After a gunman threw smoke grenades and opened fire at a Brooklyn subway station on April 12, viral posts airing doubts about the attack spread online.
A Facebook post shared April 13 shows a screenshot of a tweet WCBS shared April 12. The tweet includes a link to an article with the headline "BREAKING UPDATE: No working cameras at Brooklyn subway station during mass shooting: report."
"Well well well would you look at this another false flag shooting," reads the caption of the Facebook post.
A false flag operation is a "military action carried out with the intention of blaming an opponent for it," according to BBC News. Conspiracy theorists regularly misuse the term to falsely claim major news events were staged.
Similar posts have spread widely on Facebook, Twitter and BitChute. But the claim is false.
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Video and photo evidence, eyewitness accounts and official statements show the attack was not a false flag, as independent fact-checking organizations have reported. Subway cameras weren't working during the attack because of a technical malfunction.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.
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