NKHS Parents Notified of Threat; School to Go on As Planned Wednesday

NORTH KINGSTOWN, RI—North Kingstown High School received a “non specific” threat on Tuesday in regard to school on Wednesday, but classes will not be canceled, school officials said.

Principal Denise Mancieri notified parents in a phone message on Tuesday that North Kingstown police had been notified and police and school administration “have fully investigated and are comfortable following our protocals.

“We have no intention of cancelling school,” Mancieri said.

There will be a heightened police presence on Wednesday morning, a school resource officer will be present in the building all day and the entire school faculty has been notified, Mancieri said.

The threat was described as similar to copycat threats that have caused disruption to schools across the country in recent months.

Schools in Rhode Island have received repeated threats in recent weeks and police believe they are most likely being perpetrated by students or people who seek gratification from causing alarm using overseas robocalling systems.

The Rhode Island State Police tracked one such system to Russia. Other systems are being run by small banded-together gangs of culprits scattered around the globe and make use of data anonymization and spoofing to make tracing the threat calls virtually impossible.

That didn’t stop Newport and the state police from arresting a 16-year-old Newport boy and charging him with 15 counts of making bomb threats earlier this month.

Along with allegedly triggering 15 bomb threats to schools across Rhode Island, including a four-day period of daily threats at his school, Rogers High School, the boy allegedly threatened local businesses including one that he demanded leave $100,000 cash on the side of the road. As a result, police charged him with extortion and blackmail.

Police are not taking the threats lightly and continue to investigate each case. And the Newport arrest shows that despite tricks to hide data, old fashioned police work can crack a case. In that case, the boy apparently got entangled with a pro-Putin Russian group that dubs itself “Evacuation Squad” and has advertised its robocall threat services on Twitter in an effort to spread mayhem.

Recently, a group member tweeted that letting an American boy get as close as he did to their operation was “a mistake.”

The account has since been suspended by Twitter.