The Kent County Prosecutors Office, Grand Rapids Police Department and Kent County Sheriff's Department are reminding the public that threats of terrorism directed at schools are a crime.
Since the Feb. 14 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. where 17 people were killed, the Kent County Prosecutors Office has issued three charges of "false report of terrorism or threat of a bomb/harmful device."
GRPD has investigated nine instances of threats in the same period of time. "There's been a significant increase," said GRPD Deputy Chief David Kiddle.
"We've never charged three in a week before, I'm almost positive of that," said Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker.
In addition to the cases in Kent County, there have been more reports across West Michigan including: Belding Area Schools, Manistee County High School, St. Joseph Public Schools and more.
Kiddle said that police will investigate each of these threats fully. "We take them very seriously. They are not joking matters."
The Prosecutors Office said in a release: "It appears that the public is not aware that making these types of threats is a crime, a serious crime, and in light of what has occurred in Florida, law enforcement is taking every incident extremely seriously."
"Everything is credible, until proven otherwise," said Kent County Sheriff Chuck DeWitt. "That's not going to be able to be done until law enforcement has the chance to sit down, interview, assess the situation in its entirety to then go back and make a decision with the prosecutors office."
A previous version of this story said that four charges were issued since the Parkland shooting. The Kent County Prosecutors Office updated that number to three, since one of the charges included a threat made to a Target store in fall 2017.
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