During third period on June 3rd, City High School received a bomb threat, forcing an evacuation to Bates Field to allow police to search the building.
According to an email from the Iowa City Police Department, “The Iowa City Police Department was called to City High School at 11:08 a.m. June 2 for a report of a bomb threat. No threat was discovered and [the police] cleared the building at about 1:20 p.m.”
Classes were canceled for the rest of the day, and students were dismissed from Bates field to return home at 11:52. School administrators were notified that the process would take at least an hour and decided that it would be best not to keep students outside for that long.
“This particular call had a live person on the other end of the phone rather than a recording,” Principal Bacon said. “I think just the fact that we were interacting with a person instead of just some automated thing made us err on the side of caution and make sure we do the full response.”
Buses were arranged to transport children who needed them home.
“I was very grateful that by the time I got down to Bates Field, we had two members of our district central administration meet us there. Those members where Lucas Ptacek who is the executive director of secondary schools, and Mr. Kurt Pratt, who is the facilities director,” Bacon said. “I was able to focus on providing information to students while [they] helped with some logistics. And they just called in the buses. And, I gotta tell you, I don’t know how they were able to get the buses there so quickly. They must have reached out to drivers who are able to respond very, very quickly. It was really remarkably quick. That was a credit to everybody involved there.”
As of June 3rd the police department is yet to identify any suspects in this case.
“I don’t believe the police have found a suspect yet, but my hope is that they will,” Bacon said. “I really hope that law enforcement sees this through and has the technology to track it down.”
At this time Principal Bacon has “no reason” to believe it was a City High student.
Punishments for calling in a bomb threat range from 1-5 years in prison and tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Minors can also be expelled from school or have to pay for the price of first responders, which can be in the tens of thousands. Kids as young as 14 have been charged in Iowa.
“I worry [about a] copycat type situation where someone says, oh, well, we got to get out of school at noon. I’m going to try that now,” Bacon said. “I think everybody does need to understand that law enforcement does have the technology to track down where the calls are coming from and there would be unbelievably serious consequences [both in] school and legally for an action like that… That would be a disastrous thing to try to ever do. I think it’s important that students know that the consequences would be incredibly severe for an action like that.”
Principal Bacon was pleased with how students and staff responded to the situation.
