NEBRASKA -- After a former state senator received a swatting call to his house over Christmas, it adds to a problem of swatting calls across the country.

“It is the deliberate attempt to report a false crime in the effort of law enforcement responding to that incident,” said associate regional director of the Anti-Defamation League Midwest Trent Spoolstra.

In March, schools across the state received calls about a false school shooting in progress, which were later determined to be swatting calls. 

In Lincoln, police have reported four different types of these calls over the past few days.

Spoolstra said these types of incidents can vary from a bomb threat to an active shooter and are targeted towards marginalized and minority groups.

“All the top swatting incidents occur against marginalized groups in our society. Whether it’s people of color, people of various ethnicities, [and] non-Christian communities,” Spoolstra said.

Spoolstra said after the attacks in Israel, there’s been a “dramatic increase” in the past few months of anti-semitic attacks, which include calls like these across the country.

Former Nebraska State Sen. Adam Morfeld tweeted a picture of police at his door on Monday.

He said four police cars arrived at his house after they received a 911 call that he had killed his wife and was going to kill himself.

Lincoln Police Sgt. Chris Vollmer said there have been around five to 10 of these types of calls in 2023.

Vollmer said that finding a motive for people making these calls is difficult. 

“What the end goal is, I’m not sure other than just to see how large of an emergency response they can create,” Vollmer said.

Spoolstra and Vollmer said swatting calls waste law enforcement resources and put future emergency calls at risk for determining if they are real or a hoax. 

“You can only be afraid of it being a hoax so far. I mean, you don’t want to complete discount or discredit something like that and then show up on an actual dynamic emergency,” Vollmer said.

“Not only does it cause harm, not only to the victim or the institution where it’s taking place…causing fear [and] causing panic. It costs a ton of time and resources for the law enforcement agency to go and report,” Spoolstra said.

With advancements in technology, some calls aren't even placed in the state or country where officers are called to.

“The ones that are here that we can track locally in the United States, we can definitely have law enforcement respond if we can track a person,” Spoolstra said. “But a lot of times, they’re finding it’s international individuals or groups who are doing the swatting which makes it harder to bring them to justice.”

As far as what to do if a swat call is made to your home, Vollmer said cooperation is important.

“For the average person, in their home, if you’re being hailed on a loud speaker by the police to come out of your house, come out and see what’s going on,” Vollmer said.