A false alarm or report charge under Texas Penal Code § 42.06 means prosecutors say you knowingly reported a bombing, fire, offense, or other emergency knowing the report was false or baseless. School-related and public-service reports are state jail felonies; swatting draws separate charges. Below: the statute, penalties, defenses, the juvenile reality, and county-by-county practice in Collin, Dallas, Denton, and Tarrant County.
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Under Penal Code § 42.06(a), a person commits false alarm or report if he “knowingly initiates, communicates or circulates a report of a present, past, or future bombing, fire, offense, or other emergency that he knows is false or baseless” and that would ordinarily do any one of three things:
Three verbs carry the statute further than most people expect. You do not have to be the person who invented the hoax: initiating a false report, communicating it, or circulating it — forwarding, reposting, repeating it to a crowd — can each complete the offense, so long as the State proves you knew the report was false or baseless when you passed it along. The Fort Worth Court of Appeals breaks the offense into its working parts: the defendant (1) knowingly (2) initiated a report (3) of a future fire or emergency (4) that he knew to be baseless and (5) that would ordinarily cause action by an official agency organized to deal with emergencies. In re C.R.K., 56 S.W.3d 288 (Tex. App. 2001).
Notice what is missing: § 42.06 does not require an evacuation, a SWAT roll-out, or even a single squad car. The question is what the report would ordinarily cause — a feature that separates this offense from § 42.0601, discussed below, which does require an actual response.
Section 42.06(b) sets the grade by target. The default is a Class A misdemeanor, but the offense becomes a state jail felony when “the false report is of an emergency involving a public or private institution of higher education or involving a public primary or secondary school, public communications, public transportation, public water, gas, or power supply or other public service.” That last phrase — other public service — is a catch-all prosecutors read broadly, and it produces a sharp charging line: a fake bomb threat called into a high school is a felony, while the identical threat called into a private office building is a Class A misdemeanor.
| Scenario | Classification | Confinement | Max fine |
|---|---|---|---|
| § 42.06 — false report, no school/public-service nexus | Class A misdemeanor | Up to 1 year, county jail | $4,000 |
| § 42.06(b) — emergency involving a school, college, or public communications, transportation, utility, or other public service | State jail felony | 180 days–2 years, state jail | $10,000 |
| § 42.0601 — false report inducing an actual emergency response | Class A misdemeanor | Up to 1 year, county jail | $4,000 |
| § 42.0601 — with two or more prior § 42.0601 convictions | State jail felony | 180 days–2 years, state jail | $10,000 |
| § 42.0601 — a person suffers serious bodily injury or death as a direct result of the response | Third-degree felony | 2–10 years, TDCJ | $10,000 |
The school and higher-education language has its own legislative history. The Legislature extended the felony bump to colleges and universities in 2013 through House Bill 1284 — captioned “relating to the offense of making or causing a false alarm or report involving a public or private institution of higher education” — effective June 14, 2013. Campus threats have been felony territory ever since. A state jail felony conviction is a felony record for life unless the case is later resolved in a way that permits sealing, which is one reason these cases are worth contesting early rather than pleading quickly.
To convict under § 42.06, the State must prove every element beyond a reasonable doubt:
The proof package varies by setting. In school cases the State typically builds on witness statements gathered the same day, the school resource officer's report, screenshots of the post or message, and a forensic download of the student's phone. In C.R.K., the court of appeals found the investigation by a police officer stationed at the school was itself enough to satisfy the agency-action element — the statute “does not differentiate among the locations of the officials,” so a campus officer's response counts the same as a station-house dispatch. No fire trucks, no evacuation, no sirens required.
In phone and online cases, the State leans on 911 audio, dispatch logs, caller-ID and ANI/ALI records, VoIP provider subscriber data, and IP logs tying the call or post to a device. Motive evidence rounds it out: the angry break-up, the gaming feud, the desire to get out of a test. Courts allow the falsity element to be proved circumstantially, so prosecutors argue the surrounding circumstances — timing, motive, the absence of any real emergency — show the defendant knew the report was false when made.
The “I was joking” explanation usually fails as a standalone defense because of how the statute is built: the third element is objective, and a bomb joke phrased as a report would ordinarily cause agency action whether or not the speaker hoped anyone would believe it. Where the joke framing helps is on element one and element three — was this really a report of an emergency, or obvious hyperbole no listener would treat as one?
Yes, twice over. Swatting — fabricating a hostage situation, shooting, or other crisis to send police to a victim's address — fits § 42.06, and since September 1, 2021 it also has its own statute. Senate Bill 1056 created Penal Code § 42.0601, False Report to Induce Emergency Response: making a false report of a criminal offense or emergency to police or emergency responders, knowing it is false, where the report causes an emergency response and the defendant is reckless about whether that response “may directly result in bodily injury.” The grade ladder runs from Class A misdemeanor, to state jail felony with two or more prior § 42.0601 convictions, to a third-degree felony if a person suffers serious bodily injury or death as a direct result of the response.
Note the structural difference between the two statutes: § 42.06 is complete the moment the false report is made, while § 42.0601 requires an actual emergency response plus recklessness about injury. Prosecutors can file both from one incident, and the statute expressly contemplates prosecution under either.
Federal exposure runs alongside. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1038, conveying false or misleading information about conduct that would constitute certain federal offenses carries up to 5 years in federal prison — up to 20 years if serious bodily injury results, and up to life if death results. Section 1038(b) adds civil liability: the hoaxer can be ordered to reimburse every agency's emergency-response costs as an enforceable civil judgment. Because swatting calls routinely cross state lines through VoIP infrastructure, interstate cases are regularly referred to federal prosecutors rather than handled in county court.
Hypothetical example: after losing an online tournament match, a Plano gamer uses a spoofed VoIP number to report a hostage situation at a rival's house. A tactical team stages on the street. That single call supports a § 42.06 Class A count (a private residence, so no felony bump), a § 42.0601 count that becomes a third-degree felony if anyone is seriously hurt during the entry, and potential federal § 1038 charges with response-cost reimbursement on top.
Defense strategy starts with the knowledge element and works outward:
Outright dismissals happen most often when the knowledge proof is thin, when attribution fails, or when a suppression ruling guts the digital evidence. Short of dismissal, DFW counties resolve many first-offense § 42.06 cases through pretrial diversion or deferred adjudication, particularly for young defendants with no record — outcomes that keep a conviction off the books and set up record relief later.
On the records side: a dismissal, no-bill, or acquittal generally supports expunction under Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 55A. A completed deferred adjudication can support an order of nondisclosure under Government Code Chapter 411 after the applicable waiting period. A final conviction is far harder to clear — another reason the plea decision in these cases deserves more deliberation than it usually gets. Our expunction and record sealing practice page walks through the eligibility rules; juvenile adjudications follow the separate sealing track under Family Code Chapter 58 covered on our juvenile record sealing page.
The honest answer: a lot, on two tracks at once, and most of it involves a child. Because § 42.06(b) makes any false report involving a public primary or secondary school a state jail felony, and because the people who post school threats are overwhelmingly students, the typical false-alarm defendant in Collin or Denton County is a teenager facing a felony-level delinquency petition in juvenile court rather than an adult indictment.
Juvenile court softens the format, not the stakes. In In re C.R.K., a junior high student who was refused permission to leave school early threatened to burn the school down. No fire was set; the campus officer investigated and the State filed a delinquency petition. The student was adjudicated delinquent and committed to the Texas Youth Commission — the state's juvenile corrections agency, now TJJD — on an indeterminate commitment until age 21. The court of appeals affirmed, holding the campus officer's investigation satisfied the agency-action element. The San Antonio court added a second prosecution-friendly rule in C.M.W.: when a juvenile's own statements are the offense, the Family Code's corroboration requirement for out-of-court admissions does not apply — the threat itself convicts.
The school-discipline track runs in parallel and is mandatory. Texas Education Code § 37.006(a)(1) requires removal to a disciplinary alternative education program for “conduct involving a public school that contains the elements of the offense of false alarm or report under Section 42.06” — no charge, arrest, or conviction needed. Districts apply it on their own findings, so a student can be DAEP-placed within days while the juvenile case is still at intake. Charging volume is also seasonal in practice: reports cluster in the opening weeks of the school year and in the days after high-profile national incidents, when districts and police treat every posted threat as chargeable conduct rather than adolescent venting.
Hypothetical example: the week before STAAR testing, a Frisco ninth-grader posts “don't come to school tomorrow, you'll see why” with a photo of a backpack. By morning the campus is swept, the student is identified from the account, and his phone is seized. Expect a felony-level § 42.06 delinquency referral in Collin County juvenile court, mandatory DAEP placement under § 37.006(a)(1), and a defense built on whether the post was a “report” of an emergency at all — and on what the student actually knew and intended when he posted it.
Collin County. Adult Class A cases are filed in the county courts at law and felony cases in the district courts, both at the Collin County Courthouse (Russell A. Steindam Courts Building) in McKinney. Frisco, Plano, and McKinney school-threat referrals route through the county's juvenile system, also based in McKinney. School-related reports tend to move quickly because districts and the DA's office coordinate early.
Dallas County. Misdemeanor and felony dockets sit at the Frank Crowley Courts Building on Riverfront Boulevard. Dallas filings include more swatting-pattern and 911-system cases than the suburban counties, and § 42.0601 counts appear alongside § 42.06 with some regularity.
Denton County. Cases are heard at the Denton County Courts Building in Denton. Lewisville, Denton, and Little Elm ISD incidents generate a steady share of the county's juvenile false-alarm referrals.
Tarrant County. Adult cases run through the Tim Curry Criminal Justice Center in Fort Worth. Tarrant is where C.R.K. arose, and its courts have seen school-threat false-alarm prosecutions for decades; expect the State to rely on that line of authority.
Across all four counties, bond conditions in school-related cases commonly include no-contact and stay-away orders covering the campus, and sometimes device or social-media restrictions. These are general practice observations — every court and every case differs.
A § 42.06 outcome reaches well past the sentence. A state jail felony conviction is a permanent felony record affecting employment, housing, and professional licensing. Felony convictions also trigger the Texas felon-in-possession firearm bar under Penal Code § 46.04 and the broader federal prohibition under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Noncitizens need charge-specific immigration advice before any plea, since fraud- and crisis-adjacent offenses can carry consequences that depend on the person's status and the record of conviction. Students face DAEP placement or expulsion proceedings on top of the court case, and the disciplinary record follows them between districts. Finally, restitution and cost-recovery are live issues: plea agreements and probation conditions can fold in emergency-response costs, and the federal hoax statute makes cost reimbursement a civil judgment as of right.
Texas has a cluster of overlapping crisis-speech and false-report offenses, and the charge prosecutors pick controls the punishment range. The core distinction: terroristic threat punishes threatening violence you claim you will commit, with intent to place people in fear or provoke an emergency reaction; § 42.06 punishes reporting an emergency — anyone's, or a wholly invented one — knowing the report is false. A student who writes “I'm going to blow up the school” has arguably committed both, and the State sometimes files both, as it did in C.R.K.
| Statute | Conduct covered | Key difference from § 42.06 |
|---|---|---|
| § 22.07 terroristic threat | Threatening to commit violence with intent to cause fear or an emergency reaction | A threat of the speaker's own future violence, not a false report of an emergency |
| § 42.0601 false report to induce emergency response | False report to police/responders that causes an actual emergency response, reckless as to injury | Requires a real response; § 42.06 is complete when the report is made |
| § 37.08 false report to a peace officer | Lying to officers about an offense or incident during an investigation | Targets false statements to investigators, not alarm-raising reports of emergencies |
| § 42.061 silent or abusive 911 calls | Misusing the 911 system with silent, harassing, or repeated calls | Punishes 911 misuse itself; no false emergency report element |
| § 42.062 interference with emergency call | Preventing someone else from requesting emergency assistance | Blocks a real call for help rather than fabricating one |
| § 46.08 hoax bombs | Possessing or planting a device made to look like an explosive | Requires a physical fake device, not just a report |
| 18 U.S.C. § 1038 (federal) | False information and hoaxes implicating listed federal offenses | Federal forum, 5/20/life ladder, plus mandatory response-cost reimbursement |
Closely related conduct can also draw harassment or disorderly conduct charges when the facts read more like repeated tormenting messages or public disturbance than a crisis report. Where the line falls determines whether a client faces a Class C citation, a Class A misdemeanor, or a felony — which is exactly why the charging decision deserves an early, statute-by-statute challenge.
Co-Founding Partner · Texas Bar No. 24043514
Reggie London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on federal criminal defense, complex felony defense, and TEA/SBEC matters. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
Co-Founding Partner · Texas Bar No. 24043266
Njeri London co-founded L and L Law Group with a focus on DWI defense, family violence cases, and juvenile defense. Licensed in Texas, admitted to TXND and TXED.
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