Brian Mittge Commentary: ‘Swatting’ Is the Latest Threat to Our Schools

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As if America’s plague of school shootings wasn’t terrible enough, the destroyers of public safety and security are now adding insult to injury. 

Modern technology and lax regulations have made it increasingly easy for people to phone in untraceable threats to schools across the country. 

Using virtual private networks, free anonymous phone numbers and sometimes voice-changing software to obscure their digital footprints, these calls are known as “swatting” — as in, causing police SWAT teams to descend on schools in response to the threats. 

A wave of such calls hit Washington this week, with fake threats phoned in to Chehalis, Kelso, Shelton, Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Ellensburg, Walla Walla, Pullman, Richland and Clarkston, among others. 

Our local police departments have done a great job of responding quickly to keep our kids safe, but these calls are not only a waste of law enforcement resources. They also cause great anxiety for students, school employees, parents and community members.

The calls aren’t limited to schools, either.

“It doesn’t have to be a school. It can happen at a business. It can happen at your residence,” FBI branch spokesman Steve Bernd in Seattle told KIRO 7.

This is a difficult problem to solve. These cloaked calls are often coming in from overseas or across the nation. Local law enforcement can’t catch the perpetrators. 

Congress needs to step in to address this issue and the Federal Communications Commission should look into stronger regulation of those who provide free anonymous phone numbers to place these calls. 

Terrorizing schools and communities by phoning in threats is unacceptable — and a deluge of fake calls makes it harder to protect our kids from the ongoing real threat of shootings in the places that should be safest. 

Farewell to My First Newspaper Editor

My colleague Julie McDonald wrote a wonderful tribute to Gordon MacCracken, a longtime former Chronicler who died April 19 in Vancouver at age 68.



MacCracken was my first editor when I joined The Chronicle as a very green cub reporter in the fall of 2000. He was an experienced and steady hand in the newsroom, having joined the year I was born. 

Gordon took his profession seriously. He was proud to be part of a wave of trained journalists who had brought a new level of professionalism to the newspaper. 

In addition to editing, he was a longtime Chronicle columnist. His columns were sharp, insightful and hilarious when the occasion called for it. His wit was keen and sharp, and I was always delighted by how much humor he brought to the pages of the newspaper.

He was dedicated to the Bible of the newsroom, the Associated Press Stylebook. Even after years — decades — of editing a succession of greenhorn journalists, I remember hearing him say once that a day didn’t go by that he didn’t pull down his well-worn AP Stylebook to double-check how something was correctly expressed. 

Of course, we had our disagreements. I could never get comfortable with his replacement of “students” in my stories with the AP-approved “pupils.” 

He also was of the firm belief that “hopefully” should almost never be used — the proper way to express the idea, he said, was “it is hoped.” He told us that the only correct use of the word was in a sentence like “the dog looked on hopefully as we scooped leftovers onto the plate, eager for us to drop a morsel he could eat.”

Despite those differences, I appreciated his skills. At one point he called each of us reporters over to watch over his shoulder as he copy-edited the stories we had turned in. I was stunned by all the mistakes he found and humbled by how much improvement was needed to a story I had thought was done perfectly well.

Gordon called that “the shock of raw copy.” I experienced it myself anew when I became an editor and had to do the same work for a new generation of writers. At times I brought them over for the same shock treatment that Gordon had kindly given me. 

Gordon taught me a lot, and I’ll always remember advice he gave me when I was brand new to the newsroom. He told me that burning someone for a story would not lead to long-term success in the job. 

“Keep your word and don’t burn bridges,” Gordon said. “This is a small town. You’ll have to work with the same people again and again.”

That served me well as a reporter and I’ve kept it in mind as good life advice, too. 

Brian Mittge is a pupil of life who checks his email hopefully, eager for morsels of feedback or news nuggets to share in this column. Contact him at brianmittge@hotmail.com