Hoax school shootings: inside America's epidemic
In America the fear of gun crime in schools is being weaponised. More and more SWAT teams are having to respond to hoax calls about school shootings.
00:00 - America’s hoax school shooting crisis
01:07 - Hoax calls are becoming more commonplace
02:00 - Aspen Elementary School
03:29 - What happened on February 22nd 2023?
05:10 - Who was behind it?
07:35 - The fight against SWAT hoax calls
Sign up to The Economist’s daily newsletter: econ.st/3QAawvI
Read our full investigation: econ.st/477yzLd
Why some teachers in America are learning how to fire guns: • Why some teachers in A...
One response to school shootings in America: arm the teachers: econ.st/3u1KzPm
A report sheds light on the deadliest school shooting in Texas’s history: econ.st/3FWoe8Z
The AR-15 is a symbol of liberty or loss, depending on whom you ask: econ.st/4783G8X
Guns are the things most likely to kill young people in America: econ.st/479FrXN
The spate of gun violence shows American exceptionalism at its worst: econ.st/49bZPJL
Why America should make it harder to buy guns: econ.st/3QfeaMN
Why America spends so little on research into gun violence: econ.st/47cdheT
A year after the massacre of 14 high-school students, what has changed?: econ.st/3tXcSPb
Can school design help prevent school shootings?: econ.st/46V7Xwy
1843: Stage fright: a play about a school shooting becomes too real: econ.st/3tVmNVp
This is so sick.. False callers should be treated as terrorists in these particular situations..
russian terrorists, maybe... I may be too cynical, or to rational, or just on spot.
Mind Begs the Question: - If a Govt stage WMD/Nukes Hoax - Govt can't stage Terrorist Attack - To manufacture justification,consent - For Genocide,Occupation?
They need to pay for all those time lost by police and medics
This reminds me of my college days in the 1970s with bomb threats. That was big. Entire buildings would have to be evacuated. At my college, there were a lot of bomb threats. They finally figured out who it was based on exams certain teachers had scheduled. This dope didn’t want to take the test so he would call in a bomb threat
I don't get it, they didn't want to take any test? Sounds like they got the wrong person.
@@sueyourself5413My guess is the person wasn’t ready to take the tests and wanted an extra day to study…I assume that is the case
@@lizhoward9754 Then how would they know who it was? That could've been anyone taking any of those tests.
@@sueyourself5413 Because each time a new bomb threat is called it would eliminate students who weren't doing that test. Then once its narrowed it becomes much easier to investigate even just asking teachers and students etc.
@@Sheppo42 The op said one test, one day.
You pretty much have to go into sim and phone registration to stop this; The caller has to be identified somehow every time they dial into 911 or any other emergency line. What's scary is the tactical value of this to criminals. Imagine calling in a hoax-shooting as a prelude to an actual crime to pull cops to an entirely different part of the city.
You can do SIM swaps or spoof certain numbers. You could actually do this and frame someone innocent for calling in threat. I'm not really sure how you could stop this with anyone who knows what they are doing. Even using vocal analysis of the callers voice, the caller could be using a fake voice via software.
I have no clue how to do that stuff and I have been into tech since the internet was new. I don’t know that local areas are equipped to even begin to find this kind of thing: they don’t even have people to solve ordinary internet crime.
@@Arulane You have no idea what a burner is?
@@sueyourself5413 heard of em. No reason to use one
@@lollerskates1992nice tip will trick some people i dislike
This happened to my high school. Around the end of lunch, suddenly we went into lockdown. Swat storming through the school, everyone brought group by group into the gym to be metal detectored & accounted for. We were all stuck there till fairly late on the evening. When all is said and done, turns out some kids angry ex gf called swat and said he had a weapon in school. Its such a sad and disgusting waste of resources, waste of kids and teachers time, and shock and trauma that nobody needed.
Yes, there is trauma, mental trauma
KZheadrs and Twitch streamers get SWATted all the time and I haven't heard of ONE SINGLE PERSON being charged for making those false reports.
Any SWATing call must be a felony with mandatory jail time.
If only they had the same tenacity towards fixing the root cause for the actual stuff.
@@em0_tion What fix would you suggest?
@@NoToobForYou Something. Anything. A working government that sits down with professionals and looks at analyses of tons of those school shootings and comes up with law reforms that will actually lead to a desirable outcome for most people. Full transparency and simple term explanation of these suggestions to the people and than a VOTE on them. Copying *parts* of policies from other countries where same issues were already fixed is not a bad start either, e.g. Switzerland. Either way, doing something trumps doing nothing and continuing to lose people and POs out of inaction is infuriating.
*prison time
@@NoToobForYou stop giving other country billion of dollar and put metal detectors and more armed security guards in schools i rather school feel more like a prison then a graveyard period.
A whole nation growing up with PTSD.
Growing up, if not shot up. :/ You also have to be brave, just to be a teacher. 👀
All because society refuses to stop bullying and alienating kids.
@@jmister6824more as the US refusing to invest on mental healthcare system and to pass legislation to restrictions to the firearms
@@a.r.h9919 If it was either of those things then if you would. Explain why mass murders were not a common thing before the 1980s when it was easier to buy a gun, including a fully automatic machinegun. Also, back when we were not as knowledgeable at mental health like we are now.
"Duck and Cover" started in the 1950s didn't it? It's why my parents are irrationally afraid of communists to this day, even though they've never met or known one personally. America's own government used the tactic first to control its citizens, but the clever and observant have repurposed it effectively for chaos.
This is truly terrible, especially because if it happens in large enough numbers, true shootings may eventually be doubted.
I don't think that's the biggest danger, I doubt that will happen. But what might happen is criminals or even actual school shooters calling 911 and making the police forces rush into a different school.
It might be a game of wearing the police down, so that during a real attack they hesitate in sending in the heavy squads. I hope the police always remain prepared.
it could be someone trying to tell people how bad guns are
@@antonhornegaard2731nah bro dont touch my guns. Guns keeps us safe. Long live the 2nd amendment
I was wondering if those hoax calls arent used to distract attention from some large drug shipments or other similar illegal operations.
@@RoberttSmithhthose children filled with lead are really enjoying that second amendment
Or it's just people with a horse in the race trying to play on everyone's fears. It would help explain why people don't get caught.
How someone could do something so awful confounds me
I think it's a power trip. They enjoy making the police run around and get perverted pleasure from watching it. They figure that since no person is actually hurt they aren't doing anything wrong. (And there will be some who do it as revenge on the school or to miss an exam)
Crazy people will always exist. What's actually baffling is the zero adjustments towards this (almost) never happening again.
@@em0_tion How are such people necessarily "crazy?"
@@em0_tion I though this was a video about crisis actors and fake sh00tings😞 Real let down. Funny thing is, the “hoax callers” sound exactly the same. Hopefully they can find em.
because society refuses to stop bullying and alienating kids.
There was a hoax call at my HS back in the late 2000s and I remember just thinking this is how it ends, the teacher unplugged the landline from the wall in case any noise from it gave us away. I remember a student struggling with how to shut down their new Motorola Razor. All we could hear was silence broken by the helicopter and police dogs as they passed near us. I hope whoever it was paid for the hours of terror we passed. Sports Med class was never the same after that😮
When I grew up, not in US, and there very rarely was some prank call about bomb at school or such. There was no one, of the kids etc, taking it seriously. So when school was closed, it was more of a procedural then anything. This is simply just because those kind of things doesn't happen over here. It could happen, but it doesn't. Especially before. But I think US has everything set up to make them happen, easily accessibly and advanced weapons and of course like anywhere, always someone insane enough to do it.
@@wowJhilwatch out for the red dunce caps to say “that’s what they (who tf are “they”?) want you to think, it’s all a conspiracy!!!”
Happened in my Middle School, caused by some buzz from a forum, or chat room, or something. It wasn't as scary, since the staff caught on, and (over)reacted by shutting the whole building down before the next school day even started.
@@Ahng_Noying9574 I am guessing they decided rather to overreact and be safe than under-react and have tragedy ….smh
Just imagine the amount of money wasted to get helicopters in air and police squads to get there + all the other actions that need to take place. It's probably in hundreds of thousands of dollars......wasted........... just because of a hoax call.
I went through this several times in middle school in The 90’s….my mom still works in the school system and they get at least several threats a year…
I remember getting out of tests and going home early in the early/mid 90s for hoax bomb threats at our school. Even after the stabbing at our school where the girl died, we all just processed it as a sudden-but-weird sort of holiday, but guns and bombs are different from knives.
This is intimately connected with the robo-calling problem. Phone providers have been doing everything in their power to avoid accountability. Concealing the identity of a caller is key for the success of robocall marketing as well as swatting. The same solutions for robocalling will go a long way to solving this problem as well. When the FCC stops turning a blind eye to the problem, we will finally see some actual progress on this.
On one hand, I would consider this training and an assessment of readiness. When training for situations like this, false calls are just part of the process. You don't realize what you're missing in your response until you experience it, and you don't want to experience it for the first time when it's a real situation with lives on the line. My working dogs, teammates and I have been through so many false alarms that when the time finally came for it to be real, my entire team was like a well-oiled machine, rather than dozing cats woken up with a bucket of cold water. But yeah, after it gets to a point, it gets exhausting and you start getting slower and sloppier in your response, and you don't want that lazy day to be the day when it's a real situation that requires your full attention.
Not only is this domestic terrorism and should be charged as so, but they should also get charged with every single crime that occurs, every live lost from medical being relocated and any damage that firefighters would have been tasked with within the affected departments from the moment the call is made until the forces are back to their posts. Moves like this would cause deaths and destruction from pulling people away from their important jobs, not to mention allow for crimes that otherwise would have been interupted by police,
False callers should be treated as terrorists in these particular situations.
I think I should just give up on videos related to the USA
Great idea. That would really open up your schedule so you could do something about that awful haircut.
@@kegsofvomitspit exactly
Criminalizing this will bring it down. Kids doing this have no consequences, and everything is a joke to them. This is a soical media trend, teens only care about what their peers think about them
Then why don't you blame with social media companies, then?
My high school in the 80’s in Australia had at least a half a dozen hoax bomb threats in the three years I was there.
Yeah, that was a worldwide thing at that time. I recall friends who worked for government department in the city, being evacuated every Friday to a nearby pub, which eventually was called the bombs shelter. I think after awhile that The hoax are stopped, and then the staff started calling in so they could get time off .
This is a very uniquely American problem
Well, if you do this, you should go to prison for a minimum of 15 years. End of discussion.
Nobody can argue with that
Remember that the cops should NOT be blamed here. They were attempting to save the kids every time they went there.
It seems that a new and necessary protocol is to call the place that is reported. This could get a positive report if anything is going on, and let the school office know what has happened. Whether it's real or swatting, the school could be forewarned and the staff could not be bewildered when officers arrive. If it's real they might be able to lock down before the bad guy arrives.
I think it is wide spread, here where I live in the Caribbean usually there isn't much of this kind of thing happening maybe once a year or so but in the last few years its like every month there is a bomb threat for several schools. Even last week there was a bomb threat for several all-girls schools being targeted, the police was stretch so thin they had to send a few officers to each to confirm that there was no threat and they moved to the next school it was quite shocking.
Both of my 2 closest online friends and myself had a threat made to their schools over the past two weeks.
my school got this done multiple times last year the swat team came out guns in our face and left… my school let school go on like it was nothing i literally had to finish my AP exam like i if we didn’t just go through that😢
When I was in high school 1998-2001, we had bomb threats during my senior year almost daily for MONTHS. NO JOKE. They would bring the dogs and the police and we’d have to either evacuate, or just not go. A lot of times, it would happen just before school. They never caught anyone. This was back before most people had cell phones, and there weren’t cameras everywhere. They were likely using pay phones.
This doesn't sound much different from the rash of school bomb threats in the 80s, just updated.
Yup, we had a spate of those when I was in school in the mid-to-late '90s.
Back in the 90's when i was a teacher the vp came into the teachers lounge , informed us there had been a bomb threat and ordered us to look for the bomb. We actually walked around the school looking in lockers etc.. With no idea what it would even look like. It was actually kind of humorous because we got threats all the time and knew there wasn't one... But still that's pretty f'd up. And people wonder why there's a teacher shortage..lol
One of my little sister's classmates did this some years ago. It was horrifying.
Doesn't the police just try to call the school while they're leaving?
Presumably, if a school shooting was taking place, the staff and teachers would be taking actions to protect/evacuate the building so the police calling to reach someone there may not be feasible. Chances are if there is a situation like that, people at the school would be calling 911 to connect with the police. And even if the police called the school separately and reached someone, once officers arrive on the scene one of them will take charge of the response effort on the ground.
They would have to come out to the school regardless .. know way to know if the person at the school has a gun to their head and is being forced to say everything's fine.
Ye last year we had a lockdown bc of a reported school shooting that was fake. The cops came out with ARs and everything i had to text my mom that i loved her, its so scary to not know if you or your friends might be brutally murdered.
Is this any worse than "SWATTING" at residential homes?
And over the shooting / hoax incidents hangs the gigantic liability hammer, that if a 140% response is not mounted, and anything happens, the lawsuits will be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
Liability is a two way street, ergo the 140% response when unwarranted could also become a legal quagmire for law enforcement.
We need security guards guarding the school so that if there is a call, the guard can confirm if it's a hoax or not
These are pretty easy to sniff out on the 911 call center side... they rarely if ever come in on the actual local 911 lines, but instead on the 10-digit lines (red flag #1)... they're almost always VOIP phones rather than local cellphones (red flag #2), the person's vocal inflection usually doesn't match that of someone who is really in that mindset (you start to develop a sense for these things - red flag #3), there are often telltale background noises - or no background noises you'd expect to hear in a school or workplace setting for instance, and most importantly and most obvious, there aren't corresponding calls from other people onsite, staff, neighbors, etc. Obviously you still follow through for completions sake, but documenting the pieces that don't quite line up so that responders have much better context.
A lot of nuts out there and growing!
Does this even happen in other countries too? Why has this barbaric act been associated with USA?
Insane bulling culture + access to guns
@@user-mz7de3kc3d why don’t they stop this madness?
Hoaxes happen pretty much everywhere - but there usually is some correlation with how often a genuine attack occurs. And that is where the US has a frightening pole position in the world - the country where every nutjob has to be presumed a heavily armed nutjob.
Hmmm I wonder why? Your insane lack of gun laws?
@@user-mz7de3kc3d Wrong. It's fear, pure and simple. Shooter hoaxes are in the USA, the rest of the world gets bomb hoaxes. It's whatever the hoaxer thinks will be believed.
But apparently guns aren't the problem.. 😒
Love the soundtrack
1. The less reporting about this, the better. It's increaing because its becoming normalized through media. This also goes for real shootings. 2. Stiffer penalties. Generally speaking, punishments are weak. One argument is it's too expensive to house offenders, but the irony is we have so many offenders because the punishments are not severe enough.
Just imagine the amount of money wasted to get helicopters in air and police squads to get there + all the other actions that need to take place. It's probably in hundreds of thousands of dollars......wasted........... just because of a hoax call.
SWATting calls should be felonious everywhere.
I had 3 bomb threats at my religious school in the early to mid 1970's. This was an era when there really were large bombs going off regularly throughout the nation. Each time we were evacuated far from the buildings and had to stay there for several hours until the school was swept for explosive devices, and an "all clear" was determined. As children we actually enjoyed it because it broke up the monotony of the school day. There was not the slightest bit of psychological trauma that any of us suffered. Even the parents seemed relatively unconcerned. The fact that that mother's voice began cracking as she fought back tears shows just how far we have changed as a people and society. For better or for worse, we really have become extremely emotionally fragile people in this country during the course of my lifetime.
2 years jail is warranted.
This is cruel
People are going to different length to skip school 💀
Everyone now has instructions on how to SWAT in America and not get caught
So.. The general consensus seems to be, punish the caller the most severely! You'd think that it'd be more about gun control, mental health, call screening, etc. Since the first one is something that must not be talked about and the second just an excuse to cite but never funded to prevent, howabout phoning the school to check? Speed is of the essence? In Texas (was it Texas?) cops were waiting outside, with the gunman confirmed inside with hostages, for like... 40minutes iirc. Lot's of death. Speed without a plan usually doesn't work.
Gun control does not stop illegal firearms. Maybe America's REAL problem is a lack of basic intelligence?
It is the responsibility of law enforcement to respond as though every call is a serious threat. Taking the time to fully qualify each call BEFORE reacting could mean precious lives lost and "phoning to check" is pointless if there is a legitimate active shooter. oh, and of course we should punish the callers, that should go without saying.
@@heatherfoster7823 No. Phoning the school is the bare minimum. And in Texas thet just sat outside for an hour when preschoolers were murdered. They arent trained properlY.
That was the Rob elementary school shooting in Uvalde Texas. It took the cops 77 minutes to breach the school. And it wasn’t even the local cops that did it.
How bout schools provide 1 entrance with 1 armed security and a scanner?
First of all--there would be no way that the school could evacuate in a timely matter in case of a fire. Second--that would not be effective in case of a team of shooters (like Columbine).
Imagine thinking that having an armed guard at a SCHOOL is a reasonable solution.
My school had 3 entrances, no security guards, no scanners and still - zero shootings. Must be the country and its policy. No need to treat the symptoms, treat the causes - with better policies. 👍✌
@@somanytakennames Europeans place guards armed with fully automatic sub machine guns in their metro stations and government buildings...a Cop with an AR at a school pales in comparison.
@@ELeviathan33 The examples you’ve just provided aren’t even remotely comparable. A school shouldn’t have armed guards. End of story. If that’s seriously being considered then your society has bigger problems which need addressing.
SWAT officers do not have machine guns. Out of the probably hundreds of badge cams I've seen, I've only ever seen one instance of an U.S. police officer using a machine gun.
Interesting
they don't see it as something that's wrong to do. they do it so the feel powerful, scare someone, even just to get their friend out of school for the day because they want to skip. its pathetic
America is a very sick patient.
This alone would make me want to move to Europe or Asia as an American parent pretty much uniquely an American problem .
Ive known guys my whole life who would pull a stunt like hoax calling just for kicks.
They'll probably argue, not completely without merit, that they were "testing your response".
Considering the climate of the internet, I think this video needs a more detailed title
Whats happening in USA ? Thats terrible!
its really nothing. media is bored.
@@jmister6824 30 some swatting calls in a day is not nothing, it's domestic terrorism.
A lot of these are being done in the Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana area. These areas are, if not over a huge, geographic, swath, at least geographically linked. Somebody needs to get on that.
5:48 why would anyone pay another person to do this? What could they possibly get out of it?
lots of reasons.
Not surprised. In the 2000s bomb threats were common post 9-11. Can’t count how many my middle school incurred. We knew the bomb threats were likely not real. Active shooter threats are another problem. Real terror.
On Tuesday this week our school went into lockdown because a threat was called in. That was the most tortuous hour and a half of my life. I thought that I was going to die.
Spoiler alert. You are.
@@Some1inFNQ just a matter of time
@@girlmadesunshine You're dead right. =)
If one looked into how many school shootings and resulting fatalities there were prior to the firearm ban on school properties. Shootings were few and far between, and they did go down for 2 years but skyrocketed soon thereafter. The cold, hard fact is that this wasn't much of a problem until we made it a problem.
Kinda reminds me of all the bomb threats schools got in the 2000s
If the government wanted to fix this problem, just like the real events, they’ll be able to. You really think the government can’t track down these people who are making the call? There’s just no political incentives to do so. That’s how every decision is made in our country, whether or not it benefit the politicians. They don’t care about the lives and well being of the general population. We are just numbers to them.
Welcome to america.
I have no words.
None in Texas 😂
This is an easy problem to fix.... 1. End "Gun Free Zones" 2. Ad more security guards, and train and arm the teachers, staff, and volunteer parents. 3. Teach self defense, including firearms training, as a core class in every level of school, and post school. This would be a quality start to protecting against both real, and fake, attacks.
It sounds like it could be a political game to force people to vote a certain way to "protect" themself in a specific way. The taking of the government could be one of those possibilities.
Because even the actual mass shootings aren’t a problem in your “opinion”? And voters should only “respond” to whatever this is?🙄
@@whyamiwastingmytimeonthis He didn't say that. But the easiest way to control a population is to keep them scared. Two hoaxes per day around the country will do exactly that because the story will spread on social media and people will ignore the "hoax" part. I'm Australian and we've never had a school shooting. But all our schools have lock down procedures and drills. Why? Because they're scared. And they're scared of something that has never happened. Statistically speaking they might as well be having drills in case of a meteor shower. Anti gun Americans point to us as an example but they're wrong. Our schools are as scared as yours and our kids are committing suicide at the same rate yours are. Our laws literally say that banknotes are worth more than people.
@@whyamiwastingmytimeonthis You're intentionally missing his point.
Very well said.
Not all is a conspiracy trust me but weapon manufacturers really benefit from brainwashed people that see this and think is some plot from the government or conservative liberals and they buy more weapons
I have training in Special Weapons and No Tactics.
This is so sick.
Answer to problem, prepare, have a safe room, adult training, proper universal procedures that every school must follow. All hoax calls investigated and prosecuted, however, the process of responding is considered preparation of an actual situation. As usual, priorities are needing adjustment. Children should only know that there is a protocol, how to follow it, and when it's time, adults need to be in charge. Be prepared, not scared.
I don't see how this qualifies as terrorisim. It is certainly 'terrifying', but, technically, terrorism is the application of non-state/ illegal violence or the threat thereof in the pursuit of a political/ideological goal; I don't see that component in these examples. I admit it may exist, though, again, the dissemination and advancement of a particular motivating ideology is the entire point of terrorism, so... Thoughts?
Does anyone know who this reporter is? Her voice sounds so familiar. Thanks
To cancel your subscription, The Economist forces you to chat with an agent or call their toll-free line. Then they will ask you multiple times to try various offers for ten minutes before FINALLY canceling your subscription. I will never subscribe to The Economist again!
A failed nation under the guise of a superpower 😏
I'm just wondering where all the "what beautiful people" comments are?
@@Issac-eg5ekPlenty around, just keep looking
@@kingofhearts3185they are many. Just not here
US is a superpower because of guns
7:30 They looked exactly as expected.
like incels? what do you expect?
Armed police? is that different from police?
Why you wouldn't interview the children is beyond me.
ooof America sounds like a horrible place.
In CPAC 2022: Republicans OUTRIGHT said "we're all domestic terrorists". This shouldn't shock anyone!
Parents talking loudly at school board meetings are "domestic terrorists". What's your point?
Bring back online classes. Problem solved.
What a peaceful community/country, such lovely people.
Get bent.
@@chadfanton9994 ???
Yeah! Colorado is a beautiful place with very nice people. In general, at least.
@@chadfanton9994get help
@NadiaSeesIt I said it because, those are the top comments when something like this happens in a predominantly brown/black nation, "what beautiful people." The irony and hypocrisy is just...
so alex jones was right?
This doesn’t happen in Europe. There are not enough hand guns or magazine fed assault rifles among the public to make such threats credible.
There aren’t many assault rifles among the American public either
@@Apex_Yonko so all the schools are shot up with paint ball guns
Parenting & mental health crisis.
what a great country!
Here’s a thought: how about we actually tackle our gun problem?
The NRA has too much control now and has interwoven itself into American society.
This has been going on forever, back before 9/11 kids would do this "bomb threat" cause they didn't want to take a test, we d all sit on the lawn laughing and what not, , then it became "real" after 9/11, and even worse now with all the actual school shootings. We now live in a world where gun violence is very real in schools, but kids are still kids, and cant really think of the full magnitude of what their doing.
And they apparently can't get caught.
What see
1:34 Yes and no. In a real active shooter situation that first officer on scene better go into that building to end the threat as quickly as possible
Kids, These pranks are not funny at all! Not only is it sick! You’re wasting to Cops’ time too by delaying their response time to real calls where people could actually be dying!
so sorry bout you peeps really really sorry pray you have kids in school
Glad it was a hoax call. But raises serious concern about school shootings in the US 😢
People who argue against allowing teachers and staff who freely volunteer to carry firearms to defend their schools, are not serious in their concerns.
Back in highschool kids would call in fake bomb threats everytime they didnt want to take a test. Absolute nightmare for everyone.
This is an added effect of removing discipline from the school system. These people grow up now and think that trolling law enforcement is funny, some of the children think it's ok too because almost none of these folks both young and older DON'T GET THE DISCIPLINE WHILE THEY ARE GROWING UP TO TEACH THEM ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. Schools just push students through, even the failing ones and do hardly anything to discipline anyone so everyone just does what they want with no consequences.
None, don’t get? I think you mean none get the discipline
@@AlphaGeekgirl Yea, my grammar isn't so hot after being out of HS for 35 years. Yes that's what i meant.
be like Germany
I don't know how making a big documentary about this will make the trend go down...