An Alabama police officer has been arrested for allegedly making multiple swatting calls while on duty.
Swatting is the act of calling in a fake police report, usually about a violent crime, to a person's home or business — prompting a heavy police response.
Christopher Eugene Sanspree Jr., 23, of the Montgomery Police Department, is accused of making at least six false swatting reports over three months.
On February 7, Sanspree was arrested on six outstanding warrants for False Reporting an Incident.
According to a press release from the Prattville Police Department, "Investigators determined that Sanspree made several phone calls to Autauga County E911 to falsely report incidents, also known as "swatting". These falsely reported incidents were serious in nature and required a substantial amount of resources to respond to each call as well as a considerable amount of investigative resources to be expended."
The swatting reports ranged from claims of car break-ins to murders.
In one of the calls, Sanspree 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 is unclear if Sanspree was targeting specific people with the calls, or if they were done at random.
The New York Post reports, "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 being caught, Sanspree reportedly told investigators that he did it 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 had only been on the force for 28 months at the time of his arrest. He is now listed as being on “administrative assignment.”
