"It's very serious:" Swatting is a concerning trend, and it happened in New Berlin

NEW BERLIN (WITI) -- It's a concerning trend, and it happened in New Berlin this past weekend. Swatting is the act of tricking an emergency service into dispatching an emergency response based on the false report of an ongoing critical incident. Episodes range from large to small, from the deployment of bomb squads, SWAT units and other police units and the concurrent evacuations of schools and businesses to a single fabricated police report meant to discredit an individual as a prank or personal vendetta. While it is a misdemeanor or a felony to report any untruth to law enforcement, swatting can cause massive disruption to the civil order and the public peace by the hoaxed deployment of police and other civic resources such as ambulances and fire departments.

Dispatchers at the Waukesha County Communication Center handle hundreds of calls every day.

"We receive all types of calls from the non-emergency lines. We also have ten-digit emergency lines which are typically alarm companies -- so burglar alarms or fire alarms and we get calls from them and of course we have all the 911 lines that are coming through," Communication Supervisor Christine Bannister said.

On Saturday night, January 31st, just before midnight, the Waukesha County Communication Center took in an unusual call.

"It`s not a typical call that we would receive here in Waukesha County," Bannister said.

The caller told the dispatcher there was a shooting that had occurred inside a New Berlin home.

"Based on what I heard and how the call-taker handled the call, it sounded like an authentic call for help," Bannister said.

When emergency crews got to the home, the people inside were sleeping. There had been no shooting. That call to 911 was a prank.

It's an example of "swatting" -- manipulating SWAT teams and other law enforcement officials to swoop in on innocent people when there's no actual emergency. It's happening in cities across the country.

"It`s very serious. It`s very serious. And of course there`s always a potential for someone to get injured," Bannister said.

While "swatting" calls are unusual, the Waukesha County Communications Center was prepared to handle it.

"We refer to them as low-frequency, high-priority calls. The great thing about those calls is we train for them and so our staff is always prepared to handle any type of in-progress call, active assailant type of call -- a shooter, a hostage, a bomb -- any of those types of threats, we`re always ready to handle," Bannister said.

An investigation into this "swatting" 911 call is ongoing.