'Swatting' Call In Broomfield Now Investigated As False Report
BROOMFIELD, Colo. (CBS4) - After an incident this week in which Broomfield police shut down a neighborhood, an investigation is now underway into a false report. The 911 caller said that a gunman shot people and barricaded himself inside a home.
"We were able to determine in a short amount of time that this was a spoofed number. We had a pretty good idea shortly after we showed up that maybe this was a false call, a false alarm, maybe what you've heard called as 'swatting,'" said Rachel Welte with the Broomfield Police Department.
The call came in around 5:40 p.m. Wednesday. A Broomfield dispatcher is being credited with raising the initial red flags that the situation wasn't as serious as the caller first described. A man said he had shot his family and was prepared to shoot police officers who responded. The dispatcher noticed that the phone number traced back to a phone for the City and County of Broomfield.
"The caller was threatening but he was also very calm, not what you would typically expect," Welte said. "Our dispatcher Mary did a really great job staying on the line with this gentleman as long as she could, he ended up hanging up."
Still, police needed to respond and make sure the situation wasn't as bad as described.
"We have to continue to treat it as an active scene. We were able to bring everyone out of the home, of course they were surprised to see us," Welte said.
The home was searched and everyone inside was okay. No guns were found in the home either. A significant response pulled resources from other parts of the city. Now more resources are being used to continue the investigation.
"You can be charged with a felony, it is very serious. The next step is to determine who made this call, which can be very difficult as you can imagine. Technology has made it very easy for people to not only hack into computer but hack into cell phones. Trying to narrow down where this call came from, what part of the state, what part of the city, what part of the country, it could even be international and that takes some time," Welte said.
Broomfield police are urging residents to sign up for the CodeRed emergency alert system so they can stay informed of situations in the future.