Prank calling in a false emergency is designed to draw a large police response
CHICAGO — A call of shots fired that sent scores of heavily armed officers to a Northwestern University graduate dorm Wednesday afternoon was apparently a case of "swatting," a false emergency designed to draw a large police response.
A caller reached the Evanston police from somewhere near Rockford around 2:15 p.m. and said he had shot his girlfriend at Engelhart Hall, just west of the main campus. Alerts were issued and teams of police were dispatched, but officers found the woman — a Northwestern student — unharmed with "no evidence of a victim, scene or gunman," said Evanston police Cmdr. Ryan Glew, a spokesman for the department.
"That residence has been vacant since before Thanksgiving," Glew said. "We're preparing to call it a swatting incident. ... She was not in any danger."
The alert initially went out to students and staff shortly before 2:30 p.m., warning them to stay away from the area of Engelhart Hall, which has apartments for Northwestern graduate students and their families. Even after police found no evidence of a victim or weapon, officers continued their search and Northwestern tweeted that people inside Engelhart "should remain behind locked doors."
The school issued an all-clear around 4:30 p.m. "The report of a man with a gun in Engelhart Hall was a hoax. ... No danger to the community exists."
Swatting is the practice of placing hoax emergency calls with the aim of drawing a large response from law enforcement. It's not only a drain on police resources but can turn deadly.
Los Angeles resident Tyler Barriss has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and other felonies after he called a police dispatcher in Wichita, Kan., and falsely reported that he'd shot his father and was holding two other people hostage inside a home at the end of December. When police responded to the address, 28-year-old Andy Finch emerged from the front door and was fatally shot by an officer. It was not clear why Finch's address was a target of the hoax, according to police.
In other cases of apparent swatting, three families in Florida had to evacuate their homes in January after a detective received an anonymous email claiming bombs had been placed in them. In 2015, a 20-year-old Maryland man was shot in the face with rubber bullets after a fake hostage situation was reported at his home.
The FBI estimates that roughly 400 cases of swatting occur annually, with some using caller ID spoofing to disguise their numbers.
The Northwestern alert went out not long after a crowd of students participated in the National School Walkout. Hundreds of Northwestern University students gathered in Deering Meadow on campus in support of a national effort for tighter regulations on gun sales after a high school massacre in Florida.
Two groups of NU students marched through campus holding signs and chanting, "No more silence, end gun violence," before converging on the field for speeches.
"Being murdered when you're trying to get an education has become a real fear in this country, the only developed country where this regularly happens," Northwestern freshman Valen-Marie Santos said through a megaphone. "We stand up today because we can't let this country get used to these kinds of massacres. We can't let our country be desensitized to this kind of violence."
Santos was one of eight Northwestern students from Florida who formed a support group on Facebook after Feb. 14, when a shooter killed 17 students and educators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
The students in Deering Meadow stood silent for one minute at 10:17 a.m. in memory of the Florida high school victims.
Northwestern President Morton Schapiro and Evanston Mayor Stephen Hagerty attended the demonstration.
"Our country needs your leadership, we need your generation, elected officials need to hear from you," Hagerty told the gathering. "We need you to use social media, marketing, your persuasion, your youthful optimism, and the technical skills you are learning here at Northwestern and elsewhere to help us solve this absurd problem."