DECATUR, Ill. (WICS) — A false active shooter alert at the Decatur Civic Center on Dec. 30 prompted a police response after a notification appeared on Civic Center office phones, city officials said.

According to a statement from the Decatur City Government, the alert was triggered accidentally by a city employee.

It has been determined that an employee inadvertently initiated the active shooter notification system at the Decatur Civic Center on 12/30/25. The employee was not aware of the active shooter notification system or the passcode to issue the notification.

City officials said the notification was limited to office phones inside the building.

The notification was only sent out to office phones within the Civic Center. Informacast, which also does the weather alerts on the office phones, can be configured with broadcast groups and in this case, there was a test broadcast that was related to a drill (or drills) that occurred before 5/12/2023 for Civic Center personnel.

Officials believe the alert was linked to outdated system settings from a previous test.

We believe the passcode and a broadcast group specific to the Civic Center was created for that event and was never removed. It appears that there had been an endeavor to establish some form of alert function via Informacast but there is no indication it was officially put into production. This test feature has been disabled to prevent further inadvertent incidents.

The Decatur Civic Center general manager said the city and Civic Center share phone systems equipped with screens that display alerts. He said weather alerts have been sent through the system in the past, but on Dec. 30 an alert reading “active shooter test” appeared on Civic Center phones. He said he was unsure why the alert was distributed to those phones.

Decatur police said officers responded after a city employee saw the alert and reported it. Police arrived around 6 p.m. and conducted a sweep of the building, determining there was no threat. An all-clear was issued about 10 minutes after officers entered the facility, police said.

City officials apologized for the disruption.

We are grateful that this was a false alarm and apologize for any inconvenience felt by those attending events at the Civic Center.