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Over the last couple of months, you may have heard the term “swatting” being used to describe hoax shooting reports and bomb threats at schools around the country.
“Swatting” - in which a caller contacts police and claims to be in the school building where the threat is in progress - generates an extremely rapid response by law enforcement, often not leaving time for police to verify the caller’s claims.
In fact, the calls have been difficult to trace as most have used encrypted internet signals and are actually theorized to be coming from outside of the U.S.
Unfortunately, these “swatting” incidents have recently impacted some of our neighboring school districts including Beaverton, North Clackamas, Portland Public, and Tigard-Tualatin. While we certainly hope none of our schools fall victim to a “swatting” scam, the potential is there and we are doing our best to prepare and be ready in advance. District administration is debriefing with other districts to gather lessons learned, and is convening with high school principals and our law enforcement partners to discuss response and mitigation strategies.
Families can help by talking to their students about false threats and how serious they are - whether they are spoken to others, posted to social media, or called in to law enforcement.
Thank you for your partnership in keeping our schools safe and secure for our students and staff.
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