Someone Is Organizing Shooting Threats in Dozens of Schools

Dozens of Schools in multiple states have been victims of a coordinated series of fake mass shooting reports. Robert sits down to talk with Molly Conger about a massive, growing problem.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to It could Happen Here, a podcast about
things falling apart. This week we have an episode that
is in the vein of what my co host Garrison
Davis and I like to call Here's a Problem, goodbye episodes. Uh.
And the problem is that there has been a massive
and as far as I can tell, unprecedented wave of
swatting incidents against public schools and multiple states over the

(00:26):
last couple of weeks. Uh. And here with me to
talk about that is the person who noticed it first. Uh,
anti fascist researcher h and community meeting note taker Molly Conjure. Molly,
you are socialist dog mom on Twitter, where you are
a sensation with your delightful little pups. Um and also
one of the best researchers that I know in the biz.

(00:48):
Welcome to the show. Great to be here. So uh, yeah,
you want to start? Yeah. So this has been going on,
I guess for two weeks. There's been this wave of
swatting against schools across the country. Um, and I didn't
notice it until it happened here. Um. We had to
restart this so many times. I feel like it's great,

(01:10):
though you should because it happened here. I love it
when you say the name of the show and we
finally get to do it. Yeah, but you know, you know,
my attention is primarily local. So on Monday, when every
cop in the region was dispatched to Charlottesville High School
because there was a false report of an active shooter
inside the school. Um, it was quickly determined to be

(01:30):
a squatting, right, so they dispatched everybody, They locked the
school down, they cleared the classrooms with guns. You know,
kids reported being terrified of you because it was happy
to them. They were just enjoying, you know, an afternoon
in high school and all of a sudden there's a
man with a rifle in their classroom. Um. And it
was quickly determined to have been a squatting. And I
was listening over the scanner and by the time they
were clearing the scene, that's what they were calling it.

(01:52):
So the police identified it as a swatting, like through
over the Yeah, and I think that may have they
may have arrived at that conclusion more quickly because a
dozen other districts had it at the same time. So
across the state of Virginia, UM districts you know, from
Hampton Roads to Arlington, Culpepper, Lynchburg, like tiny towns in
Shenandoah County, like a town with four thousand people down

(02:15):
you know, in the southern part of the state. We're
hit almost exactly the same time with these hoax calls
about you know, I gotta get somebody down to the
school because there's somebody with a gun. Good lord. It's
so you know, it happened all over the place. All
of these schools were quickly cleared. No one was hurt,
thank god. Um, but at least think you know, as
the news was coming in, I was picking, you know,

(02:35):
picking through trying to find the districts where this was happening,
and I was pulling up these news articles and it
wasn't just us, and it wasn't just that day. So
it's I think the earliest I can find in this
rash was what was that two weeks ago in Texas?
A bunch of districts in Texas were hit. Uh And

(02:56):
the one in Houston I think is particularly grim because
the caller, the caller said, you know, oh, ten students
have already been shot there in the classroom. It's two
guys with a RS and they gave this is one
of the one of the ones that the best described
in the media is that the caller gave a description
of the two shooters. And that's what scares me, right,
is that the cops show up with a description in mind,

(03:17):
they're going to act with extreme prejudice if they see
someone who fits that description. There's a Hispanic guy in
the parking lot that you know, it could be a risk. Yeah, well,
and that's that's the first one. Like, when I shared
your early posts on this, people from Houston started showing
up and saying like, hey, you know, we had something
like this hit a couple of weeks ago, and it

(03:38):
sounds like it's the same thing. And these are i mean,
like number one, the scale of this, it feels unlikely
that at some level, I know, there's there's certainly possible,
an extreme likelihood that some of these are copycats, some
of these are people falling in, but the sheer number
of them makes it seem it's hard to believe that

(03:59):
this would all be unrelated, all of these calls would
be unrelated to each other. I think, you know, I
don't know what the background level of normal splottings is, right, Like,
I'm sure to a certain degree. This is happening somewhere
all the time. You know, people are saying, oh, it's
just kids who don't want to take tests. Yeah, fifteen
schools in Minnesota were hit simultaneously yesterday. This is and
kids who don't want to take that right simultaneously, so

(04:23):
many schools, And it's there is a point there, which
is you know, because people when I started sharing this
and stuff, people like, what are we supposed to do?
And the first thing that occurs to me is actually
not a preventative measure, but is purely just like, well,
we should probably have some sort of at least at
a state level system in every state for letting people
know how many fake swatting attempts to get schools are happening,

(04:45):
how many like false reports of mass shootings at schools occur,
like it would be because otherwise we can't tell if
this is rising above the level of background. I think
it's clear this is because neither of us can think
of a time when there were us many in such
a short period of time, but dozens a day, dozens
a day, there should be some method of keeping track

(05:07):
of that, because it is I I thought there's a
lesson of nine eleven rights that don't have inter agency communication,
like you know, on Monday, when it was hitting all
these schools in Virginia, some of the early reports were
quotes from local authorities saying, we talked to the state
police and this happened to other people. It's like, well,
I've already found ten other reports. Did the state police
know about the hose? Yeah, and it's it's this is um.

(05:28):
Obviously none of this is as bad as a single
actual mash shooting at a school. But this isn't like
nothing either. It's not like you you file a false
report about I don't know a break in and the
cops drive around a neighborhood for a while. Like. This
is kids getting guns pointed in their faces. This is
children thinking that like their friends have been massacred. This

(05:48):
is like parents thinking their kids might be dead. This
is this. This is an act of violence, like doing
this as an act of violence and it ripples. Right,
The effects of this are are compound and unfamble. You know,
I've heard from friends in the community saying, you know,
I got a text from my thirteen year old son saying,
I don't know what's happening, but I love you and
even if, even if you know, thirty minutes later the

(06:11):
dangerous passed and everyone knows it was a false alarm.
For that thirty minutes, those parents thought, I thought that
their kids weren't going to come home. And you know
that's a background fear of the parents have every day
when they said that. But that's the text no parent
wants to get right. You know, before we lost the
recording earlier, I was telling you about a a surgeon
here in Charletsville. She's a surgeon at EBA Hospital. So
the hospital was alerted about a possible mass casualty incident

(06:32):
so they could prepare their their operating rooms. And so
this woman gets the mass casualty incident alert as she's
scrubbing in for a scheduled surgery. So she has to
walk into that. She has to walk into that o
R without her phone knowing that her child's school, to
her knowledge in that moment, has a mass shooter inside
of it. And so she doesn't know if when she
walks out of that o R are her children going

(06:54):
to be in there. That's horrific. That's horrific, and also
like that could get somebody killed. And this is nothing
care it would not be surprising if she was less
able to properly provide care in that situation. That's just
being a person. Um. So this is serious, very serious

(07:14):
and it um So yesterday a rash of them hit Minnesota,
and if some locals in Minnesota were saying that so
one of the schools that was hit was East main
Cato High School the day before, So the day before
yesterday that at that high school, a student at that
high school attempted suicide with a firearm in the parking lot.
So kids came back to school the day after this.
You know, the students survived in his hospitalized, but you

(07:37):
know they're coming to school hopefully to you know, access
counseling resources and deal with the fact that one of
their classmates shot himself in the parking lot and suddenly
they're sheltering in place and there's cops with guns. Just
there's a baseline reality for these students every day that
gun violence is present, and this is just cruel to them.

(08:07):
One of the things that surprises me, you and I
you started was it four days ago? Now, kind of
reporting this on your Twitter, which is where you do.
You're reporting on local news and the anti fascist reporting
as well. Um, and so I started sharing your stuff
and I we started chatting about doing an episode. And
my suspicion, the thing I was expecting was that like, well,

(08:30):
we'll probably get scooped on this, right, Like there's probably
liked vice or somebody is going to put out something
because there's just there's too damn many of these. Um
it's Thursday now, the started Monday. I still haven't seen
any coverage of this as a as a wave of swattings,
and I'm kind of surprised by that. There's a few, Like,
you know, regionally, people are bringing together and doing these

(08:51):
little quick hits about like, oh, this happened in a
dozen districts in our state. Yeah, but I'm not I'm
not seeing anyone connect the dots nationally, and you know,
and some of these local stories are saying the local
authorities are talking to the FBI, But I don't know
that there's a cohesive nationwide investigation into this as as
a phenomenon. Regionally, there is some indication that like these
calls are connected. So I saw an article that just

(09:12):
came out an hour ago in Minnesota that all of
the Minnesota calls came from the same IP address. Ah,
So this that's I mean, that's what that's the proof
we're looking for, though, that's the evidence we're looking for.
That Like, there's a significant degree degree to which this
stuff is is coordinated. And when I because this is
something that since you started talking about it, every researcher

(09:35):
I know who covers extremism has been talking about at
least a little bit in like private conversation signal loops.
And the thing that keeps coming up is like, is
there some ship on Kiwi Farms? Is there some ship
on four chan? Is there some ship on like these
these little spaces. I haven't seen anything nothing, So yeah,
you know, to some degree, there is the possibility of

(09:56):
social contagion, right, Like I found a few stories that
don't fit the pattern, specific the cases like yesterday in Roanoke,
a fourteen year old girl was arrested for making one
of these threats. She didn't make all of them, she
made this one. Did she do this with what she
inspired to do? So? Because of this? Was it unrelated?
It's hard to say. So this at some point, even
if it did originate in one incubator, it breaks containment.

(10:18):
And I'm I am certain that's part of the intent, right,
Like when you do the benefit of if you're thinking
about because again, we don't know who did this. We
don't know what kind of ideology or whatever or why
was behind it, but we know that a significant number
of them like occurred from a single source, which means

(10:39):
like something coordinated was happening at some stage of this.
That's a reasonable conclusion to draw from the extent information
um And I think it's just pure psychic terrorism, right
because my first thought on Monday was, is this someone
testing the fences? Is this someone timing response times? Is
someone watching local news coverage to see what kind of
equipment the police have? That doesn't make sense at this scale.

(11:03):
This isn't how you would do that, because this is
going to draw too much attention, right, And like why
would you want to know the you know, the police
capabilities in Emporia, Virginia, which is just like three truck
stops in high school, No offense to the beautiful town
of Emporia, Virginia. It is Virginia's greatest speed trap. God
bless them. But like that that theory immediately fell by

(11:24):
the wayside for me because it doesn't make sense. But
it is interesting. So I've been, you know, trying to
compile follow ups on some of these reports because the
initial reporting is vague and people use nine one one
as short cancel. They'll say a nine one one call,
But was it actually a nine one one call? Because
that makes a huge difference here, dialing nine one one
is you know, I'm not a genius about how technology works,

(11:45):
but if I die INLINEE one here from my living room,
it hits my closest emergency communications center, right, it's my
local nine one one. If these calls are being made
from out of state, it takes a high degree of
technical ability to hit a nine one one dispatch center
where you aren't. Yeah, right, So we know we're not
dealing with someone who is capable of that. Alternatively, we know,

(12:08):
perhaps that this person knows that making a false nine
one one call is a separately prosecutable crime. Right, So
like the articles that are specific will say that the
call came in directly to police dispatch, or the call
came in to the front desk at the sheriff's office.
So these people know well enough how to contact the

(12:28):
you know, the front desk at the police department, and
the name of a school that's nearby right there. It's
not it's not so vague as as to just be
dialing random police stations and saying go to the high school.
Well no, And that also again because we we've just
mentioned I haven't seen any evidence of this in the
places you would expect if this was the way. It's

(12:48):
a lot of these docksing campaigns have gone the way
a lot of Kiwi farm stuff goes the way a
lot of swatting happens, where like you have a shipload
of people openly talking about and talking about bad things
happening to a targeted person, and then some of those
people do swattings. Right, there's no evidence of that, And
the way in which it seems like the bulk of

(13:09):
these have gone doesn't seem like the way it would
happen if you were just kind of targeting someone in
a public area and hoping that enough people made the
decision independently to make these calls. Um. The other My
other thought too is that you know, it's sort of
a limpse of TikTok phenomenon, like they're targeting schools with
you know, woke policies CRT gender include, they're not I

(13:31):
mean they hit Lynchburg, Virginia, which is Jerry Folwell country.
There's no demographic or political consistency to the district's being
targeted well, and the right hasn't picked this up at all.
I haven't seen any kind of like, very no one,
very few people seem to have at this point. So
this is just such a if I if I were

(13:52):
to guess where this is going down, it's some some
sort of communications platform where people have a degree of privacy. Um,
And I don't know, if it's not testing the fences,
which at this point it seems too widespread to be,
then it may just be kind of pure. I mean,

(14:13):
one thing that occurs to me is just like there's
the pure accelerationist value of of setting up this wave
and hoping that that the copycat effect will just keep
it going for a significant period of time, of shutting
down dozens of schools around the country, of traumatizing kids,
of continually making those schools roll the dice, because anytime
you have a cop with an a R bust into

(14:34):
a fucking school hyped up thinking there's a shooting, there's
a chance someone's going to get shot, right, So there's
and that's that's I mean, there have been deaths from swattings,
and that was that was but so it happened here
two days in a row. On Tuesday, it happened in
our middle school. And so like the second time they responded,
they didn't respond. Is hot and heavy. Uh yeah. Anytime
you get, you know, cops charging into a scenario where

(14:56):
they think they might get to or have to, depending
on how you feel about it, use their guns, the
risk of someone being shot by accident is pastronomical. Yeah,
and I honestly I'm kind of shocked that has it happened,
especially in the cases where you know, the caller gives
a specific suspect description that you know, puts anybody who
vaguely meets that description at great risk. But I think

(15:16):
this is just you know, joker mode nihilism. Yeah, that's
that is if I were to like make a raw
irresponsible like public guests. Um, not that I don't think
this is actually that irresponsible, but like we just don't know.
But that's that's what this that's the the mo this
fits best so far is kind of raw. I want

(15:39):
to disrupt the system. I want to scare people, and
I want to do so in a way. That's the
problem with a mass shooting from the perspective of someone
like this is that you're gonna die or get arrested
doing it, right, That's the way all of them end.
And so that limits the number of people who are
going to be inspired to carry out a mass shooting.
If you can show that, yeah, people can can call

(16:00):
in dozens of these fake reports and some of them
you know, we're going to end violently, Uh, then maybe
a bunch more people are willing to do that, and
the overall level of disruption and chaos that you cause
is substantially higher. Right, So it's a relatively low threshold
for involvement. Right, you don't have to be ready to die,
and maybe you won't get caught, although I think because

(16:21):
especially in the Minnesota case, they're going to catch somebody.
Governor Tim Waltz's son goes to man Cato High School. No,
I mean you you you upset the governor's son. You're
gonna get Yeah, and you did it all from a
single like And I have to suspect the FBI is
looking at this. They never I mean, it's policy, They're

(16:42):
never going to confirm that until the point at which
like it becomes there's it's a big enough story that
they kind of have to for pr reasons. But I
would be surprised if there was not an investigation at
the moment. Every couple days when one of these regional
stories comes out, you know, they'll quote the local FBI
field officing, you know, we're working with local authority EIS
to help them investing. The FBI is absolutely investigating this nationwide.

(17:03):
There's no chance that they're not. Yeah, it's it's too
it's too clear of a pattern, and it's not unprecedented,
right that a couple of years ago there was that
Adam Wofin swatting ring that those guys did go to
prison for. So it doesn't have to be a lot
of guys. This could just be a couple of people.
So you know, we're saying we're not seeing this leak
out anywhere, it's not being disgusting. Or it could just
be you know, three or four guys. It could be

(17:24):
for four people in a discord with some like auto
dialing apps that they've they've either coded, are found somewhere
on the internet, um, which if they if they are
using some sort of like program to do this that's
meant for I don't know, sketchy uh salesman or whatever.
There's a decent chance that's what brings them down, um
because all of that ship has terrible security, but um

(17:47):
so does discord. I don't know, Like it'll be interesting
to see what happens here. I think one of the
questions for from the perspective certainly of like people listening,
what can be done here? Well? On a a local level,
one thing people can fight for and advocate for especialty,
especially if you're involved in local government, is like I

(18:07):
would like to know every year, how many times the
police go to a school over a false report of
a shooting? Right? How many times are classrooms being cleared?
How many times are the cops showing up for this? Um?
Because that's important information, and that also should tailor the
way the police are being trained for this and the
ways like the there's a number of things that you

(18:29):
should be doing. If you know, hey, we had no
mass shootings this year, but the cops showed up with
guns drawn forty five times, right, that that should inform
the way you do things in the future in order
to minimize the trauma these kids go through. That's one
thing that is an immediate thing people can take and
that you can do, people can advocate for locally. But
it's I mean, it's a tough line here, right, because

(18:50):
you know, I think every district is really eager not
to be the next bal day police. Of course, so
showing up hot and heavy right in there, knocking down
doors and pointing guns kids. You know that the video
that came out from that classroom in Houston, they frisked
several children at gunpoint. I'm not sure why that they
were sitting at their desks, they were obviously not committing
a mass shooting. Or in Denver on Monday, they evacuated

(19:12):
the whole school onto the football field with their hands
in the air, like necessarily horror, right, And you know,
even even as a police abolitionist and recognize that in
the system in which we currently live, there is no
response to a school shooting that does not involve the police.
That's right where we are. But are they are they
doing this smart? Yeah? As a as a rule, I

(19:33):
think everyone can agree that given the current realities of
the world we live in, if a guy is shooting
up a school or a lady, Um, it's good for
people with guns to come and stop them, and that
that's realistically going to be the police in our current system.
But that doesn't mean we can't be like, well, okay,
they came up fifty times falsely and traumatized all these

(19:54):
kids by pointing guns at them on the fucking football field.
We should change the way in which they're responding to
to these like that should be the default. These are
things people can lobby for at a local level that
will have an impact on at least the quality of
life for kids in the schools and for parents, you know,
like you know, in All Day there was the parent
who you know slipped around the police line and got

(20:15):
into the school and got her kid yesterday, no, two
days two days ago in San Antonio, they had a
you know, a hoax call. Somebody called in swatch showed up, uh,
and parents showed up because they got the emergency alert text.
So the parking lot fills with parents. A father punched
through a window, cut his arm up, and was hand
look tackled and handcuffed by the police because I just

(20:37):
wanted this fucking kid. Of course, this is gonna keep
playing out or here on Tuesday at the middle school,
you know, I was listening to my scanner. After the
you know, they cleared buildings, the police left, and then
a call came over the scanner and said, the school's
requesting that the police come back to handle the parents
because parents are angry. Of course they are. So how
do we how do we navigate this tension of yes,

(20:59):
we need police to respond if there is a school shooting.
But how do we as community communities navigate this space
where we also don't want them to point guns at
our kids. We don't we don't have a lot of
trust and communication with our police department. So I don't
know if that's a space we can navigate. This is

(21:26):
a problem that has to be adapted to. Right. There
is the potential you have this problem, right, which is
that it is apparently easy to weaponize the reporting system
for mass shootings. The problem that's compounded by the fact
that you can't ignore the risk of a mass shooting
because kids can die, people will get killed if you
are wrong about that. At the same time, it is
unreasonable to say that every single time one of these

(21:47):
reports happens, if the ratio is hundreds of false reports
to one actual shooting, every time it happens. You go
and you stick guns in the face of a bunch
of kids, and you traumatize all these parents who wind
up going crazy for understandable reasons. They're a way there
are structures that can be built into the system to
mitigate those harms at least, and I think that is,
you know, from the perspective of who is doing this

(22:09):
and how can they be stopped? That is a question
that will be answered either by law enforcement or by
independent researchers. But but that's that's a research problem, right,
that's a cracking case problem. My fear is that the
response to this will be um putting more cops in schools. Right.
It's you know, the Coppy school doesn't stop the school shooting.
We know that from you know, empirical evidence. Maybe in

(22:31):
several of these cases. You know, the news story says,
you know, Dispatch contacted the school resource officer who said, no,
I don't see anything. So is the solution going to
be put a guy in there who can look. Yeah,
and he's not gonna do anything, but he's gonna Charlottsville,
the city of Charletsville took our took school resource officers
out of schools last year, two years ago, time scaped now.

(22:52):
So my my fear is that even people who applauded
that decision will at this point say, maybe we should
put them at Maybe we need a guy in there
with a direct line to dispatch. Yeah, and I and
maybe we do. I don't don't think they need to
have It needs to be a man with a gun
who has the ability to arrest children, right having having
a first responder on scene at every school who can

(23:14):
be the yes, there actually is a shooting, or no,
there's not. Maybe a se medical training is perhaps a
different thing that could happen, rather than let's put more
armed men in schools, right like that, That's not an
inherently unreasonable proposition. But I don't know. I don't know
that police are going to be receptive to the idea.
Let's ask some questions first, right Because as I was
listening to the scanner again, you know, I have the

(23:35):
most information about the two incidents is that were in
my neighborhood. Um, I was listening to the scanner on Tuesday,
and it takes time for cops to arrive at a scene,
even in a relatively small town. By the time they
had dispatched this response to the scene. They had already
spoken to the principle over the fall. They already knew
this was not true. We'll see, And there's another solvable problem,

(23:56):
because if you're if you're having guys with guns still
show up because it's policy. When someone at the school
has said no, there's not a shooting, well that's again,
that is a problem that can be altered or that
can be fixed to mitigate harm. That seems pretty simple,
which is be like, well, maybe if somebody at this
maybe if the school's principle says no, nothing is happening here,

(24:17):
you don't send the gun guys. Maybe you still send
a squad car to check it out for die hard purposes.
I'm sure we all remember what that movie has to
say about these kinds of problems. But um, you know,
I I there's a lot that can be done with
the information that this is a problem, And to a
certain extent, I think I'm hopeful that once this kind

(24:41):
of blows up, and I'm certain this well, I'm certain
that maybe even by the time this launches, there will
be some big national stories about this, because this is
this is a really substantial problem. Very obviously is a
substantial problem. Um. I hope that one of the things
that does is perhaps lead to the authorities take king
swatting and threats of swatting and communities that engage in

(25:03):
swatting much more seriously, because by god, they have not
so far, and it's not the laws about it are
not super consistent state to state that you know, there's
been some attempts on the federal level to make you know,
blanket legislation about this specific because you know, it's it's
illegal to make a false report to the police, it's
illegal to make, you know, a false nine one one call,
but to specifically and intentionally weaponize an armed police response

(25:26):
because you hope it will hurt someone. In most states,
isn't its own crime, right, Like, and I think in
California they have specific legislation that like, you can be charred,
like financially responsible for whatever it costs to have that response. Like,
there's not uniform agreement that this is a separate crime.
This is a separate harm that should be punished in

(25:47):
a specific way. And maybe maybe we'll get that out
of this. I don't know that that solves it, but again,
it will, Like you were saying, that this is a
lower barrier to entry crime. But if you up the punishment,
maybe the threshold to just to do it goes up. Yeah. Yeah, again,
I think there's there's a variety of things that can
be done. So now that we know this is a problem,

(26:09):
and one of the reasons why I think this is
important for us to cover on a show like this
is a lot of these are problems that can at
least be mitigated at the local level. Right, you do
have power if you're involving yourself in local politics to
do things like advocate for a system in which you
track how often this is happening, to do things like
advocate for changes in how the school handles this sort
of thing like that is a thing that you that

(26:30):
people can handle locally, um, and that is you'll get
a faster response handling it locally as well than you
will trying to advocate for some sort of big national
swatting law and you're gonna get You're going to get
faster and better results changing local departmental policy than you
will getting any law that changes how the police be

(26:50):
highly unlikely. Yeah, And so I I think this is important.
I think it's important for people to engage with this
from the perspective of, like, we don't know why the
is happening or who is doing it yet, and it
maybe a while before I'm certain we will find out.
At some point these people will get caught, but um,
it almost doesn't matter because the system is so easy
to weaponize. The solution is to try to find ways

(27:15):
to make it less harmful without reducing the ability of
people with guns to show up if they need to
to stop someone who's murdering kids. Right, those are the
two things that need to be done, not reduce the
efficacy of the system, which is not very good to
be honest at stopping mass shootings, and and it's pissport
at that, so it would be hard to make it worse.

(27:35):
I will say when people talk about, well, what happens
if they well, they're bad at it now. They're terrible
at it now. So it's not like I'm not worried
about making a change to like mitigate the response of swattings,
in this instance, harming kids, because as it is, the
system almost never saves them when there is an actual
mass shooting. So simply reducing the amount of time that

(27:58):
kids have cops pull guns on them and these false reports. Um,
that's more of a priority to me than anything else. Um. Yeah,
when when we're talking about the issue of swatting and
I think there again, there's just there's things that can
be done there Molly, is there anything else you wanted
to get to on this on this subject? No, I
think that covers it. I just this is still happening.

(28:20):
It's happening today like it's it is still ongoing. This
phenomenon is ongoing, and I think it will continue to
build until it hits a breaking point. Like you said,
I definitely think some of these people will be caught,
But I don't know what that changes, right, Like once
this breaks containment, once people see that this is a
thing that they could do. Yeah, yeah, do we do

(28:41):
we deal with a wave of this before it gets
under control that gets even bigger? Or is that what's
actually happening right now? I don't know. And when does
this When does this, I don't know desensitize people to
the idea of these threats. Yeah, I don't know. I
don't know. But no kids get shot. I hope no
kids get If you're a journalist and you're trying to

(29:05):
you are trying to report on this in some sort
of concerted way. Uh, you can find Molly on Twitter
and socialist stuck Mom. She's she's riding most of your
article for you. You can stee like. But I think
there are journalists listening to this. I think it's important
to tell them ask the right questions right, like when

(29:26):
you're you know, when you're getting your three questions into
the press conference with the local shriff's office, ask specifically
where did the call come in? What number was dialed
by the caller? Right? Because I don't think these are
nine one one calls. I think people are using nine
one in shorthand, So asked where the call came from,
the substance of the call, because I think, I imagine
that some of these calls are verbatim and we just

(29:48):
don't know that. I think some of them are probably identical,
and we just don't have a way of It's hard
to connect the dots when the police won't tell us. Um.
So I think if you know, if journalists are listening,
ask more questions then you got in the press release.
That's critical because if there were if there was a
if there was a Virginia State like repository where every
time we get a false swatting attempt against the school,

(30:10):
we report when it came in, who was called, and
what was said over the call, right, Um, all of
which are things that they could pretty easily get because
this ship is always recorded. Um. I don't know that
that's true though, and that's that's another sort of tactical
nine one one call. But if you call the front
desk at the police station, it probably isn't. That is

(30:30):
a fucking good point, um. In any case, that is
another thing that could be dealt with, because then you
would at least be able to see, Oh, there's forty
swatting attempts in the state in the last five days,
and thirty eight of them it was the exact same script.
There's probably a single source of this that we should
be like looking at, um, and that can help not
just law enforcement who's generally bad at these sort of investigations,

(30:53):
but people like you who are good at these sort
of investigations and can maybe then start doing keyword searches
and figure out where the fun this stuff is originating from,
if it's anywhere on the semi open internet. Um. Again, things,
there's a lot to be done to respond to this
problem that that doesn't start with like throwing more cops
at it or or or whatever. Like. There's there's a

(31:15):
number of different problems that this is revealed. Um, so
hopefully those get solved anyway, Molly, you got anything else
in the plug before we go? Oh, defund your local
police department, subscribe your local newspaper. Sure, um, and uh
yeah if if you're at a school right now, good

(31:38):
good luck those kids. Yeah, they are really the kids
these days are dealing with a lot. Um. I'm I'm
I'm more grateful every year that my my childhood was
as uneventful as it was, because, boy, howdy is it
rough to be a student today? And they still have
to take their test teach your fucking tests. Yeah, they

(32:00):
have to go to school. They got to read The
Great Gatsby while this is going on. Unbelievable. Um, sorry kids.
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(32:22):
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