Submitted to OnFocus – As the school year is wrapping up, the WRPD is reminding students that making a hoax threat against a school or other public place is a serious crime.
It drains law enforcement resources and causes distress to students, parents and school staff. It can cost taxpayers thousands of dollars. If convicted a person can be sentenced up to five years in prison.
Parents of a student who is found to have made a hoax threat can expect their student to be expelled from school, and may even receive an invoice for restitution for emergency service expenses.
Parents, please talk to your students about the seriousness of hoax threats. It’s not a joking matter; nobody including Teachers, Parents or Law Enforcement thinks it’s funny. We take all of these matters seriously and investigate each one as if a threat is real.
To report any threat or alleged threat, please report as soon as possible with school administration, teachers, or your local law enforcement so it can be investigated fully. Information can be shared directly and anonymously through our local school district
STOPIT app, or Wood County Crime Stoppers.
If you are a student or parent and wish to use the school-district provided app called STOPit, please do so. https://appweb.stopitsolutions.com/ the code needed to gain access for Lincoln High School is: redraiders
The Wood County Crime Stoppers have a new app to help solve and report crime in our community. The new app, P3, can be downloaded for free onto your phone or used online at http://p3tips.com/index.htm This new app does eliminate the text-a-tip program that had been previously used. The Wood County Crime Stoppers tip line will still be available for citizens to call in 1-800-325-STOP (6867).
What took a few seconds to write, will result in a lifetime of consequences.
Here are a few examples of serious threats that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have investigated:
- Two young men in Kentucky created a social media account in someone else’s name and used it to make threats against a public school, which police investigated and determined to be a hoax. An 18-year-old was sentenced to 21 months in prison and a 19-year-old was sentenced to 27 months.
- A young man in Texas used social media and a phone to issue threats against schools in Minnesota. He also called in fake hostage situations, known as “swatting.” He was arrested, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison. He was 19 at the time of sentencing.
- A 21-year-old South Carolina man was sentenced to one year in federal prison after he sent text messages claiming there was a bomb in the parking lot of a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the state.
- An 18-year-old North Carolina man was sentenced to 22 months in federal prison and was ordered to pay restitution after he broadcast himself on the Internet calling in bomb threats to various public places, including schools, colleges, and FBI offices.
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Author: News Desk
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