Florida draws more 'swatters' than any state, including an 11-year-old 'school terrorist'

PALM COAST - Between May and June, Flagler County deputies responded to 21 false reports of shootings at elementary and high schools in the area, costing taxpayers an estimated $210,000.

All the "swatting" calls except one, were traced to an 11-year-old Virginia boy who seemed to treat the threats as some sort of competition, according to law enforcement officers.

"He told us during an interview that every time (a swatting call) solicited a response or media coverage, that was like him getting another trophy," Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly told The News-Journal. "And that's what's going on. These are like trophies to the people that do this."

And those trophy seekers are targeting Florida more than any other state, researchers say.

In 2023-2024, there were 1,564 school swatting threats impacting 1.2 million students in Florida, according to TDR Technology Solutions, a research firm that tracks the calls. And the state leads the nation by a huge margin. The second-largest number of threats was just 385 in Texas.

But these calls are not fun and games. They disrupt and redirect critical law enforcement assets away from actual emergencies. And for students, teachers, and parents, they enact an emotional toll. It is not uncommon for some parents to keep their traumatized children at home, Staly said.

"One juvenile just wreaked havoc on this community," Staly said of the 11-year-old. "Really, he was a school terrorist."

Virginia child accused of swatting Virginia boy, 11, accused of making swatting calls to Flagler Schools at the end of the year

Bomb threats and shooting calls

During the child's alleged reign of terror, the calls to Flagler County schools became more and more menacing. There were bomb threats and shooting threats, school officials said. But in some cases, the caller would even claim to have shot a teacher. At other times, the caller said he was placing pipe bombs around the school.

"Some of the calls were 'you better get here quick because I am going to start shooting,' and the caller said he was on campus armed with an AR-15," Staly said.

Student arrested for swatting school Student, 16, charged in false gun report at NSB High School that locked down schools

There is also a financial cost to these attacks, Staly added.

"We are talking, probably each one of those cases, (cost ) at least $10,000 in resources. I don't have perfect numbers for you, but it's a significant impact," he said.

In neighboring Volusia County, the sheriff's office said it incurred $5,000 in investigative costs when deputies responded in May to a swatting call where the offender claimed there was a gun on campus at the Richard Milburn Academy at New Smyrna Beach High School.

In that case, a 16-year-old girl was charged with disrupting school functions by making a false report.

The Volusia County Sheriff's Office did not respond to requests for comments for this story.

TDR Technology Solutions says swatting cost taxpayers more than $1 billion in the last two years. The firm said it examined over 16,000 schools in the U.S. and found that approximately 16 million students were affected by these fake threats of harm.

Fighting back

The term "swatting" refers to calls made to draw police action to a particular location. Law enforcement "SWAT" teams are specially equipped and trained to deal with threats and can be noisy and intimidating.

TDR started collecting comprehensive data on school threats in the U.S. in 2016, according to the company. Now it produces swatting prevention products that track threats in over 12,000 schools in the U.S., the company claims.

The data is also used in FBI swatting training programs for law enforcement and school personnel that have helped reduce the impact of fake threats and saved taxpayers at least $200 million in the last two years, the company says.

The job, though, is becoming more difficult as the calls evolve.

A computer science professor at the University of Nevada has identified several subclasses of the crime according to Campus Safety Magazine, in a March report. For example, there is celebrity swatting, gamer swatting, and even partisan swatting.

There is also "hate" swatting, which was carried out in Florida by a 17-year-old boy not long ago. He was arrested in January for allegedly calling the police and saying he was going to carry out a mass shooting at a mosque. The teen, who dabbled in Satanism, also allegedly made hundreds of swatting threats against Historically Black Colleges and Universities and homes of FBI agents, according to the magazine.

From the mind of a child

The 11-year-old Virginia boy suspected in the Flagler incidents may have been engaging in a "gamer" style of swatting, Staly said, which grew out of a fascination with social media. Staly said swatting games and challenges start on various social media platforms and can lead to serious offenses.

The Virginia boy targeted other areas than Florida, deputies say. In addition to his Flagler County activities, he allegedly made swatting calls to six other states, including one to the Maryland State Capitol.

But for now, at least, the boy will not be picking up any new trophies. As of this report, he was residing at the Volusia Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Daytona Beach. And he might be there for a while given that he admitted to making 21 threatening calls that mentioned a shooting or bomb threat.

The calls were made between May 14 and May 22, according to the Flagler County Sheriff's Office. Most of them targeted Buddy Taylor Middle School in Palm Coast.

The News-Journal is not naming the boy because of his age.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Florida draws more 'swatters' than any state, including an 11-year-old 'school terrorist'