Tustin, Garden Grove Schools Deal With Threats

As security was tightened at a Tustin high school and a bomb squad combed a Garden Grove campus Friday, law enforcement officials said threats of violence at Orange County schools just keep coming.

Since the shootings in Santee and neighboring El Cajon in San Diego County, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department has investigated more than 60 school threats in south Orange County, said spokesman Steve Doan. In Garden Grove, police have investigated 24 threats of school violence, arresting eight teens.

“Kids do not realize the consequences of the statements they make,” said Garden Grove Det. John Enriquez.

On Friday, officials at Foothill High School in North Tustin brought in extra security officers and called in sheriff’s deputies after a threat that warned of violence Friday was found scrawled in a school restroom Monday, said Doan. Letters were sent to parents Thursday explaining that the threats were being taken seriously. Classes were not interrupted.

In Garden Grove, bomb squad members went to Santiago High School after weeks of threats that the campus would be blown up Friday, said Lt. John Woods. A suspicious package found by a teacher inside a classroom was harmless, Woods said. Students were kept off campus until 9 a.m.

Since the San Diego County shootings in March, police in Orange County have been swamped with calls from nervous parents and students, many responding to rumors and Internet threats, Doan said.

“We have to check them all,” he said.

While some students have been arrested in connection with the threats, the majority have been provided with counseling or enrolled in anger management programs. “We only want to drag kids into the juvenile system as a last result,” Doan said.

Since the Santana High School shooting in Santee, the Capistrano Unified School District logged 65 incidents that Supt. James A. Fleming considered worth investigating. Of those, Fleming said, seven or eight were threats “and in every case but one they were pranks.”

The one incident not viewed as a prank involved a Capistrano Valley High School student who made an indirect threat at a weekend party that he intended to shoot another student. Fleming said the police found a gun at the boy’s home. The student was arrested.

“Literally, the heaviest period was the first 24 hours after the Santana High School shooting,” said Fleming. “Each day that went by it was a little bit less. The biggest problem was never really the threat (so much as) the rumors flying around and in some cases, the hysteria.”

The second San Diego school shooting recharged the school violence threats. “We were just getting back to normal, and bam!”

Vigilance has not waned in the Santa Ana Unified School District, even though the district has not reported a single threat after the Santee shooting, said associate Supt. Don Stabler.

“I think it would be a mistake to relax security,” said Stabler. “You had Columbine [in Colorado] and then people for a while relaxed and then you had Santee. We’ve always got to be very diligent of the students who are at our high schools and the problems they have.”

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Times Staff writer Dennis McLellan contributed to this report.