September 23, 2010

To: The UMBC Community

Fr: Mark Sparks, Chief of Police

Re: False Report of a Shooting on Campus

This morning, Baltimore County Police responded to a 911 call of a possible shooting in front of the Retriever Activities Center within about two minutes of receiving the call. Both police agencies did a thorough search of the RAC and surrounding area and found no evidence of a shooting through the search or citizen interviews on the scene. The call was apparently unfounded, and is being treated as a False Report call by the Baltimore County Police Department.

An e2Campus text alert was sent out once the UMBC officers developed enough information about the call, to tell the campus the nature of the call and that it was unfounded.

Members of the campus community are encouraged to sign up for e2campus, an emergency alert text-messaging system that will permit the University to notify subscribers to any campus-related emergency (such as potential campus safety hazards or campus closures due to weather). It is compatible with mobile phones, Blackberries, "smart phones," satellite phones, e-mail, wireless PDAs and pagers. Normal text-messaging rates apply. There are no additional charges. Sign up for this important service today at http://my.umbc.edu/go/alerts.