SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Sioux Falls police are investigating social media threats that appeared to be against schools in the Sioux Falls District.
The first one showed up on Monday morning. The school district says it originated in another state and was not credible.
Then, other similar posts showed up Monday night listing other Sioux Falls school names.
That set off a firestorm of posts, phone calls, and text messages.
“The first priority is keeping the school safe, the second priority is finding out if the threat is credible is there anything to it and who is responsible,” Sioux Falls Police Public Information Officer Sam Clemens said.
There’s been a lot of talk about school safety following social media threats against some Sioux Falls schools.
Police say the district was made aware of it immediately and sent out a message to parents around 9 Monday night.
Following that KELOLAND News received numerous messages from parents who wanted to know if the threat was real.
“We believe it’s probably a spinoff from an earlier threat that happened in another state, there are some similarities between that one and this and this most recent one we believe someone probably altered it or manipulated it to make it seem like there are schools from Sioux Falls listed,” Clemens said.
While police don’t believe it was a real threat, they’re still investigating.
“We’ve had cases like this in the past where we’ve been able to find out locally where some of these have originated and we’ve had juveniles who have been arrested and charged with crimes, quite frequently what we find is these posts originate somewhere else, in other states and sometimes in another part of the country and then as they get shared and reshared and reshared they end up in Sioux Falls,” Clemens said.
Police are now looking to see if the threat was manipulated or altered by someone in Sioux Falls.
If that’s the case, they could be facing charges.
“Once we determine where that originated from, then it would be up to the state’s attorney’s office to make that decision if somebody would be charged or not,” Clemens said.
But in the meantime, they want people to know this.
“The best thing we can say is if people receive that message; doesn’t matter if it’s a kid or a parent or somebody else call police let us know about it and we can investigate it and let people know,” Clemens said.
Because it was deemed not a real threat, school went on as usual Tuesday.
