GRANT, Mich. (WOOD) — Police in Grant say the local high school was the target of a fake threat Thursday, one of several that went out across the country.

On Thursday, a report came through a third-party crisis intervention line of “an unknown male standing outside of Grant High School with an AR-15 rifle, preparing to enter the school,” the Grant Police Department said in a release. Police learned of the reported threat around 11:55 a.m.

As a precaution, all of Grant Public Schools was placed in “secure mode” — a security measure for potential external threats in which doors are locked and everyone stays inside — as authorities investigated. Police say they didn’t see any signs of the reported suspect and no schools had seen any suspicious person entering. To be safe, officers say they searched each school in the district. They didn’t find any threat, so the schools were released from lockdown, according to the release.

The Grant Police Department says the original call was traced to an IP address that originated from outside of the country. According to police, the IP address was also used in at least 13 other calls across the United States, all of which happened at the same time.

“In each of those incidents, the reported threat was the same, and only the name of the supposed suspect changed,” the release says.

Police termed it a swatting incident, which they described as “a dangerous hoax designed to provoke an emergency response to a fabricated threat.”

The Grant Police Department says it is sharing information with the FBI and the Michigan Intelligence Operations Center so they can investigate.

Newaygo Public Schools said in a social media post that it also went into secure mode Thursday, noting that the step was taken out of caution and there was “no credible threat.” By about 1:20 p.m. Thursday, the district was no longer in secure mode. It was not clear whether the situation at Newaygo Public Schools was linked to the swatting incident that targeted Grant High School.