Phoenix police: Social-media school threats can be charged as terroristic threats; 14-year-old arrested

At a Paradise Valley Unified District (4241) safety briefing, an investigator with the Phoenix Police Department’s Violent Crimes Bureau said social-media threats to schools are treated as criminal terroristic threats and described how investigators traced and arrested a suspect within hours.

“This is making a terroristic threat. So for anybody who thinks it's a joke, having a class 3 felony in your employment record is not a joke,” the investigator said, summarizing the legal stakes and the department’s approach.

The investigator gave a recent case as an example: a threat sent over Snapchat in which a student said a classmate would be shot during a specified time at school. Within several hours, Snapchat provided law enforcement with account data — including username, email, account creation date, phone number, birth date and a recently used IP address — and investigators obtained GPS…