Threaten to blow up a school, go to jail.
That's the message Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger is hoping to send with a new policy his office put into place earlier this month.
Goldinger, in a letter sent to superintendents of the nine school districts in the county, wrote that he is frustrated that there is little he can do to prevent threats of school shootings or bombings.
“These threats are disruptive to teachers, students, administrators, parents and first responders who may be called out,” he wrote.
In hopes of deterring young men and women from making such threats, Goldinger said his office will urge police to file charges as soon as possible in these cases and his office will pursue detention of the suspect, including juveniles and people facing only misdemeanor charges.
Goldinger, in an interview, said he wants students to see that these threats are taken seriously and “it was a joke” is not a valid excuse.
“I want the message sent and I want the kids to understand, if you're under 18 and you do this, you're going to be put in a juvenile facility. If you're over 18, you're going to jail,” he said.
In many cases, people charged with misdemeanor offenses receive a summons to appear in district court, however Goldinger said that for school threats his office will make the case that the offender poses a threat to society and that this person should be placed in the jail on a significant bail amount.
Whether an adult defendant is held or not is ultimately up to the district judge, Goldinger said.
Making a written or verbal threat is often filed as terroristic threats, a first-degree misdemeanor offense in Pennsylvania. However, the district attorney's office can also pursue felony charges in some cases.
After Karns City student Garrett M. DeBacco, 18, allegedly threatened to blow up the high school last month, state police filed a felony threats to use weapons of mass destruction charge, which includes bomb threats.
He was arrested Feb. 23 and booked into Butler County Prison on $50,000 bail. After waiving his charges to court at a preliminary hearing Feb. 27, District Judge Lewis Stoughton reduced his bail to a $50,000 unsecured bond and he was released. He is scheduled to be arraigned in county court April 10, according to online court records.
Goldinger said that if a threat causes a school district to evacuate a building, police and prosecutors can pursue felony risking catastrophe and felony terroristic threats charges.
The state criminal code states that terroristic threats should be graded as a felony when the threat causes a “place of assembly or facility of public transportation to be diverted from their normal or customary operations.”
Law enforcement in the county has dealt with one school threat case since the policy was put into place. A 15-year-old boy was arrested last week after allegedly making a bomb threat at Karns City High School. Police said they planned to charge him in juvenile court with felony terroristic threats.
Juveniles go through a quicker prosecution process. Charges are filed in juvenile court and the suspect is sometimes imprisoned at a juvenile detention facility where their case is handled within 10 days, Goldinger said.
Brian White, superintendent of Butler School District, said he is supportive of the new policy. He shared the letter with teachers and also posted it to the district's website.
Threats, even if they are not credible, are disruptive and often upsetting, he said.
“We ask the community to invest a lot in the education of the kids and for one person to be able to disrupt it so easily, it's upsetting,” White said.
In many cases threats are copycats and come shortly after another threat or a national tragedy, such as the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. where a gunman killed 17 people.
The Butler district has had a couple of threat cases in recent months, including Bryan P. Flecken, 28 of Bridgeville, Allegheny County, a Butler graduate who is accused of threatening to “shoot up” a school in the district. He faces two misdemeanor charges in Allegheny County, where he was held in jail on $250,000 bail for three weeks before being released on a nonmonetary bail earlier this month.
Police have also investigated threats at schools in the South Butler and Freeport districts since the Parkland shooting.
