An online threat against an Elk Grove school was unfounded, but police are on campus
A threat to Laguna Creek High School posted on social media over the weekend was unfounded, Elk Grove Unified School District officials said Monday, but law enforcement will be on the Elk Grove campus through Tuesday.
“The threat has been deemed not credible by law enforcement,” district spokeswoman Xanthi Soriano said Monday in an email. “Out of an abundance of caution, there will still be a police presence on the Laguna Creek High School campus today and tomorrow.”
Soriano said district officials and law enforcement were made aware of the possible threat, signaled by the initials “LCHS,” and were able to track down the post and contact its sender.
It wasn’t immediately known whether district officials will pursue criminal charges against the person who issued the threat.
“Since LCHS are the letters for Laguna Creek High School, we are and have been making sure we respond appropriately,” Soriano said in the email statement.
Elk Grove police said late Sunday they were aware of the threat and that Elk Grove Unified School District and Sacramento County Sheriff’s officials were investigating.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office on Sunday night was sent the online threat, claiming there was going to be a shooting at Laguna Creek High either Monday or Tuesday. A few hours later, the Sheriff’s Office was made aware of another similar threatening social media post about the high school.
“Through our investigative techniques, we were able to identify the second sender of that threat,” sheriff’s Lt. Cary Trzcinski told news reporters Monday afternoon . “We were able to determine that was more or less just a student kind of joking around with the first one.”
He said investigators do not think these social media threats are “credible or serious,” but the Sheriff’s Office has to treat them as credible and serious threats to make sure students and staff are safe on campus.
Trzcinski is the bureau commander who oversees the Sheriff’s Office contract to provide security at Elk Grove Unified campuses. He supervises a team of sheriff’s deputies and a sergeant, along with two Elk Grove police officers, tasked with making sure the schools are safe.
He said if sheriff’s officials ever feel potential threats are “serious enough” and investigators can’t find out the source of the threat, the Sheriff’s Office will “pull that big red handle” and have classes canceled until they can “make sure everything is going to be okay and that our kids are going to be safe.”
All school districts throughout the country, including Elk Grove Unified, seem to be receiving more online threats this year, Trzcinski said. He doesn’t know why online threats are being made more frequently. He said some of them are simply “copy-and-pasted” threats circulated online.
“That’s kind of becoming a thing now, where they’re taking the same threat (posted online) and just changing the name of the school on it and sending it out to different areas,” Trzcinski said.
Typically, students who were found sending similar online threats were met by law enforcement and school administrators. Sometimes it could lead to criminal charges, but Trzcinski said they were more likely to receive school suspension or other similar punishment.
But he said the Sheriff’s Office will now more regularly submit information to the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office to determine whether prosecution is necessary when a student has been identified as someone making online threats.
“Because I think that’s only way some of these kids are going to see that’s there consequences to this,” Trzcinski said.
The threat is the latest against an Elk Grove Unified School District campus in recent months.
Cosumnes Oaks High School and nearby Elizabeth Pinkerton Middle School in Elk Grove were threatened in an online post in late October. Those threats brought extra law enforcement to both campuses and briefly locked down the schools.
The threats to the two schools were also deemed unfounded, but district officials warned that they and law enforcement took the threats seriously and that posting the threats could lead to felony criminal charges.
The threat to the Laguna Creek campus comes as tensions at school campuses have been raised across the country following a Michigan school shooting last week that left four dead. The teenage shooter in that case is in custody.
This story was originally published December 6, 2021 at 10:01 AM.
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