Police Chief Paul Nikas reports that the school day at Ipswich High School and Ipswich Middle School was briefly interrupted Tuesday as a result of an alleged act of “swatting.”
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, at approximately 11:41 a.m., Ipswich Police received a call claiming that an armed individual wanted to do harm at the schools, which are located next door to one another on High Street.
The schools were immediately placed into lockdown, in accordance with policies and procedures established by the school district and police.
Ipswich Police responded immediately with mutual aid from the Topsfield Police Department and conducted a building search and perimeter check, confirming there were no unauthorized individuals on or near school property.
The lockdown was lifted and the school day returned to normal by about 12 p.m.
The incident is known to be one of several swatting incidents that have occurred around the state and region since Monday.
Chief Nikas praised the administration and staff at Ipswich Middle School and Ipswich High School for immediately following established policies and procedures to ensure the safety of students once the threat was called in.
“These swatting calls tie up a lot of police and emergency resources, potentially diverting those resources away from other emergencies, so we will be investigating in an effort to hold whomever did this accountable,” said Chief Nikas. “I am pleased that the emergency protocols we have worked hard to establish were followed, and followed quickly, but I remain concerned about the proliferation of these types of calls across the state.”
“Swatting,” according to Oxford Language is “the action or practice of making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to bring about the dispatch of a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.” The phrase entered the dictionary in 2015 and has been recognized as a criminal phenomenon by the FBI since at least 2008.
The incident remains under investigation by Ipswich Police. Ipswich Police have been in communication with state and federal law enforcement, which is investigating a series of incidents targeting communities around the Commonwealth this week.