Interim Police Chief Jason Arres talks to the Naperville City Council Tuesday about the series of threats that have been made against Naperville high schools over the past month. (City of Naperville / HANDOUT)

       A teenager from New York is facing possible felony charges stemming from an Oct. 15 threat that led police and Naperville District 203 officials to evacuate Naperville North High School, according to Naperville’s interim police chief.

       Speaking to the City Council Tuesday night, interim Chief Jason Arres said Naperville police and the DuPage State’s Attorney’s Office are working with authorities in New York to figure out accountability and whether the teen will be charged in Illinois or New York.

       “Threats like this to our youth, our students, their parents (and) the school staff caused a lot of stress and anxiety for these folks and the community,” Arres said.

       The threats also put a huge burden on police, he said, because his department takes each one seriously and will pursue them to the fullest.

       “I can promise you, in all these, we will not stop,” he said. “We’re working tirelessly to hold those accountable who make these threats against the schools.”

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       Arres said the New York youth is facing felony charges.

       Naperville schools have been the target of four threats in the past month, three in less than a week.

       Mayor Steve Chirico asked if there was a way to hold the social media platforms accountable.

       “I mean, just to think of it. A 15-year-old kid from New York causes this much disruption in the community is really frustrating,” Chirico said.

       The city has to take the threats seriously, “because if it’s real, then we have to protect everybody’s safety,” he said.

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       “At what point does freedom of speech and public safety intersect?” the mayor asked.

       Arres said the hope is that social media platforms would pull threats down immediately. “They’re so quick to pull other things down,” he said.

       But some of it might be the social media platform’s inability to track it, Arres said.

       Naperville police put in a great deal of work identifying a suspect, and some if it based on how the threat is received, he said.

       In the Oct. 15 incident, “we were able to have somebody out in New York knocking on the door that evening,” he said.

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       But with Monday’s threat, the company that provided the platform on which it was posted was less cooperative, he said. Police will file subpoenas that could take up to a month to returned in order to determine which subscriber was responsible, Arres said.

       Chirico said he’d heard the incidents might be tied to a TikTok challenge but Arres said there is nothing so far to suggest that’s the case.

       Last month, a TikTok challenge resulted in schools across the United States reporting that students were vandalizing washrooms.

       Indian Prairie District 204 administrators have urged parents to talk to their children about serious nature of TikTok challenges, particular October’s challenge to “smack a staff member on the backside,” which can be deemed as an assault.

       Arres said the department has dealt with a number of issues regarding online forums, including TikTok challenges, threats against schools and swatting, which is alerting police of a false claim that a person will perform a criminal act.

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       “It just adds more to the plate to figure out who’s doing these things and putting our community in these situations,” Arres said.

       Naperville police are working with School Districts 203 and 204, the Aurora Police Department and the state’s attorney’s offices in DuPage and Will counties on a proactive message to the community, according to Arres.

       “No one’s going to tolerate these (threats). The state’s attorneys will prosecute these to the fullest,” Arres said. “We’re really going to encourage parents to talk to their children because a lot of these are spread through rumors that leads to a lot of unknowns.”

       subaker@tribpub.com

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