Harvard police raided a dorm where 4 Black students were living after someone made a false call about an active threat: 'We are traumatized'
- Officers raided a suite where four Black students were staying at Harvard University, The Boston Globe reported.
- Police said they received a 911 call about an active threat in the building, per reports.
Harvard police raided a suite where four Black students were staying after someone made a hoax 911 call, The Boston Globe reported.
Seniors Jarah Cotton, Jazmin Dunlap, David Madzivanyika, and Alexandra René were asleep in their suite in the Leverett House when officers began banging on the door at around 4 a.m., The Harvard Crimson reported.
Cotton told the Crimson that officers in riot gear were at the door pointing rifles at them and ordering them to leave the suite with their arms up in the air.
"We were all terrified — they had guns pointed at us," Cotton told the Globe. "Everybody was extremely frazzled. No one's been asleep since."
The group was taken to another suite, where an officer told them that someone made a call that there was an active threat in their room, Cotton told the Crimson.
"We were all extremely scared, particularly because my roommates and I are Black students who have been bombarded our whole lives with stories and images portraying how situations such as this had ended up terribly," Cotton told the Crimson. "We felt our lives were in danger. We are traumatized."
A Harvard University Police Department spokesperson told the Crimson that students were "briefed about the false report."
The incident appears to be an example of swatting, where someone places a false call so officers show up at a residence. Massachussets has seen a number of swatting incidents in recent months. In late March, 28 communities in the state recieved similar swatting calls of an active shooter in high schools, the Metro West Daily News reported. The calls came following a mass shooting at a school in Nashville, Tennessee on March 27.
The incident at Harvard caused concern. In a Facebook post, The Harvard Black Alumni Society said they were "horrified and upset that Black student at Harvard endured such trauma in their own homes."
The Harvard University Police Department did not respond to Insider's request for comment at the time of publication.