North Bergen police and Board of Education officials continued last week to look for the people involved in making bomb threats at North Bergen High School in the last month.
Two new threats, considered very serious by police officials, were reported last week, causing Superintendent of Schools Peter Fischbach to issue a $250 reward for any information that leads to the arrest and detention of the parties responsible.
The threats last week brought the total of bomb threats at the school to three in the past month.
“Anyone causing these threats will be dealt with appropriately, with the severest of penalties that the law allows,” Fischbach said. “The Board of Education is ready to offer the reward for information that leads to the arrest of anyone causing vandalism or any act of disruption at any township school.”
According to Fischbach, the reward is part of an existing board policy, along with a reward of $100 for any information regarding an out-of-town student attending a township school.
Right now, the epidemic of bomb threats is more severe than any illegal student. Last Thursday, the school was evacuated after an official found a cryptic message found scripted on a bathroom wall, stating that a bomb was going to go off between 11:30 and 11:45 a.m.
As the students and faculty convened on the back lot of the school and a team from the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey bomb squad came, along with an explosives-trained Labrador retriever, to search the entire complex. No devices or equipment was found.
Students were allowed back into the school by 12:15 p.m., but to make up for the lost time, the school day was extended an hour thanks to the cooperation of the faculty and staff.
Last Wednesday, a hand-written message on a piece of paper was spotted on a student’s desk warning that the school would “blow up at 10 a.m.”
By 10:30 a.m., internal investigators discovered information to confront the student responsible, who then admitted writing the note.
“He told us that he thought it was a joke,” Fischbach said.
However, the recent bomb threats have been no laughing matter to the North Bergen police department, according to Police Chief Angelo Busacco.
“Each time it happens, we take the student into custody and ship them off to the [Hudson County] Youth House [in Kearny],” Busacco said. “We bring the harshest of charges against them and will continue to do so until reality sets in. I don’t know when the message is going to get out to them that we don’t consider this a joke. They’re going to get sent to the Youth House. They think they’re jokesters, but they’re not laughing when they get sent to the Youth House and get a taste what that’s like.”
Added Busacco, “Maybe it’s stupidity, maybe it’s because they think they’re being copy cats. But we’re going to prosecute them. It’s an embarrassment to the parents who are inconvenienced, and it’s then encumbered upon the parents to produce the child.”
Busacco thinks that the recent streak of threats may stem from an attempt to get out of taking exams, or perhaps asking for answers when an exam begins.
“They think that if they can pull this, then they can get the tests cancelled,” Busacco said. “They think they can get out of school, but since the class day was extended after this last one, if that’s their motive, then it’s not going to work. It is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
On Tuesday, a student was apprehended for threatening a teacher verbally and in a written diary.
“If you compute this to man hours and to the resources we’re forced to use, it really adds up,” Busacco said. “Time, manpower personnel and equipment. And then we have to bring in another agency to search for possible explosives. It’s still the taxpayers’ dollars being spent, all because the kids think it’s a joke. That’s why we’re going to prosecute to the fullest.”