Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a push for $10 million in funding for the FBI to investigate a recent surge of hoax calls in which there is a claim of an active shooter in a school, an act known as swatting.
Schumer revealed the plans at Lockport High School, which was a victim of one such swatting attack last week.
The Lockport Police dispatch received a call Thursday claiming there was an active shooter at the school, which caused a massive police and emergency response and the lockdown of 1,300 students. The call turned out to be a hoax.
"Swatting is no joke. It's sick, it's heart-breaking, it causes long-term damage. It's got to stop," Schumer said.
Thirty-six false reports of mass shooting incidents occurred last week, causing police to respond to over 220 schools across the state, according to a press release from Schumer's office.
The senator has announced a three-point plan to investigate the calls. In addition to the push for $10 million in funding, he asked for a full FBI investigation into the attacks, and that the FBI begin to track swatting as its own crime.
"As majority leader, the first majority leader from New York ever, I have some clout. And I always try to use it for the people of Western New York and the people of New York State. And so I am here to say that the feds need to step up to hold the perpetrators accountable, to figure out what happened, and to figure out how to stop incidents like this, which are occurring in larger numbers at more and more schools," Schumer said.
But these calls can be hard to track, with perpetrators often using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to disguise their location and device's identity. Lockport Police Chief Steven Abbott said federal support is required when investigating attacks of this nature.
"We do work closely with the federal partners, and there's only certain things we can do locally, and once it gets beyond our scope locally, you know, that's why I agree with Senator Schumer. Funding the FBI to get more agents on the streets to look at what's going on behind the scenes for cyber attacks," Abbott said.
The proposed funding is not yet secured, and would need to be passed in the federal budget in the summer. But Schumer said that his standing as Senate Majority Leader should move things along.
"Usually when the Senate Majority Leader says something is in the budget, especially something like this which is not partisan in any way, you'll have everybody helping," Schumer told those gathered.
