Senior investigator Kent Theobald has been with the New York State Police for 36 years. During the last decade, he has served in the intelligence center.
“It is a constant changing environment, and we’re doing our best to try and keep up with that,” Theobald said.
It hasn’t been easy trying to keep up with the increased use of social media. Since the school year began in September, it’s been a busy few weeks for Theobald and his staff. Across the state, there have been many threats made against schools.
“We have an investigator assigned at the intelligence center 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Theobald said. “So there is always someone ready to available to assist.”
He says when state police get involved, they can provide resources like explosive detection canine teams, obtaining records from social media companies and investigative techniques to identify those responsible.
Theobald says there has been an uptick of these resources being utilized since in-person learning returned.
“Many of the accounts we find out are fake accounts that do not contain the person’s real name or other descriptors that may help to identify them,” Theobald said.
Some of these threats toward a school begin in one part of the country and then circulate to another. Schools in Utica and Schenectady have been on the receiving end of these disseminated threatening social media posts.
Whether it’s legitimate or not, police are treating it like all criminal investigations.
“We want to do everything we can to identify anyone who has made a threat against any school, against any part of society so we can get them into the criminal justice system and possibly get them help,” Theobald said.
Charges for making these threats can includes aggravated harassment or even making a terroristic threat. And depending on the age of the suspect, it could be prosecuted in family court or local criminal court.
Theobald continues to encourage people to always report a threat if they see it in person or online.
Currently, there is no official state data to compare the number of social media threats over the last few years. The state education department updated its reporting regulations this year to require districts to report threats of school violence, including social media threats.
Districts have until August to report this information, and a state education department spokesperson expects to have data available by 2023.
