A bored Alabama police officer spent his work hours making a series of “swatting” calls because “he thought it was funny,” officials alleged.
Christopher Eugene Sanspree Jr., 23, is accused of making at least six bogus reports during a span of three months, each of which occurred while he was on the clock for the Montgomery Police Department.
Swatting is considered any false report to law enforcement, typically from a spoofed caller ID, with the goal of getting authorities to storm an address.
Each anonymous report was “serious” in nature and required a substantial amount of police resources to respond and investigate before ultimately determining it was a hoax, the Prattville Police Department said.
The bogus calls ranged from car break-ins to a person shot in a front yard.
In one call, Sanspree allegedly claimed to have seen “a man walking around with a blood trail” and “seeing a male running around with a machete, people laying in the street bleeding,” Prattville Police Chief Mark Thompson told WSFA 12.
It’s unclear if the cop specifically targeted anyone with the calls as typical with swatting incidents, but the department classified the phony reports that way.
His reign of swatting terror may have even expanded well beyond Alabama — officials are investigating whether Sanspree could be behind a string of fake reports made in Georgia, Wyoming and Massachusetts.
After he was caught in December for making the fake reports, Sanspree allegedly admitted to the swatting because “he thought it was funny.”
“Point blank, honest with you, it pissed me off,” Thompson told WSFA 12.
“We have enough to deal with, with the image of police officers, already, and then we have somebody do something like this, and he was on duty when he was doing this.”
“And so, yeah, it highly irritates me and other law enforcement chiefs that are trying to keep the image of law enforcement being a honorable career, and then we have people like this doing stunts like this.”
Sanspree, who has been on the force for 28 months, was on patrol duty when he was arrested Feb. 7 on six outstanding warrants for false reporting an incident.
He was released after posting $6,000 bond.
The young cop, who is currently on “administrative assignment,” did not respond to a message left by The Post at his listed phone number.
Swatting is a phenomenon that has swept the nation in recent months, with the FBI revealing in November that law enforcement deals with hundreds of incidents per year, many of which occur at schools.
Investigators treat the calls as serious and often storm into locations due to the urgency of the claims.
Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Hayley was a victim of a swatting report in January when an unknown person called 911 and “claimed to have shot his girlfriend and threatened to harm himself while at the residence of Nikki Haley.”
Days earlier, someone falsely reported to 911 that there was an inferno at the White House.
