(Washington) Southern Caroline students were panicked when they saw the police tumble on their campus: a false alert as there are more and more in American universities.
The “swatting”, a phenomenon appeared a few years ago in the United States, stormed this back to school the American universities, which are also strongly taken to task by Donald Trump.
The term, which stems from “Swat” – US police intervention unit – describes an appeal to emergency services to report a false serious accident, like a shooting.
Before the University of Southern Carolina, where two calls reported on Sunday shots on Sunday, equally unfounded information affected Villanova University, Pennsylvania, and the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga last week.
At least seven other establishments were targeted on Monday as well as the University of Virginia-Western Tuesday, according to statements by establishments and the police.
Or the swatting is a source of trauma for students and risks desensitizing Americans to alerts, in a country where shootings are frequent, experts say.
“It plays with our nerves, because such tragic events really occur”, moreover, explains John Decarlo, professor of criminal law at the University of New Haven.
“A single call can trigger confinements, mobilizations, buildings of buildings and significant media coverage,” he said.
The FBI, the American federal police, confirmed to AFP to note “an increase in cases of swatting across the country ”.
The agency said it has received thousands of reports since the creation in 2023 of a database, adding that this practice “exhausts the resources of the police, costs thousands of dollars and, above all, endangers innocent people”.
“Inner terrorism”
At the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, several buildings were evacuated as a result of false information.
As for the University of South Carolina, she said that two students had been slightly injured by rushing outside the library, which had been evacuated as a result of a call.
A third student of this university was falsely accused of being the shooter after sharing images on social networks showing him with an umbrella, resembling a firearm.
Universities are “particularly vulnerable” to swatting Due to their visibility, underlines John Decarlo.
Several of them, including Harvard, Columbia and the University of California, have been targeted by Donald Trump in recent months, who has accused them of “wokism” or support for the Palestinian cause.
According to Keven Hendricks, an expert in cybercrime, the authors of these calls are often linked to groups and extremist ideologies, and sometimes minor.
Experts have called for a strengthening of legislation and investing in technologies to identify the authors who hide their voice or IP address.
“In reality, it is a form of inner terrorism”, facilitated by the fact that “we do not have the means to conduct surveys or effective proceedings”, regrets John Decarlo.
