Editorial: Pain, panic and fear: the fallout of a faked school shooting report

How dare you?

This short sentence — equal parts earnest question, alarmed utterance and angry interjection — is directed at the person or persons, organization or movement behind computer-generated “swatting” calls made Wednesday reporting active shooter situations.

Allegheny County 911 received calls about Central Catholic and Oakland Catholic. Both schools were evacuated, and police swarmed the Oakland area around them. State police at Uniontown responded to a similar report at Laurel Highlands High School.

False reports of any kind should never happen. A pulled fire alarm. A bomb threat. They disrupt lives, waste money and divert resources from real, critical needs for first responders.

Swatting is worse. It’s a report of a dangerous event, the kind of thing that draws a SWAT response — thus the name. It’s dangerous because it draws police into a situation where they expect violence and may counter with the same, putting the lives of real people at risk for what is at best a prank and at worst an attack.

But what happened in Pittsburgh and Fayette County and elsewhere around the state Wednesday was more than that. It was heartless. It was cruel. Perhaps it was malicious, but it may have just been uncaring.

Related:

• Active shooter calls send panic across Western Pa. before deemed a hoax by investigators
• Experts describe how 'swatting' hoax threats cause chaos and panic

Every parent of every child at those schools has watched for two days as the last school shooting drama played out in Nashville, leaving three children and three employees dead at The Covenant School.

Parents of children at schools everywhere have swallowed their dread at saying goodbye to their children in the morning because of the Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde reality that too often children do not come home.

The students have done the active shooter drills. They have seen or heard snippets of what happened in other recent explosions of violence, whether at a school or a movie theater or a church — or as many Pittsburgh kids can remember, a synagogue. They do not need to think they will be the next reason for people to be Pittsburgh Strong.

The police are asked to stand between the citizens and gunfire, to pull their weapons and end lives if necessary. That is a heavy burden. It should not be reduced to an early April Fool’s Day stunt.

Was it meant to terrorize? Was it meant to reopen old wounds that are still tender from the Tree of Life shooting in 2018 or simply to capitalize on the new Nashville heartbreak? If so, congratulations. Your crafty plan worked.

“I really won’t feel relief until he is standing in front of me,” Munhall resident Chris Schrieve said of his son, a Central Catholic student.

At every turn, these calls caused pain and panic and undeserved but all too understandable fear. It is all the upheaval and stress of a shooting without the body count. Is that what you wanted, whoever you are behind that computer-generated call?

How dare you.