Edmonton police help find U.K. teens allegedly behind series of threats to schools in 5 countries

Last February, a handful of Edmonton schools were on high alert. Each had received a phone call in which someone with a Scottish or English accent threatened a gun or bomb attack.

With the help of some international detective work by Edmonton Police Service officers, four youths in the United Kingdom have been linked to more than 80 hoax calls made that month to organizations in Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, England and Scotland.

"The amount of school and police resources these calls take up, not to mention the distress they cause to children, teachers and parents, is unacceptable," Edmonton Det. Philip Hawkins said Thursday in a news release.

"We left no stone unturned in this lengthy investigation."

Charges have been laid in Scotland against three youths between the ages of 15 and 17, and are pending against another youth in England. 

"Calls were made that someone was going to show up at the school and was going to shoot the kids or that there was a bomb in the school that was about to explode," said Hawkins, a member of the EPS Cyber Crime Investigations Unit (CCIU), which spearheaded the six-month investigation.

It quickly became clear that the Edmonton calls, placed using an online calling app, were part of a large-scale hoax that had seen similar threats on the same day received by schools in Calgary and Texas, he said. 

Within a week, the Edmonton team determined the calls had come from the U.K., and connected with law enforcement agencies there. 

Investigators eventually linked the youths, who Hawkins said had been acting as a group, to more than 80 similar threats made in Europe and North America.

Hawkins said police agencies around the world are constantly updating their digital detective skills to combat the rise of cybercrime. But just like old-school investigations, footprints are key, he said Thursday.

"All these apps and everything that we use, it's all based on a network, it's all based on technology, and everything you do leaves that footprint," he said. "Depending what they use, there are different footprints left in different areas and that's what we're trained these days to do — to find that and to trace it back." 

'We have to take precautions'

The practice of making prank calls to police or other emergency services, often referred to as "swatting," is frustrating both in terms of the wasted police resources and the extra stress on students, Hawkins said.

Even though the calls on Feb. 11 were quickly identified as a hoax, police still made a full response, as a precaution, to protect student safety.  

• Police investigate threats against schools in Edmonton, Calgary and Camrose
• Leduc family surrounded by armed police after apparent 'swatting'

"We live in a time where school shootings and bomb threats are a real thing and we have to take precautions," he said, measures that included students being evacuated from the school in –20 C weather. 

"It's sad to see that people would take advantage of that, and to disrupt other peoples' lives just to … watch the fallout of their pranks on social media." 

Among the charges laid against the three youths is the Scottish common-law offence of "wasting police time." 

• Charges laid in swatting calls, including one man linked to 86 incidents
• Calgary hospital swatting linked to 2 similar incidents as fake threats climb, police say

In Edmonton, the series of hoax calls — which happened on Feb. 11, 12 and 20 — resulted in the deployment of 47 police vehicles. Six schools were put under lockdown, affecting 4,000 students, for nearly five hours.

In total, nine schools and one bank in Edmonton, and five schools in Calgary, received hoax phone calls over the three days in February.

Hawkins said the Edmonton team has handed over the investigation to the U.K. law enforcement teams.

The other five charges laid against each of the Scottish teens fall under:

• The bomb hoax section of the Criminal Law Act.
• The section of the Communications Act pertaining to offensive and threatening messages sent over a "public" network.
• The threatening or abusive behaviour section of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act.
• The section prohibiting sending certain articles by post under the Postal Services Act.
• Culpable and reckless conduct under Scottish common law.