Toledo was the victim of a terror attack.
An active shooter inside Scott High School was reported to police, and the response from city safety forces was massive. The report was a hoax, but the fear that cascaded through the entire city was totally real.
It’s a serious crime to cause that sort of trauma. Inducing panic is a felony in Ohio, and the penalty is considered especially serious when the chaos is inflicted upon a school. Between two and eight years in prison and a fine up to $15,000 is the potential sentence for what happened at Scott on Friday. It’s also a federal crime to cause public panic, which could add five years in prison.
What happened in Toledo was taking place all over Ohio at about the same time. Active-shooter reports appeared to come from within schools in Findlay, Cincinnati, Cleveland, near Columbus, Dayton, Akron, Springfield, and Chillicothe.
In each case, police, fire, and EMS units raced through busy communities in the midst of their normal activities. It’s a blessing that no one was hurt in the response. The law recognizes the dangers inherent in the response to an emergency. If someone is injured because of a hoax, it becomes a felony of the first degree.
The so called swatting of schools — or reporting a threat that demands response from police, special weapons, and tactics teams— is happening nationwide. Schools in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia have all dealt with this issue.
Police in Toledo, across Ohio, and all the other states attacked this way say they’ll do their utmost to find and prosecute the person or persons responsible. But cybersecurity experts say these attacks are likely launched from outside the country, using the same technology that prompts us to answer nuisance telemarketing calls.
It’s called spoofing. It makes a call coming from some far-flung location appear to be local and therefore harder to ignore. Tech experts say cyberwarfare units around the world have the ability to hack into virtual private networks and make a call to the police look like it’s coming from inside the school.
If these attacks are part of a foreign government’s attempt to unleash chaos, there is little local law enforcement will be able to do. But it would be a huge issue for the federal government, and it should demand a harsh diplomatic response.
It’s important that all levels of government quickly move in coordinated fashion to find the origination of these terror attacks. That will tell us whether we have a crime to solve or a new form of psychological warfare to protect against.
First Published September 27, 2022, 4:08 a.m.
