Rockville High School and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School received police protection this week after pranksters falsely reported gunmen wandering about near the campuses.
On Wednesday afternoon, Montgomery County Police received a report that a man carrying a gun was roving about near Rockville High School. Police notified RHS administrators who sent the school into a new “secure” protocol, a designation new to the 2025-2026 school year in which all staff and students come inside and lock all external doors.
An hour later, police reported that there was, in fact, no gunman and the whole incident was a swatting hoax, which is when a person makes up a fake violent crime for police to respond to with the goal of creating as much chaos as possible.
A similar incident occurred one day later when an anonymous caller reported a crime near Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, though they did not go into lockdown. Police declined to elaborate on the details of the call.
Police are investigating whether these two incidents are linked to other swatting incidents around the county, according to police spokeswoman Shiera Goff.
Rockville High School families were notified multiple times soon after the school received a swatting call Wednesday, according to Marcus Jones, chief of security and compliance at Montgomery County Public Schools.
Communication is “very important for us,” Jones said, adding that the principal reached out five times in less than 30 minutes.
“We had a heavy police response” at the school, he said during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.
Following the incident, Jones’ staff held a debriefing that covered who was responsible for every step in the process.
Board of Education Vice President Grace-Rivera Oven said that parents care deeply about their children’s safety during police activity at a school.
“On the heels of a shooting in another state, people are nervous,” she said, referring to the recent school shooting in Minneapolis.
Montgomery County Public Schools has new safety procedures in place for the 2025-2026 school year which guides the responses for schools in emergency situations. Rockville High School went into “secure” protocol during the swatting incident, as first reported by BethesdaToday. A “secure” protocol is a level of emergency that is below a lockdown, and it allows regular activities to continue inside the school.
