Dayton, OH – With more than 300 people praying in Temple Israel’s Great Hall on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, seven Dayton police cruisers and a MetroParks cruiser converged to block the congregation’s main entrance minutes after receiving word of a swatting threat.
Jewish new year services continued uninterrupted with no incidents through their scheduled 1 p.m. conclusion.
“Someone called the national suicide hotline at 988 and reported that they were going to commit suicide, and they were going to take as many Jews at Temple Israel in Dayton with them,” Suzanne Shaw, Temple Israel’s executive director, told The Observer about the Sept. 16 threat.
Swatting calls aim to cause disruption and trigger a large-scale police response.
Dayton’s police, Shaw said, “ended up coming here in force.”
Dayton Police Information Specialist James Rider said the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline alerted Montgomery County Regional Dispatch when the threat came in. The dispatch informed Dayton Police a few minutes before 11:30 a.m. Seven cruisers were on the scene a few minutes after 11:30 a.m., joining the police cruiser already stationed there for the services.
Shaw said law enforcement told her they traced the swatting call to Washington, D.C.
“We had all the cruisers blocking the entrance for a while and they ended up leaving two or three cruisers here for the rest of the day,” she said.
