On Saturday night, a man stormed a Jewish community center and school in Scottsdale. He shot people in the lobby then barricaded himself in a room on the building’s second floor. Over 22,000 users on the Citizen App were notified about the incident.
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“People Evacuated Following Report of shooting,” at a local school, the public safety app’s alert read. “Suspect Barricaded in Room.”
The app users followed the updates, complete with audio recordings from the police response, anxiously on their phones. Two thousand users reacted with prayer hands emojis, to send their support to the people on the ground.
“All units, all units, shots fired” at the school, an officer could be heard saying over radio audio posted to the app.
According to the updates, police arrived to help the wounded to safety. They made contact with the barricaded suspect — a 170-pound, five-foot-ten white man, approximately 50-years-old who was “agitated and non-compliant.” The fire department staged nearby to help victims and the Mesa Police Department was called in for extra support. They called for a negotiator, but none were on duty. It would be an hour before someone could arrive, an officer said in the audio.
But then at 12:06 a.m. on Sunday the updates stopped.
What was happening, Citizen users commented. Was everyone okay? The skeptics emerged. Who is in a high school at midnight on a weekend? What was going on? Was it even real?
The skeptics were right. The shooting never happened. There was no 911 call, no 5-foot-10 barricaded man, and no negotiator an hour away. It was all a police training drill.
It wasn’t until 9:26 a.m. the next day that Citizen posted an update: “CORRECTION: This was a police training exercise.” A few minutes later, it changed the incident headline to “Police Training Exercise.”
“Crazy that about 24,000 people got notifications of an active shooter incident and its not real,” wrote PhoenixUser844689002 the next morning.
For over 9 hours, Citizen users thought there might be an active shooter situation with injuries and possible fatalities. The error raises questions about the app’s protocols for preventing inaccurate and misleading reports.
“Wow…I seriously thought people got shot up over there…this seems like a MAJOR communication issue between Citizen and Scottsdale PD,” user KittVulpin commented the next morning after the incident was updated in the app.
The Citizen App did not respond to requests for comment for this story or questions about its verification process for incidents.
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The Scottsdale Police Department public information officer Aaron Bolin confirmed the training exercises. The department does not participate in the Citizen app, he wrote. Instead it encourages residents to reach out to them directly and follow them on X.com for updates. The department typically uses encrypted channels for training, he added, but didn’t this past weekend. He noted that instead the trainers “used training verbiage during the use of the radio channel, including calling it “training” numerous times on the radio.”
Citizen posted over 20 audio recordings of officers responding to the “incident” none of which included people clarifying that it was a training.
The department learned about the Citizen alert because some training participants who have the app received it, Bolin wrote.
“A few of them replied in real time in the app about the call being a training exercise and not an actual police response,” he wrote. “Other app users reportedly did not believe them.”
Two commenters did post that it was a drill, however neither identified themselves as participants. One user wrote that they’d called the department’s non-emergency hotline to confirm it. But others argued back.
“The message says there are possible fatalities involved, one user responded. “That is sure a lot of horrible detail for just a drill.”
In the recordings, the officers arrived at the scene and located the barricaded suspect on the second floor of the building. They requested a special unit and a helicopter to help with the response. They worked to evacuate people in the building and get victims medical attention. They discussed the suspect’s state of mind and what to do while they waited for the negotiator. The officers had been on the phone with him, but the suspect hung up. They decided to try to contact him through the doorway rather than by phone.
Many of the commenters didn’t know what to believe. Finally, username jd480 decided to drive to the address to see what was happening herself. At 12:58 a.m., she posted a dark, shaky video of the building’s front door. She said there were police there, but now they are all gone.
“If something was happening, it’s over,” she can be heard saying in the video. “But I think it was just a drill because there would still be ambulances and fire trucks here.”
Although most commenters breathed a sigh of relief when they realized no one was actually hurt, they didn’t let Citizen off the hook for the snafu. Many shared the following sentiment of one user who encouraged the app to make changes to avoid this kind of confusion from happening again.
“@citizen please update your protocols. This was a scary situation for the public with gory details that were not true! The description should NOT be allowed until confirmed! I’m glad everyone is okay,” wrote user hael0103.
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