WAUKESHA, Wis. — According to the Waukesha Police Department, four threats of violence have been made to Butler Middle School in the last week. They believe the threats are not credible, but will continue to investigate them.
In a video address to the public, Lieutenant Chad Pergande shared what the Waukesha Police had learned about the threats: “All the threats include bomb threats with one indication that there would be a shooting. We assess these threats are not credible. They have come from overseas, and are meant to create fear and disrupt our learning environment.”
While every message indicates the use of violence, none of them mention a specific day that something would happen.
Lieutenant Pergande said that three of the four threats have come from Nigeria with the other coming from Russia. To make that conclusion and assess whether the threats are credible, Lieutenant Pergande confirmed they brought in experts.
“The Waukesha Police Department has invested in the training of two detectives who specialize in computer internet crimes,” he said. “These detectives train with our federal partners on a regular basis and they have an extreme amount of expertise in this area.”
Nevertheless, The Waukesha Police Department has placed a resource officer inside Butler Middle School and increased the police presence outside of the school.
Lieutenant Pergande said they believe the people who sent the messages probably hoped to scare a “broad audience”, but the social media activity of one individual might be connected:
“What we assess is that there appears to be a correlation between the personal online posts of a staff member at Butler Middle School and the targeting of the school.”
No specific individual was named, but that is “consistent with similar instances reported across the country.”
One of the reasons the Waukesha Police Department is so confident the threats are false is because there are other similar threats across the country from overseas actors. According to Lieutenant Pergande, none of those situations resulted in violence.
Lieutenant Pergande said they are unsure of how long this situation will continue, but he feels confident in the community of Waukesha.
“The bad actors involved in these threats want to create fear and generate publicity. They also want to divide us. I know that we have a strong community and we can persevere through this together.”
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