A youth was arrested in Fort Resolution on September 7, charged and released after threats to South Slave schools were posted on social media, according to police spokesperson Marie York-Condon.
"We very much feel a sense that the situation is under control, and if there is any threat that it has been mitigated,” said South Slave Divisional Education Council superintendent Curtis Brown.
Neither the school board nor the RCMP would confirm whether the accused is a student in the South Slave, and while RCMP confirmed charges have been laid, York-Condon would not specify what they were because, she said, the investigation is ongoing. York-Condon also said the RCMP did not want to disclose the specific social media platform, given the small size of the accused’s community.
RCMP also did not want to disclose the exact nature of the threats, said York-Condon, as to not give them further platform.
“We don’t want to give too much information so that somebody feels that they’ve accomplished something by having a certain platform mentioned or too many details,” she said.
York-Condon did say that the threats were not directed towards one specific school.
“There was a reference to schools and it was within the South Slave area so all three communities were spoken to – Fort Smith, Fort Resolution and Hay River.”
Over the past two years, school principals and program support staff in the district underwent Violence Threat Risk Assessment (VTRA) training, delivered by the Canadian Centre for Threat Assessment and Trauma Response, said Brown. When a threat gets identified, school staff and RCMP work together to go through everything they know about the individual involved to assess whether the threat is credible and how to respond to it. Brown said this may have been the first time this specific training was put into use in the NWT.
“I can’t say enough how proud I am of the partners and how well they worked together to assess the situation and to follow up to ensure the health and safety of everybody, including the individual as well as anyone else,” said Brown.
“Fairly quickly, we found out that the RCMP had tracked the IP address and managed to apprehend the person that posted it, and now there’s a wraparound support being provided to, one, determine whether there truly was a threat or whether it was a hoax, and two, to get the help that the young person might need.”
In tandem, Brown said the schools practice emergency evacuations, fire drills and lockdowns every year so staff and students know what to expect in emergency circumstances. In this case, no school went under emergency lockdown, though an increased police presence did happen around the three communities’ schools.
Brown said there are council policies and in-house instruction, among both staff and students, about posting on social media. These centre around the message that the things one posts on social media, or even in emails, are not necessarily private – they can be forwarded or saved to a computer.
“This is another example where I’ve encouraged principals at the schools to follow up with students about the seriousness of this,” said Brown. “It may seem like a hoax at the time, but the RCMP take it very seriously and criminal charges can be laid.”
The education council has a zero tolerance policy for aggression, both verbal and physical, within its schools, and has guidelines for students, parents and staff on the acceptable use of school computers. These guidelines bar, among other things, the use of school computers for cyberbullying, illegal acts and actions that violate the privacy of others.
Kate Powell, principal of Fort Resolution’s Deninu School, deferred questions to the school board.