MUPD says swatting calls waste time, resources
Alison Patton
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
The University of Missouri Police Department said it has gotten false reports in the past, and it takes up time and wastes resources to verify that the incident is false.
“‘Swatting’ calls are dangerous, disruptive and waste valuable law enforcement resources. While many of these calls turn out to be hoaxes, MUPD treats every report as credible until it can be properly assessed,” university spokesperson Nicholas Tietsort wrote in a statement.
Many universities across the U.S. have received false reports of on-campus shootings this month, including the University of South Carolina.
Reese Dorsett, an MU junior studying French, said she doesn’t think people are taking school shootings as seriously as they should.
“It’s definitely scary, and especially I feel like we’ve had a lot of pushback from the government and everything like that about gun safety,” Dorsett said.
She said she feels safe on and around campus, but not beyond.
“If you stick around campus, kind of downtown, I do tend to feel safer, especially at night and everything. But once you get kind of a little bit to the outskirts, it feels a little dodgy,” she said.
MUPD communicates emergencies via the MU Alert app.
Last week, an alert went out letting students know about a shots-fired call near the 900 block of South Providence Road. It was actually a car backfiring.
Zachary Hardy, a junior studying psychology, said he wasn’t in town for that alert, but he got alerts last year while on campus.
“Luckily, I’ve always been on the other side of campus or not downtown,” Hardy said about last year’s alerts.
His friends were living in the area where the alerts went off, and he said they were mostly unworried.
“They avoided the area, generally, and avoided going outside if they were home or something,” Hardy said about his friends who lived near the alerted areas. “After we got the all-clear texts, they weren’t worried about it afterwards.”
MUPD officers are trained on active-shooter and other scenarios, Tietsort said.
Anyone looking for more resources on what to do during an active-shooter scenario can visit MU’s website.