WYOMING, Minn. — Just 20 days ago, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety issued an advisory against "swatting."
Then on Dec. 6, multiple law enforcement agencies responded to schools and several Jewish facilities for fake calls and emails about shootings and bombing threats.
The latest victims of swatting are Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia, and oddly enough, the Wyoming, Minnesota police department on Christmas Day.
Police and fire departments are always staffed throughout the holidays, but not fully. So when Wyoming PD got a serious 911 call on Christmas morning, they responded with only one officer on duty.
"They had called saying that they were going to harm their mother, specifically saying that they were going to kill their mother and had her tied up," Wyoming Police Chief Neil Bauer said on Tuesday.
With one officer on duty, Bauer said six departments helped respond in a matter of minutes. Turns out, it was all for nothing.
"Eventually they ended up calling the number back and ended up speaking with someone," Bauer said. "And that it was a swatting incident and they made all kinds of comments to the deputy, you know laughing, joking, making all kinds of statements to him."
However, police still had to make sure everyone was safe, so they checked out the scene. All in all, resources were sucked up from six departments for an hour. Bauer said some deputies from Chisago County could have started to make their way up from around the Scandia area.
"It's a significant resource draw and we can back off those resources along the way as we determine more and more that this is not legitimate," Bauer added.
Other considerations include officer safety and resource allocation.
"Is this a swatting call, is this legitimate, are they trying to draw officers in to a specific area to ambush them?" Bauer said. "So even though they find out that this is a swatting incident, it still is a concern that you want to make sure you're not drawing in resources from essentially miles around and potentially having another incident happen somewhere else."
Bauer said they are working to figure out if they can track down the actual caller from Christmas Morning. Swatting, depending on the circumstances, can be charged as anything from a gross misdemeanor to a felony.
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