How Minnesota police are tracking anonymous school threats

MINNEAPOLIS – The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office SHIELD team is one of many law enforcement groups around the U.S. working with schools to track down and stop threats.

Lieutenant Dennis Jahnke, who works with the team, knew it could happen – and then it did.

Since a fatal school shooting in Georgia earlier this September, unsubstantiated copycat threats have appeared across the country. This week, a threat went out on social media targeting nearly two dozen St. Paul area schools.

"The minute something pops up earlier this week, we started to get information from partners on our east coast, partners on the south," Jahnke said. "If your school hits that list, you've got to vet it out, you've got to speak with law enforcement, you've got to collaborate with partners to make sure, is this a viable threat?"

Eventually, police tracked the source of the threat – a 12-year-old girl living in the Twin Cities. She didn't have the means or the desire to carry out the threat, police say.

The girl is now home with her family. It's not known what ramifications she could face in the long run.

"There's legal ramifications, there's also academic ramifications," Jahnke said. "Obviously you could be prosecuted as a crime for that, but ultimately causing that fear in the community is probably the biggest harm from that."

The team creates a direct line of communication between law enforcement and the private sector, including schools. It's this type of collaboration, Jahnke said, that could thwart any threat before it has a chance to materialize.

"Our job as law enforcement and as school security professionals is to try and vet the information our as best we can to keep the school safe."