follows a nearly identical narrative. He identifies himself as a student at the school, although he sounds like an adult male. He also speaks with a heavy accent. NPR also requested call records from locations in other states, but many were denied on the basis that the incidents are under investigation.
--- End quote ---

This reminds me of a swatting event against a YouTuber that I watch. When he spoke about it in one of his videos he mentioned that the caller seemed to speak with a foreign (non-American) accent.  This makes me wonder if there is some overseas "call center" selling its services to make swatting calls? Or if some foreign government, or even more troubling a US governmental organization, has set up such a call center to make swatting calls?

Sighlass:
This is what pushes to have our freedom taken away, because jerks like this keep doing this, the FBI/CIA/NSA etc keep pushing to track all internet usage. Jerks need to be eliminated, but how to do it and still respect privacy is a tough row to hoe. 

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