New PSA aims to bring awareness to rising school threats in El Paso

EL PASO, Texas ( KTSM ) — On Wednesday, Sept. 4, District Attorney Bill Hicks and law enforcement agencies across different school districts held a news conference to talk about how school threats are becoming more common in El Paso.

“Every week. Any school district in our community is seeing gun and bomb threats. And as we have seen just today in Georgia, we have to take every one of these threats seriously. Our school districts are reacting to these gun and bomb threats very seriously. We take every one of these threats seriously,” Hicks said.

Both the DA’s Office and various law enforcement agencies collaborated on a video called “School threats are no joke.”

The goal of the public service announcement (PSA) is to raise awareness about the consequences that come with making threats against schools.

KTSM also spoke with the El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez, whose office handles juvenile cases, and said school threats are felony offenses.

“So, we know that in 2023 we had over 15 cases. We’re seeing about the same amount of cases, at least in this period of time this year. Not necessarily a drop, if you will. We see in some instances of heightened threats or individuals that call in school threats. For example, at the end of a school year, sometimes it’s at the end of a semester,” Sanchez added.

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