More than 120 threats against schools since Kauhajoki killings

A total of more than 120 threats against schools and colleges in Finland have come to the attention of the National Bureau of Investigation, Finland's central criminal police, since the fatal shooting incident in Kauhajoki.
      The number of reported threats against educational establishments in the two weeks since 22-year-old gunman Matti Juhani Saari killed ten others and himself is greater than that which police were notified of between the Jokela and Kauhajoki cases.
     
Between last November - when nine died in Jokela High School - and September 23rd there had been rather more than 80 such threats reported to police.
      The largest share of threats against persons and property since that bleak Tuesday in September were in the province of Southern Finland.
      By last Friday, the total had risen to 54.
      The second-greatest incidence of such threats investigated by police, 37 of them in all, was in Western Finland.
     
In most of the incidents, police have been able to determine the identity of the person believed guilty of issuing the threat.
      In the most serious cases, police have arrested and held the suspect, weapons have been confiscated, and house-searches carried out.
      A person making a groundless threat in this way can easily find themselves in court and facing a maximum sentence of up to two years' imprisonment. A good many of the suspects were minors, and a threat received via the Net against a school in Kajaani turned out to have been sent by a boy of just ten years of age.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Schools closed in different parts of the country after threatening messages (26.9.2008)
  Police officer who let school shooter keep weapon faces criminal charges (1.10.2008)
  Jokela shooting sparks more copycat school threats (14.11.2007)

See also:
  School shooting in Kauhajoki - Eleven dead, many injured (23.9.2008)
  Eleven die in shooting bloodbath (24.9.2008)

Links:
  Kauhajoki School Shooting (Wikipedia)