Spate of hoax calls about active shooters stir fear at US college campuses

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A rash of hoax calls about active shooters on college campuses some featuring gunshots sounding in the background has sent waves of fear among students around the nation as the school year begins.

The calls have prompted universities to issue campuswide texts to run, hide, fight. Students and teachers have rushed to find cover, often cowering in classrooms for safety. Officers have swarmed campuses seeking out the threat. Yet in every recent case, the threat didn't exist.

It's looking as if this was another swatting or hoax call, University of Arkansas Police Department Assistant Chief Matt Mills said after false reports of an active shooter Monday prompted school leaders to cancel classes for the day.

Number of college campuses receiving hoax alarms grows  The hoax calls and false alarms have hit at least a dozen college campuses from Arkansas to Pennsylvania.

On Monday alone, law enforcement responded to calls claiming there were active shooters at Arkansas, Northern Arizona University, Iowa State, Kansas State, Colorado University and the University of New Hampshire. More calls were made Tuesday to campuses in Georgia, Kentucky and West Virginia.

The goal of swatting, which sometimes uses caller ID spoofing to disguise numbers, is to get authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to respond to an address.

The FBI said Tuesday that it was working with law enforcement on the swatting cases on college campuses, which come as such false reports surge nationwide.

A wave of threats three years ago was believed to have come from outside the country, the FBI said at the time. The agency provided few details about the recent campus threats, including whether they are coordinated, but the calls appear to share similar traits. Most of them involved multiple calls to authorities about an active shooter or shooting, and at least four included the sound of gunshots in the background.

In an era of mass shootings, the calls create a climate of fear and sap law enforcement resources. The FBI stressed in a statement that the threats also put "innocent people at risk. In 2017, for instance, a police officer in Wichita, Kansas, shot and killed a man while responding to a hoax emergency call.

Climate of fear can linger  The emotional toll on students and staff can linger for days or even weeks, said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm that focuses on K-12 safety.

Miceala Morano, a 21-year-old senior journalism major at the University of Arkansas, knows that firsthand. She hid behind a green screen in the broadcast room and called her grandmother as officers outside donned bullet proof vests.

As of right now, I'm safe. I love you, said Morano, who was raised on active shooter drills.

As a child, she learned to stack chairs in front of the classroom door and to climb into the ceiling if there was no other way out. Now this.

There's just these few minutes where all you really feel is fear, whether the threat's there or not, she said.

Casey Mann, a 19-year-old classmate, said she couldn't sleep until 2 am afterward.

It's just a scary reality the time we're living in right now, she said, her voice choking up. It just makes me wonder what we're supposed to expect in the future when it comes to the frequency of events like this.