Berkley police investigate where school threat originated
Police in Berkley, Michigan, are investigating a threat of a school shooting involving high school students that is going around on social media.
An investigation revealed that the threat was spreading online in multiple communities.
"It got shared multiple times by multiple students. It was shared in one jurisdiction and then got shared by more and more kids and without any specifics, the students weren't sure which school it was, so it raised a lot of community concern throughout the area," said Berkley Public Safety Detective Lieutenant Andrew Hadfield.
Hadfield says the threat was of a photo that caught the attention of police at about 9:30 p.m. on Monday.
The threat did not mention any specific school or district, but Hadfield says screenshots were taken from Snapchat and shared to Instagram between kids at Berkley High School.
"It originated on Snapchat, and the threat was that it was going to be a school shooting on Oct. 14, and told the other students to not come to school," Hadfield said.
Police began investigating after receiving anonymous tips through the OK2SAY platform.
"Once we got the notification of what the threat was when they started trying to source that information. Through that investigation, it was found it was not originated from the city of Berkley, so as a precautionary measure, they did check all of the schools here in Berkley, but there was no threat posted here," said Hadfield.
The message is also circulating online through other cities in Metro Detroit. Though the threat was found not credible in Berkley, one parent who wanted to stay anonymous tells CBS News Detroit she's proud students spoke up so authorities could look into it.
When things get posted like that, in a high school setting, it's even scarier. Made me feel better knowing they did take it seriously," the parent said.
Police say OK2SAY is a reliable resource and encourage students to always report concerns like they did in this case.
"Credible or not, let us determine that. That's how we find out about a lot of the problems is through OK2SAY," said Berkley Public Schools School Resource Officer Sergeant Dave Arney.
"The more it's used, the more cases get solved," Hadfield said.
In the meantime, other departments are still working to track down where this post came from and say it may be Detroit.