For the second time in a year, the Walton Central School District has been besieged with virulent Facebook threats made against children.
On Monday evening, a message was posted on a local Facebook group threatening to shoot elementary school children in Walton, and then quickly deleted. The message, from user "Taylor Elizabeth" (possibly a fake or hacked account) read:
Someone sent me a message and it said this...just wanted ta pass it on not looking for drama plz .......KIDS ARE GOING TO DIE TMO (TUE) AT THE WALTON LITTLE SCHOOL. ;) . BANGBANG THEIR ALL DEAD!!! Kin.. 1st and 2nd. & if I get that far 3rd Haha....(;
Left: A threat directed at children in the Walton Central School District, posted to a local group on Monday, June 3.
The message was similar to other Facebook threats made against the school and several local children earlier this year, which resulted in the arrest of 27-year-old Jennifer Morris in January on misdemeanor charges of endangering the welfare of a child.
Walton village police chief Brian Laauser confirmed that his department got a complaint about the recent threat on Monday night, which was captured and saved by a member of the Facebook group before it was erased. Laauser said Monday's threat was only the latest in a series that have been made against the school over the past month, starting in early May.
"We've had three or four different ones," Laauser said.
With each threat, the small village police department has sent officers to the school to ensure that students are safe. Today, Laauser said, he and another village officer, along with several Delaware County sheriff's deputies, were at the school for dropoff and dismissal. On no day did the officers see anything unusual, he said.
"We had no incident of any kind," Laauser said. "Every time, we've had a presence [at the schools]. Usually it's lasted a day, or a couple of days."
Asked whether he thought the threats were connected to those made earlier in the year, Laauser echoed the thoughts of many angry parents in the community.
"My gut tells me yes, but I don't have any proof of that," he said. "It's a slow process. We're working with Facebook."
Laauser said that the police department had needed a court order to get Facebook to agree to release the IP addresses associated with various threatening messages left by several Facebook accounts. Facebook's guidelines state that the company discloses private user data only in response to a subpoena, court order or search warrant, except in certain emergency situations. An IP address is unique to a particular device connected to the Internet, and can be used to track location.
Laauser said he had been told by Facebook that the IP addresses were en route to Walton police via FedEx, as of Tuesday afternoon.
The past year has been rough on the Walton community, which has seen a bizarre murder-suicide and the arrest of a teacher on statutory rape charges in addition to the ongoing online threats. Laauser told the Watershed Post that he is as determined to stop the threats as parents are.
"Just like everybody else, we want this to stop, and we're not going to stop until we figure it out," he said. "The hardest thing for us is the parents are upset. They get frustrated because it's not going fast enough."
As of Tuesday afternoon, many parents active on the Facebook group the threat was posted to were planning to attend a regular meeting of Walton's board of education, scheduled for Tuesday evening at 7pm in the high school.
Update: WBNG ran a TV news segment on the threats Tuesday, in which a reporter spoke with several Walton parents as well as interim superintendent George Mack.
A petition is circulating in the community urging lawmakers to make the use of social media to terrorize a community a felony offense. But in fact, New York State criminal law already contains such a provision: Making a terroristic threat is a class D felony. Just last month, Nyack-Piermont Patch reports, a security guard in a Nyack school was charged with making a terroristic threat after he said to a colleague that he was going to "go home and get my guns and blow this place up."
