On Monday, November 25, members of religious communities gathered at Newtown Community Center to listen to a presentation from the Newtown Police Department, FBI, and Connecticut State Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security regarding faith-based swatting. The community meeting was called following several incidents that occurred on Sunday, October 27, when communities of faith in Newtown were the victims of swatting calls.

Swatting is a tactic used to create fear and chaos by someone calling in a fake threat to an address. The address could be a church, synagogue, mosque, school, or personal residence. The fake call then diverts emergency response to that area, sometimes requiring more than local police resources.

George Bryce, a lieutenant with Bethel Police Department, said swatting “is extremely dangerous and carries a high risk of violence with the aim of causing chaos and provoking law enforcement response.”

Bryce continued to explain how these calls work, sometimes including a for-hire aspect where someone will pay money to have, for example, a bomb threat called in on a school.

Tim Silva, who works with the CT Intelligence Center, added that another aspect of swatting calls is “sextortion,” or the act of exploiting someone in a sexual manner such as sharing nude photos without consent, to force the individual into placing fake emergency calls.

“Somebody will do something innocently enough, like, ‘Oh, this person really likes me,’ and then they get caught up in [swatting],” Silva said. “Sometimes there [are] groups out there that all they do is try to make this innocent person now start to do other things. So they’ll have to call in threats.”

The presenters explained swatting and offered some best practices to the community. One of the biggest things to consider during a swatting incident is the choice between evacuating and sheltering in place, they said.

Bryce shared, “Some things to consider is that buildings offer protection. If you have people leaving the building, you lose the concrete walls, you lose places to hide, you lose that ability to actually have some barrier to protect yourself.

“Sheltering in place tends to be the best practice,” he continued. “One of the things to look at is absent evidence of an actual explosive device inside the building, people are likely safer in the building … If your facility is locked and alarmed, in particular overnight or before you guys get there, no one got in to place a bomb, so it’s another thing that gives you at least some level of comfort … something to work off of as you decide to respond to it.”

Members of the public were invited to ask questions throughout the presentation, and a formal Q&A took place after the presentation.

Newtown PD Sergeant John McDermott was asked how Newtown would respond to an event like this.

“Our officers are going to start heading to whatever that location would be immediately, but our communication center will typically call wherever that threat is supposed to be, he responded. "So for us, the main thing is schools … when [the communication center calls] the school, ‘how is everything? Is there anything out of place? Is there anybody weird out in the parking lot?’”

“[The schools know] who’s coming and going, so we can kind of reassess and be like, ‘all right, this might be a swatting type incident … If everything sounds calm at the location, odds are there probably isn’t someone in the parking lot threatening violence,” he added.

Silva said, “What we’re talking about here is each place is going to do what they think is the safest for whoever they’re trying to protect and there’s no wrong answer to that … If you’re doing what you’re doing with the best interest behind it, that’s really what we’re looking for. But on the same token, what we’re looking for is for everybody to just have an informed decision.”

For those looking for resources and more, visit portal.ct.gov/demhs.

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Reporter Sam Cross can be reached at sam@thebee.com.