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Just this past week, the United States Capitol Police stopped a man from bringing a machete and knives past a screening checkpoint and responded to a man who tried to set a vehicle on fire outside the Capitol. The back-to-back incidents come amid heightened security ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. Threats against lawmakers have grown exponentially in recent years. NPR congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt brings us this report.
BARBARA SPRUNT, BYLINE: Last month, Congressman Tim Burchett was out to dinner when he got a call from local police about a threat of a pipe bomb in his mailbox.
TIM BURCHETT: And I wasn't at the house at the time, and I was concerned 'cause my daughter was. She's 17. She's a barrel racer, so she's a tough little cowgirl, but it was an unfortunate situation. And they locked the street down and evacuated the houses, the FBI came out.
SPRUNT: The Tennessee Republican was the target of two swatting incidents last year, a crime where someone makes a false report, like a bomb threat, aimed at generating a huge law enforcement response that can be volatile, frightening and dangerous, both for the people at home and the police.
BURCHETT: It does exactly what the dirtbags want, it disrupts your life and has real consequences. And somebody's going to get killed.
SPRUNT: And in a swatting threat against Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, that's exactly what happened.
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: Someone sent an email to our city police and said that there was a pipe bomb in my mailbox. Well, they, of course, responded to that threat, and tragically, there was a car accident, and a 66-year-old woman ended up dying at the hospital after the car accident. These are the results of these swattings, pranks.
SPRUNT: At the end of last year, there were at least 50 swatting calls made in one month targeting members of Congress. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut was one of them.
CHRIS MURPHY: My sense is that it came from outside of the United States. We live in a world in which somebody in a basement in Moscow can cause the police to be rallied to any school, any business or any house in the United States.
SPRUNT: Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger said the nature of swatting makes it incredibly challenging to track the source.
THOMAS MANGER: There are apps that anonymize the individual who - I mean, that's how they market themselves, you know, that you can send an email and nobody will ever find out. Oftentimes, we find out that these are coming through servers from another country, and whether they originated in the other country or it originated here, it's very, very difficult. I'm not saying impossible, but it's very, very difficult.
SPRUNT: He says the FBI has made some progress on these cases.
MANGER: But it's still a tactic where people seem to be able to do it and get away with it, unfortunately.
SPRUNT: Manger said it's likely a small number of people making a large volume of threats and that the rise in swatting aligns with the increase of other threats.
MANGER: For many years, if we got a thousand or 2,000 threats, you know, throughout the year, that was about average. Now, we're averaging eight to 9,000 every year. It's really shot through the roof.
SPRUNT: He told the Senate the force needs more staff.
MANGER: When I look at the number of threat investigative agents and the number of analysts that we have, I need more of each because of the sheer numbers. And believe me, I understand when people, you know, hear that the government wants more people and all that sort of thing, and they sort of roll their eyes. But all you have to do is look at the caseload that we have.
SPRUNT: As for Burchett, he says he's already put over $40,000 into securing his 60-acre farm in Tennessee and that the growing threats against lawmakers more broadly has an effect on who actually wants to run for Congress.
BURCHETT: People don't want to make their families endure this stuff, and for stuff that's gone on around me that I can't even talk about because it's ongoing. But it's real, and I'd say a lot of people don't want to do it.
SPRUNT: Congress has taken steps to help members pay for some personal security measures, but it's just one part of addressing growing safety concerns for lawmakers in D.C. and back at home.
Barbara Sprunt, NPR News, the Capitol. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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