Putnam County Sheriff Donald B. Smith reports that a false report of a hostage situation in a Garrison home this morning caused a large-scale police response, the lock-down of nearby schools, and a temporary highway closure.

This incident in Putnam County is but the latest of a number of similar hoaxes that have occurred nationally in what have come to be called “swatting” cases: false reports of hostage situations or other violent incidents that are intended to cause a response from police special weapons and tactics (“SWAT”) forces.

In today’s incident, a telephone caller called the Sheriff’s Office shortly after 10:00 A.M. and reported that a woman and her son were being held hostage at gunpoint in a home in the Manitou section of Garrison, along State Route 9D.

The incident prompted officials at the nearby Garrison Union Free School and the Haldane Elementary and High Schools in Cold Spring to order precautionary lock-downs at those campuses. Route 9D was closed to traffic for about two hours in the Manitou area, as sheriff’s deputies, state troopers, and Cold Spring police converged on the home and discovered that the reported hostage situation was fictitious.

Sheriff Smith denounced the hoax. “A false report like this one goes way beyond a prank–it is the product of a sick, twisted and criminal mind,” said the Sheriff. “Falsely reporting an emergency causes serious disruptions in a community and puts many innocent persons at risk as officers are responding rapidly to the call,” he said. The Sheriff said that investigators were working on identifying the perpetrator of the hoax.