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After receiving a false report of an on-campus shooting on Sunday night, Syracuse University’s Department of Public Safety waited over an hour to tweet that the report was false.

Neither SU nor DPS addressed the false report again until just before Monday afternoon, roughly 18 hours after the initial report was posted by the Twitter account CNY911 and about 17 hours after DPS’s first tweet.

At 10:47 p.m. on Sunday, the Syracuse Police Department contacted the Onondaga County 911 Center following a report of a shooting threat to SU, according to an 11:12 p.m. tweet from CNY911. The anonymous account tracks and posts crime and other reports through public sources, including the Onondaga County Department of Emergency Communications CAD online tracker.

Following initial contact from the response center, DPS immediately investigated the report by searching the entirety of SU’s campus for any indication of a shooting, but found nothing, SU’s Chief of Campus Safety and Emergency Management Services Craig Stone confirmed with The Daily Orange on Monday afternoon.

At 11:54 p.m., DPS put out the tweet, its first public communication on the incident, acknowledging the report as a rumor. DPS wrote in the tweet that it was working with local law enforcement to investigate who is responsible for making the false report.

In the time between the initial report of the shooting and DPS’ follow-up tweet, rumors about the alleged shooting circulated both on campus and beyond campus on social media.

An unnamed sophomore resident advisor for Brewster Hall said several RAs in the Brewster, Boland and Brockway residential halls coordinated messages to their residents themselves after they didn’t receive any guidance from SU. The messages instructed students to refrain from leaving their rooms unless necessary, the unnamed RA said, and clarified that SU was not on an official lockdown.

Joy Mao, a freshman majoring in television, radio and film, said she first heard about the rumored shooting through her sorority group chat. Rumors circulated through student organizations’ communications and via public forums like GroupMe and YikYak, students said.

Several students said they reached out to DPS in the time between the initial report’s publication and DPS’ Twitter statement to inquire about the credibility of the shooting report, and were assured over the phone that it was a rumor.

Neither DPS nor SU publicly acknowledged the report or any rumor about the shooting until varying times on Monday afternoon in a campus-wide email from Stone.

Stone wrote in the email that DPS did not send an alert through SU’s Orange Alert app — a notification system DPS uses to provide campus safety updates and information — after it resolved the report as false because the service is reserved for imminent threats of physical danger, and not for rumors.

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Stone told the D.O. on Monday afternoon that the intention for the protocol is to prevent Orange Alert from losing credibility or legitimacy within the campus community.

“We don’t want to overuse or misuse the Orange Alert system,” Stone said. “We don’t want to use the system when we’re getting threats that aren’t credible.”

In the email, Stone wrote that Sunday night’s case had been an instance of “swatting,” which is when a person contacts 911 with the intent of falsifying an emergency with intent to elicit a response from law enforcement, according to the FBI’s definition.

New York state has experienced an increase in cases of swatting in recent weeks, Gov. Kathy Hochul addressed in an April 4 news release. Hochul wrote in the release that more than 5o school districts in central New York, Long Island, the Southern Tier and the North County received swatting calls on April 4 alone.

In a March 31 news release, Hochul announced statewide “heightened monitoring” in response to the rise in swatting calls. On the same day, the New York state police and education departments co-signed a letter encouraging school administrators to review their safety measures and policies.

Stone wrote in the Monday evening email that local law enforcement identified the report as similar to previous “swatting” calls being reported across New York state.

Alex Haessig, a spokesperson for DPS and campus safety services, said in an email that Stone’s campus-wide email is the only comment DPS could provide at this time.

Stone encouraged the university community to ensure their contact information for the Orange Alert system is updated in order to receive emergency communications from DPS.

“As your police chief, it is my responsibility to ensure you are and feel safe on this campus. Part of that responsibility is having an emergency notification process in place that clearly communicates to our community when a threat to public safety is present,” Stone said in the email. “It is also my responsibility to prevent panic when no threat exists.”

Published on April 11, 2023 at 1:21 am