More threats at schools

LIHUE — Police were on campus at three schools Friday in response to another round of threats posted to social media.

Additional security and law-enforcement officials patrolled Kapaa High School, Kapaa Middle School and Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School during the school day “out of an abundance of caution,” state Department of Education Kauai Area Superintendent Bill Arakaki said in an email.

According to Arakaki, school officials alerted the FBI and monitored investigations throughout Thursday night. Schools remained open and continued with classes as scheduled.

FBI Special Agent Jason White was assigned to the case but deferred to Kauai police when asked to comment on the status of the investigation. Thursday night’s social-media posts were the latest in a series of school threats that began Sept. 20, when Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School administrators shut down campus after a student allegedly showed classmates some radical videos on the school bus and later posted a message online saying he was going to shoot up the school, according to the parent of one student.

Kauai High’s campus was forced to close its doors just five days later while police looked into a threat made via text message, and Waimea and Kauai High schools closed early on Sept. 30, as law-enforcement officials investigated reports of threatening text messages.

Two more anonymous threats on consecutive days in October interrupted classes at schools in Lihue and Kapaa. Police detained one person and identified “persons of interest” in connection to a threat against high schools in Lihue and Kapaa in mid-October, but a second threat against Kapaa Middle School interrupted classes the next day and prompted precautionary campus lockdowns at two other nearby elementary schools.

Meanwhile, police are working on a standardized plan of action for responding to school threats.

Kauai Police Department Chief Todd Raybuck told members of the county Police Commission on Nov. 22 that he has tasked two officers with developing “an effective strategic/assessment protocol plan,” including the possibility of partnering with state agencies.

Three weeks later, that plan remains a work in progress, according to Raybuck, who issued the following written statement: “The Kauai Police Department takes all threats seriously, and we continue to work on developing threat-response protocols. We conduct an assessment on every threat in order to determine the best response according to the facts of each incident.”