Town of Wallkill Police Chief Robert Hertman, left, and Schumer
TOWN OF WALLKILL – U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D, NY) met with
school officials and local law enforcement officers Monday to discuss
the growing issue of “swatting” and to advocate for new
legislation that would increase penalties for those who call in bomb scares.
Schumer spoke outside Maple Hill Elementary School, one of the two Middletown schools that had consecutive “swatting” attacks over a two-day period.
Students from each school lost hours of classroom time and one school, Monhagen Middle School, even had 1,300 of their students evacuated.
Schumer has come out against the act of “swatting” in the past but, now has specific legislation focused on deterring and punishing “swatters” for the havoc they reek on unsuspecting schools.
“What the legislation does is three things,” the senator said. “First, it tightens up the law as to making ‘swatting’ itself a federal crime, as opposed to trying to stick it into some other crime. It increases the penalty to eight years. It also says that, if you do ‘swatting,’ you’re going to pay the cost to the Town of Wallkill or the County of Orange. Let’s say that it costs $30,000 to send all the police cars over, the SWAT teams, the K-9 dogs because they threatened a bomb threat; all of that would have to be repaid by the guy who did it.”
The legislation would also make it a crime to disguise your phone number and call the police,” he said.
Schumer’s legislation was well received by law enforcement and Middletown school officials ,
“The Middletown City School District strongly supports Senator Schumer’s legislation that would toughen penalties for ‘swatting’ crimes and require perpetrators to repay police for the costs,” said Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Eastman.
Schumer said that a major part of the ‘swatting’ issue is criminals using online services to call landlines via computer, giving them the ability to hide their caller ID information. The new legislation will update the Truth In Caller ID Act of 2009 and make caller ID masking via computer illegal. With these strengthened laws, Schumer is hoping to drastically decrease this act which is costly and terrifying to communities, their residents and their children.
