“Bottom line is, think before you post,” Botsch said. “Actions have consequences. If you are engaged in this sort of conduct, you will be held accountable.”
When calls came in about an active shooter at more than a dozen Wisconsin schools, it sent parents into a frenzy about their children’s safety.
“My son was in one of the schools that the active shooter threat came to,” Robert Botsch said.
Despite the fact that Botsch’s job is to investigate incidents like these with the FBI, his concern was elevated until he learned the calls were fake.
“This takes it to a different level,” Botsch, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Milwaukee said. “They’re trying to generate a significant law enforcement response to a critical incident or a major crime, so the police officers that are responding to whatever the problem is believe that it’s real.”
Those responses were as real as they get. Officers, armed to the teeth, descended to schools in our area by the dozens. As Botsch puts it, they’re forced to respond this way because they can’t tell if it’s fake or not until they get there.
“Just because one is a hoax threat doesn’t mean the second or third one is not real,” Botsch said. “So, they’re all treated and taken seriously until proven otherwise.”
Listen to the fake active shooter 911 call:
The South Milwaukee Police Department released the 911 call it received Thursday morning. A man gave the address for South Milwaukee High School claiming a former student around 20 years old had just come into a classroom and shot a teacher and a student.
The call ran for about two minutes, with the caller seemingly out of breath and panicked. The 911 operator on the other line quickly tries to get resources to the scene until another dispatcher interjects on the line.
“We also received a call like that,” the voice said. “It’s a swatting call, is what it sounds like.”
Despite being made aware of the hoax call, departments still send their resources to confirm there is no active shooter on scene. It can mean dozens of officers from multiple different agencies heading to the location. While there is no real threat at these locations, the response could mean life or death.
“They are truly putting people’s lives in jeopardy,” Botsch said. “Law enforcement, fire departments, EMS, they all have to respond to those things and they’re trying to get there as quickly as they possibly can. As a result, you can risk traffic collisions and other second and third-effect problems that could develop because of a hoax threat. The threat itself is a hoax, but the response is real.”
Take Port Washington for example. The police department there sent about two dozen of its own officers to the high school for the swatting incident. In the hour and a half it took for things to be declared safe, the Police Department says it received six calls.
The number may sound minimal, but Port Washington PD is just one of at least seven total jurisdictions that arrived on scene. Port Washington PD tells the I-Team, they don’t receive nearly as many calls as some of those busier jurisdictions.
RELATED: False active shooter threats reported at schools across SE Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Those calls don’t get the proper response they would get otherwise. Emergencies being answered improperly could put those people’s lives at risk.
“It’s police, sheriffs, State Patrol, the FBI, the Fire Department, EMS,” Botsch said. “Those can get into the dozens, if not hundreds of people that respond to those incidents, diverting resources away from true emergencies.”
While the number of calls received last week is unusual, the FBI can not take these kinds of calls as a joke.
The reason these agencies respond in full force is because they’ve faced a number of true active shooter events in the past. In Southeast Wisconsin alone over the last 10 years, Botsch says, they’ve responded to at least four mass shooting events; the Sikh Temple shooting in 2012, Azana Spa shooting in 2012, Molson-Coors shooting in 2020 and the Mayfair Mall shooting in 2020.
And earlier this week, a 19-year-old went to his former high school in St. Louis and killed a student and a teacher. Because of the reality any one of these calls could be ‘the big one’ it’s all hands on deck to respond.
Because of that, the FBI loses valuable time it could be spending elsewhere fighting real crime; like gang investigations, robberies or white-collar crimes.
“It’s threat mitigation,” Botsch said. “If you have a lot of real crimes that are occurring on a regular basis, those resources are being diverted away from those real crimes in order to investigate hoax threats.”
But these incidents don’t just happen on larger scales; swatting can happen to the individual.
“This is when they first approached the front of the house,” Patrick said.
Patrick and his wife Niki have been swatted six times in the last four years. The two have become the target of online swatters.
Each time, the Milwaukee Police Department arrive at their doorstep, with their guns drawn, believing there is a true emergency inside.
“More terrifyingly,” Niki said. “We're the officers who went around the back of the house and came to the front, on their guns. They were ready to use their guns. That scared the hell out of me, honestly.”
Patrick feels one wrong move could end his own life, if the officers responding to the perceived threat make a wrong decision.
“These are not prank calls,” Patrick said. “This is not a 10-year-old asking if your refrigerator is running. This is attempted murder.”
Police are still investigating Patrick and Niki’s case. But it can prove difficult because the swatters aren’t always local.
“Your threat actor may not be sitting in Wisconsin,” Botsch said. “The threat actor could be sitting in California or New York or Spain. You don’t necessarily know where they are until you start to dig and you’ve got to start to peel the layers of the onion apart in order to be able to find out where they are.”
Botsch pointed to a recent swatting arrest within the last three months. He says, there was a bomb threat called into a local government building and when the FBI investigated, they figured out the threat actor was a 13-year-old boy.
“In that case, that took us two days to be able to trace it,” Botsch said. “Sometimes, it can be very fast and other times, it can take weeks or months, depending upon where that person is. If the IP Address is taking you back to Europe or Asia or Africa, it may take a little bit longer in order to be able to peel that back.”
Botsch says, identifying a swatter crosses all demographics. But, he says, the FBI will ultimately find those who are doing these kinds of actions. Those responsible will face a hefty punishment.
According to Botsch, swatting comes with a five-year federal prison sentence. If someone is hurt during the incident, the penalty is increased to 20 years. If someone dies as a result of the swatting, the person responsible could face life in prison.
These punishments are why the FBI hopes people understand, swatting is no joke.