Why the rise in students’ school threats alarms Southern California law enforcement

In Riverside this September, a 13-year-old boy found himself locked up in Juvenile Hall after middle school parents reported an Instagram post depicting a student with a firearm and a list of classmates’ names.

Then, at a Riverside high school, a 15-year-old girl was arrested after students in a group chat on Instagram shared a photo of guns along with a message suggesting violence toward a classmate.

And in another example of what law enforcement officials and safety experts say is a nationwide increase of threatening behavior toward students and schools this fall, a boy was incarcerated after Riverside County sheriff’s officials said he threatened students in Jurupa Valley.

That Moreno Valley resident was 12 years old.

Officer Ryan Railsback, a Riverside Police Department spokesman, said detectives have investigated four threats since school started in mid-August.

“It’s rare when we have even one,” Railsback said, “but to have four in the first month and a half of school is outrageous. I can’t think of a school year where we have had this many over such a short span of time.”

Riverside County sheriff’s Sgt. Aaron Avila, who coordinates the school resource officers — deputies on campus — for the Jurupa Valley station, said he has been comparing notes with his counterparts in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties.

“We’re all seeing the same stuff,” Avila said. “The last couple of weeks, there is an increase.”

Safer Schools Together is a national organization that provides training and consultation to schools and law enforcement on digital and behavioral threats. Its founder, Theresa Campbell, has been studying the topic for 30 years.

Campbell estimated from their research that 700 threat arrests have been made nationwide since Sept. 4, when two teachers and two students were slain at a Georgia high school.

Campbell said she doesn’t like the term “copycat” because each student’s situation is different and each threat must be assessed on its own.

But she added: “This is definitely the greatest and the highest number of imitator threats that we have been seeing.”

Motives behind the threats

The reasons are varied, including kids being kids and students wanting to get out of going to school, she said.

Sometimes, they say they made threats “Because I can. I didn’t even think about it,” Campbell said.

“It’s often a cry for help. They have other things going on in their lives, and they use this behavior to catch others’ attention,” Campbell said.

Said Railsback: “A lot of them just say they are joking around and they thought it was funny. We’re here to tell them it is the furthest thing from funny.”

Even though no students locally have followed through on the threats with actual violence, their actions have taken a toll: Jacquie Paul, spokeswoman for the Jurupa Valley Unified School District, said school attendance decreases when threats are made because worried parents keep their children home.

Avila said a recent threat resulted in a dozen calls to his office from parents wanting to know what he was going to do about it. These threats have prompted the Sheriff’s Department to move deputies from one school to another.

Railsback talked about a student, who upon learning of a threat, begged her mother to pick her up from school and then didn’t want to go the next day.

“To have that fear in a child who is going to school to learn and have fun, to have something like this disrupt this one kid is unacceptable, let alone hundreds,” Railsback said.

How images become criminal

These threats are made verbally and on social media. Increasingly, Railsback said, someone from hundreds or thousands of miles away will post a photo of a weapon on social media that will get shared and reshared by students. It becomes a crime, Railsback said, when a student adds text to the image that suggests an attack will target a specific school, classmate or staff member.

Threatening images that listed the Texas cities of Martin and Arlington were misinterpreted as threats to Riverside’s Martin Luther King High and Arlington High, Railsback said.

One threat in Riverside mentioned names of classmates and another a school principal. The image that resulted in the arrest of the 15-year-old girl came from a post created in Indiana, Railsback said.

It’s also a crime when someone promises a specific action, Avila said, such as “I’m going to be at school tomorrow and everyone I see I will shoot.”

It doesn’t take much time for these threats to spread, Avila said.

“One of the things that is happening is that a lot of kids are doing what we call copycat stuff,” Avila said. “They will see a post and some take screen shots of the post and are editing them and superimposing information on the photo. They will show friends or pass it around and before we know it, that screen shot is spreading like wildfire and setting all the alarms off.”

Those alarms trigger action under what Riverside County calls its STAR Protocol, or School Threat Assessment and Response program

When what is perceived as a threat is reported, investigators will determine who is responsible. That student will be contacted at home or school, and their parents will be contacted as well and their homes searched for weapons Railsback said. Parents will be asked if their children suffer from mental health problems, and services will be offered. Anything remotely threatening gets investigated.

“Even the ones that aren’t crimes, we are going to verify,” Railsback said. “I wouldn’t say it’s zero tolerance, but if you made the threat, you will get booked.”

Campbell said arrests provide an opportunity for early intervention that can possibly prevent more serious crimes.

Ontario police arrested Ontario Christian High student Sebastian Bailey Villaseñor in February after learning about his obsession with school shootings that included posing for selfies with his father’s rifles and researching police response times and what type of bullets could pierce protective vests.

After questioning, Villaseñor, who was 18 at the time of his arrest, was charged as an adult with attempted murder despite not having fired a shot. Although Villaseñor eventually pleaded guilty only to intimidating a witness, San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson said he believes the prosecution may have prevented something worse.

Villaseñor was ordered to undergo psychological counseling as part of his sentence.

What happens after an arrest

In Riverside County, the punishment a student younger than 18 could face will vary depending upon the seriousness of the threat.

Officials would review police reports and assess whether the juvenile needs to be detained during the court process, said Joe Doty, a Riverside County Probation Department deputy chief probation officer.

The juvenile would be evaluated by the county’s Behavioral Health Department within 24 hours of the arrest and then face a detention hearing in juvenile court. Charges could be dismissed, or the juvenile could be sentenced to probation, diverted into a program or incarcerated at Juvenile Hall, Doty said.

How parents can help

Officials called on parents to monitor their children’s social media activities and report anything concerning to law enforcement.

“By having open communication between parents and the kids, it will help curb some of these school violence threats,” Avila said.

Jurupa Valley Unified officials plan to reinforce that message during Digital Citizenship Week, Oct. 14-18, Paul said.

The best thing a student can do if they see a threatening image, Railsback said, is to resist the temptation to hit the “share” button.

“Show your parents, show your teachers, share it with law enforcement, but don’t share it with your friends,” Railsback said.