California Bills Aim to Increase Penalties for ‘Swatting’ Incidents

Current state law says a ‘swatting’ threat must be directed at a specific person. New bills would expand that to schools, churches, and other locations.

First responders including SWAT teams secure Santa Ana High School as parents and family members wait for students on lockdown after bomb and weapon threats at the school in Santa Ana, Calif., on March 10, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Two bills making their way through the California Legislature aim to increase penalties for “swatting” crimes and eliminate loopholes that keep authorities from prosecuting incidents in the state.

Swatting typically involves prank calls to law enforcement that trigger a large number of armed police officers sent to a particular address.

While it’s already a crime in California to make a false emergency report that’s likely to cause great bodily harm, the threat must be directed at a specific person. State law does not cover threats against schools, religious institutions, and other public spaces.

Assembly Bill 237 and Senate Bill 19 are intended to fix that, according to lawmakers.

SB 19, the Safe Schools and Places of Worship Act, would make an adult who willfully threatens to cause death or great bodily injury to any person who may be on the grounds of a school or place of worship guilty of a misdemeanor or felony. Introduced by Democratic state Sen. Susan Rubio from Baldwin Park, the bill is scheduled for an April 7 hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“Right now, California law falls short,” Rubio said in a statement on the social media platform X. “Unless a threat names a specific individual, officials have limited options, even when the danger is clear.”

The law would allow prosecutors to charge individuals who make credible threats of mass violence against schools and places of worship, even if they don’t name a specific person. Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear from Encinitas and Republican Roger W. Niello from Fair Oaks coauthored the bill.

In January, Democratic Assembly members Darshana Patel from San Diego and coauthor Chris Rogers from Santa Rosa introduced AB 237, which would close similar loopholes and apply to day-care centers, hospitals, and workplaces. AB 237 passed the Assembly Public Safety Committee on March 14.

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan also supported the legislation.

“To protect public safety and to deter those who would consider making such threats, my office is proud to sponsor Assembly Bill 237 and the common-sense changes Assembly Member Patel and our fellow sponsors are proposing,” Stephan said in a statement.

The goal of the bills is to hold people accountable for making threats, recognizing that even fake threats can cause mass panic, school closures, and expensive law enforcement responses. If both bills pass, legislators would combine them into a single law.

The need for legislation was highlighted in October 2024 when a Superior Court judge dismissed a case against a 38-year-old man who had sent hundreds of emails to Shoal Creek Elementary School in Poway, California, northeast of San Diego, threatening a mass shooting at the school.

The judge ruled that the threats didn’t target a specific person, despite a gun and a map of the school found at the suspect’s home. Prosecutors refiled the case, naming the school principal as the target of the threats.

Swatting incidents have gripped the state in recent years. On March 12, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office responded to a swatting call at Loma Linda Children’s Hospital. Deputies rushed to the scene and cleared the area, while traffic was rerouted for several hours.

Just a day later, the Claremont Police Department received a phone call in which the caller claimed they were holding a hostage on the Claremont McKenna College campus and threatened to harm the hostage in a bathroom. The caller also claimed to have a bomb and would shoot anyone they saw on campus.

Officers from multiple police departments responded. They searched the campus and various other college buildings on nearby affiliated campuses, but found no one. There were no signs of an active shooter.

“Extensive resources were used in response to the call for service, which was later determined to be a false report or ‘swatting call,” Claremont police wrote in a statement.

In February, an 18-year-old from Lancaster was sentenced to 48 months in prison for making interstate threats to injure someone.

According to the plea agreement, Alan W. Filion made over 375 swatting and threat calls, including calls in which he claimed to have planted bombs in the targeted locations or threatened to detonate bombs and/or conduct mass shootings at those locations. The calls were made from approximately August 2022 to January 2024, and targeted religious institutions, high schools, colleges and universities, government officials, and numerous individuals across the United States.

In some instances, armed law enforcement officers entered a targeted residence with their weapons drawn and detained individuals present. Filion ultimately turned swatting into a business, posting on social media that he would swat for a fee.

In May, Eduardo Vicente Pelayo Rodriguez, 31, of Riverside faced an 18-count indictment alleging he placed swatting calls threatening mass shootings at several schools in the Inland Empire, as well as Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and to bomb Nashville International Airport on behalf of the ISIS terrorist group, according to the Justice Department.

Rodriguez used a Voice Over Internet Protocol service to place more than a dozen swatting calls.

Additionally, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners, in December 2023 announced the arrest of an unnamed juvenile alleged to be a member of an online swatting ring behind threats targeting religious, educational, and public institutions in the United States, including synagogues and African American churches.

The group was alleged to have called in bomb threats and swatting attempts at least 25 synagogues in 13 states between July 2023 and August 2023.