Two swatting incidents in North Idaho in the past month posed big problems for law officers.

“Swatting is a huge resource drain on the jurisdiction that it’s at and the mental effects it has on students and staff at the school or building that it was called into is really big,” said Tyler Morris, undersheriff for Benewah County Sheriff's Office.

On May 13, Benewah County Sheriff's personnel responded to a confirmed swatting incident at St. Maries High School, sending it into lockdown and prompting an emergency response from police. 

A caller from outside the school stated that he was going to bring a weapon into the school to kill people, per a Facebook post from the St. Maries School District.

The Benewah County Sheriff's Office released this statement:

"Investigators found no credible threat to any school, student, staff member, or member of the public. Similar calls have been reported at several schools across multiple states in the past weeks, some even the same day as the one called in at the St. Maries High School."

A similar event happened May 1 at the Silver Lake Mall in Coeur d’Alene, resulting in an evacuation.

The mall threat took hours to safely deescalate and provoked a response from Coeur d’Alene police, Kootenai County Sheriff's Office, Idaho State Police and the Spokane Bomb Squad.

The caller has not been identified.  

“It’s almost like a game to them to see how many resources they can utilize from the government to push this out,” said Dave Hagar, interim chief for the Coeur d’Alene Police Department.

Not only do these types of situations provoke fear for citizens, but the rapid developments also associated with these threats can leave citizens and bystanders without important information. 

Hanna Franck, who was inside the Silver Lake Mall during the threat, found out from social media that the mall was considered to be in danger. 

“We saw on Facebook that the whole building was surrounded by police, so it was pretty scary,” she said. 

The lasting effects are serious as well. 

“It takes our resources and it starts to desensitize people when this happens,” Hagar said. 

Police have a tough time nabbing swatting perpetrators.

Not only are they using methods to conceal their identities, but some are part of large groups that commit these crimes across the nation. 

“The same day we had this (Silver Lake Mall) incident there were three zoos across the country that received similar swatting. And so these groups are somewhat in competition with each other,” said Hagar.

Morris said enforcement takes time.

"You have to have the number that it was called in from and you have to be able to trace it back,” he said.

Even after receiving a credible phone number, investigators still have more hoops to jump through.

“A lot of times they are using apps that change their number. So, it could be several different companies that you have to get subpoenas for to find out what account it came from,” Morris said.

To further complicate measures, some callers use a virtual private network that allows a user to mask their location.

“Because of the VPN networks and things like that they can disguise themselves as from being all over the world,” Hagar said, “It makes it very difficult and, in some cases, impossible to track these things to the root."

Hagar believes that community help will be useful in combatting these types of incidents. He recommends active listening when receiving the calls, noting specific details like background noise, accents and other important information. 

“Really, be kind of a good witness, listen for background information, are there more people that are there, are there sounds you don’t hear in our general area, voice accents, things like that, track the numbers they are coming from because we can get intelligence from that fairly quickly,” Hagar said.