One in custody after Santa Cruz High School social media threat
SANTA CRUZ — Just days after a hoax active-shooter threat, Santa Cruz High School’s students and personnel briefly were ordered to shelter in place Monday in response to a social media threat lacking in credibility, authorities said.
The shelter in place was in response to a “nonspecific threat” made against the school in an Instagram post Saturday, Santa Cruz High Principal Michelle Poirier said Monday outside the school after the order ended.
Within an hour and a half of being notified, responding Santa Cruz Police Department officers identified and detained a male juvenile Santa Cruz County resident they allege was responsible for the social media threat. The boy, police and school officials said, is not a Santa Cruz High student and his threat was unrelated to last week’s threat — which remains under active investigation.
“The juvenile is in police custody,” the police department’s spokesperson, Joyce Blaschke, wrote in a media release. “There was never a credible threat to any Santa Cruz City Schools.”
Police arrested the boy on suspicion of making criminal threats and his case will be forwarded to the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office for review, Blaschke said.
Earlier, Poirier alerted parents of the preventative action with an email message sent around 10:45 a.m. Monday morning and a subsequently released recorded voice message. In regards to the delayed response to the threat, Poirier said the school’s Associated Student Body club — which oversees Santa Cruz High’s Instagram account — alerted school officials of the weekend social media post soon after they met during second period Monday.
Students were seen moving freely on the campus by 11:30 a.m.
The shelter-in-place order was issued “in an abundance of caution,” according to a message posted to Santa Cruz High’s website at 11:10 a.m. Schools officials believe the threat to be another fake inspired by a phoned-in message to police Thursday, they wrote.
“The high school instagram received a threat on Saturday morning that was to be carried out today,” school officials wrote in their notice.
A shelter-in-place directive translates to teachers closing the classroom blinds and turning off the lights while allowing them to continue teaching, Poirier said.
“The students today were really calm,” Poirier said. “They felt that we were well staffed and it was an air of great supervision.”
Santa Cruz City Schools Superintendent Kris Munro, speaking in front of the campus with Poirier, thanked law enforcement officials for the swift response.
“The protocol we’ve had in place and practice have borne fruit,” Munro said. “Everyone did what they were supposed to do.”
A more dramatic scene unfolded around 9:30 a.m. Thursday at the school, when 911 dispatchers received a call reporting shots fired with multiple victims. In addition to drawing an extensive response from law enforcement across the county, emergency responders rushed to Dominican Hospital in preparation for the alleged shooting victims. After an extensive campus search and an order for all of the Santa Cruz City Schools campuses to shelter in place, Santa Cruz Police Department Chief Bernie Escalante was able to declare the call a false report and send students home for the day.
“Schools must be safe places for students, and the safety of students is a priority,” Santa Cruz police release said in the release. “There is currently no threat to schools in our area, and students can feel safe attending school.”