A phony call brought a tactical team to a Lodi neighborhood. The hoax is known as swatting.
Tactical Team Responds to Lodi Call
A swatting call brought a tactical team to a Lodi neighborhood, according to TAPinto.
A Pattern Playing Out Across New Jersey
Saturday's call fits a pattern that has rattled Bergen County and beyond. In November 2021, a caller who said he had shot everyone inside a Bergenfield house drew police and a Bergen County Regional SWAT unit to a home that turned out to be empty — authorities quickly determined that call was unfounded and cleared the scene, according to Daily Voice. That outlet also reported that swatting incidents nationwide had peaked roughly five or six years before 2021 before subsiding and then flaring again.
Garfield has seen a similar scramble, with a report of gunshots there drawing no fewer than three tactical units — two units from the Bergen County regional SWAT team backing up Garfield's own emergency service unit — as reported by NBC New York. Schools have not been spared either. SWAT team members and a bomb squad descended on Glen Rock High School in March after officials received a call about a possible threat to the building, and a search of the complex turned up no threats or suspicious items, Glen Rock police said, according to NJ.com.
Why These Calls Keep Happening
Swatting has roots in internet and gaming culture.
NJ.com reported that eight Burlington County school districts received false threats in a single day in April.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation describes swatting as a malicious tactic built around hoax calls or reports to emergency services that typically feign an immediate threat to life. The bureau has used the term since 2008, and the stakes of these fake calls are not hypothetical: in 2015, a police chief in Sentinel, Oklahoma, was injured by gunfire after responding to a hoax bomb threat at a preschool, and a Wichita, Kansas, man was shot and killed by police in 2017 after a swatting call sent officers to his address, both incidents noted in earlier coverage from Lodi News.
