Take strong steps to stop the swatting

America’s latest mass-shooting disaster commenced Monday when a man entered his former place of work, a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, and opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle. When it all ended, at least four people had been killed and at least nine injured, three critically, including at least one police officer. The gunman was dead.

The horrific attack, which the shooter livestreamed, brought a necessary swarm of heavily-armed police to the scene. It's now a too-familiar response, in an era of urgent, military-style reactions in cities and suburbs. For many years, the teams created to carry out these responses have been labeled SWAT, which stands for Special Weapons and Tactics.

The slang term “swatting” means the very opposite of a proper deployment of these units. It is an abuse of public emergency dispatch systems. It occurs when someone makes a hoax call, usually about a violent incident, to 911, to deliberately draw a dramatic police response.

At this tense moment in the U.S., swatting is far more dangerous, costly and destructive than its simpler incarnations in the realm of deranged pranks, such as pulling a false fire alarm. One of the worst swatting incidents caused a death in Kansas. In 2019, an online gamer, Casey Viner from Ohio, was sentenced to 15 months in prison after trying to swat a rival with whom he had a beef. Viner had a wrong address for his rival. When called to this location, police ended up killing a stranger to Viner they’d been led to believe was holding a hostage — a horrible fiasco caused by a vicious fraud.

One day last week, law enforcement authorities had to handle noncredible threats at more than 50 school districts statewide, including several on Long Island. That came soon after a 28-year-old former student killed three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville.

Against this chaotic backdrop, it is more important than ever that those who call in purposely false reports face the harsh consequences they have long avoided. Gov. Kathy Hochul has met with law enforcement and education officials urging them to investigate those responsible for swatting threats. That’s good, but she should also negotiate legislation right away to add teeth to crackdown efforts.

One bill, introduced by State Sen. Mark Walczyk (R-Watertown) and co-sponsored by Sen. Dean Murray (R-East Patchogue) would explicitly add swatting to the charge of false reporting of an incident, which is a misdemeanor. Another bill would make a threat of mass violence in the first degree a felony punishable by three years in prison and a $35,000 fine.

Swatting makes everyone more vulnerable. Strong punitive measures are needed to keep police resources from being diverted, to keep kids and adults from being terrorized, and to keep falsely reported instances of violence from turning into real ones.