Real threat or wisecrack?

One student was hitting his head against the wall, saying he wanted to kill people.

At the same school on a different day, a boy supposedly threatened to stab a girl in the throat.

The first one was arrested; the second was not.

“You can take one incident and say, ‘There’s something there,’ and take the other incident and say, ‘Something doesn’t look right here,’” said El Paso County sheriff’s deputy John David, a school resource officer who works with six schools in the county.

When reported threats surface, law enforcement and school officials work to discern what’s real and what’s not, who’s just mouthing off and who ought to be taken at their word.

In the post-Columbine world, the rule of thumb is to start off by taking everything at face value.

“We have to check them all,” said Dan McCormack, a school resource officer at North Middle School. “The time you don’t check, that’s the time it’s going to bite you.”

In Colorado Springs School District 11, the staff conducts a threat assessment — a standard approach taken by most districts — then classifies threats as low, medium or high risk.

If the threat involves any type of weapon, police are called in, said D-11 spokeswoman Elaine Naleski.

If police decide a threat constitutes a crime, the student is arrested on suspicion of interference with staff, faculty or students at an educational institution, a misdemeanor.

That law is defined as making “a credible threat to cause death or to cause bodily injury with a deadly weapon.”

As with any misdemeanor, police have the discretion not to make the arrest if they think the threat wasn’t serious.

Police must gauge the merits of the case just as they would in an investigation involving adults, said officer Ray Abeyta, a school resource officer at Sierra High School. What do witnesses say? Has the kid taken steps to act out the plan, such as drawing up a hit list?

“If it fits the statute and I have enough probable cause to make an arrest, then I would,” Abeyta said.

“We have to look at: Is there opportunity? Ability? Intent? If those things exist, they can make the difference between a credible and noncredible threat,” sheriff’s Lt. Clif Northam said.

Kids say things that fall into both categories, said Rob Slauson, principal of Wasson High School, which dealt with three threats and a gun at school in the past month.

“Some are goofing off, others really want attention,” he said. Some may be in such despair that they want to hurt other people, he said.

In one recent case, a staff member at North Middle School overheard two students “laughing that they would shoot up the school,” McCormack said. The incident came soon after another student was caught with a gun at the school.

The boys admitted to making the comment, but said they were only joking.

“You want to believe them, but you just can’t take these things for granted,” McCormack said.

Although the two eighthgraders were suspended for three days — in accordance with D-11’s zero-tolerance policy for threats — they weren’t charged with interference.

Whether or not a threat is — or could be — viable is usually revealed during the investigation.

David, the sheriff’s deputy, has two examples. At Horizon Middle School, a boy became upset in class, tore up an assignment, then started hitting his head against the wall.

In a meeting with the school counselor, the boy said he was in therapy for threatening to kill people, which his mother denied. But when the family met with David, the student made a specific threat — that he wanted to hurt a school official.

When David learned the boy had access to guns at home, his concern grew. The boy’s demeanor also was a factor.

“You could tell there were some issues going on with that person,” said David, who decided to pursue charges.

In another case, two girls reported that a student said he would stab a girl in the throat with a knife.

The boy said he’d been looking at a magazine picture of someone with a tracheotomy and commented that the person looked like he had a knife in his throat. David said the girls changed their statements, but the boy’s remained the same. David decided to close the case.

Officers realize that kids say things they don’t mean or haven’t thought through. “They haven’t realized how important it is to think about what you say before you say it,” David said.

He said he spends a lot of time helping kids mediate their problems. “I say, ‘Next time this happens, we’ll send you to court.’ Ninety-five percent of the time, we never have a problem again.”