City police say it cost them $17,765 to launch a three-hour
lockdown of Gilroy High School after a prank death threat on a
teacher May 14, Capt. Scot Smithee said Friday.
GILROY – City police say it cost them $17,765 to launch a three-hour lockdown of Gilroy High School after a prank death threat on a teacher May 14, Capt. Scot Smithee said Friday.
Gilroy police plan to recoup this amount from the parents of three 17-year-old GHS students – two girls and a boy – charged with making the threat. They want the California Highway Patrol, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office and the Gilroy Unified School District to do the same with their costs incurred by the death threat, but the CHP and sheriff’s office have declined.
As for whether the school district will seek restitution, Assistant Superintendent Steve Brinkman said, “We haven’t talked about it.”
GUSD conceivably can claim the threat and its fallout wasted almost an entire a day of school. Brinkman said “little” education was possible at GHS that day. The cost of operating GHS for a day is between $65,000 and $66,000, Brinkman said.
The brother of the arrested boy said he doesn’t think it’s fair for police or the school to bill his family for the incident.
His mother refused to comment, and the other defendants’ parents could not be reached for comment.
At 9:29 a.m. May 14, police say a girl masking her voice to sound male called 9-1-1 from a stolen cell phone and told the dispatcher she had a gun, was at GHS and planned to shoot her cooking teacher, Diana Burkholder.
Thirty-one Gilroy police staff members were involved with the lockdown and subsequent investigation, which resulted in the defendants’ arrest nearly six hours after the call. The CHP and sheriff’s office each sent five officers from nearby stations, and the CHP also brought in two expensive tools: a helicopter from Napa and an airplane from Paso Robles.
“We will not be billing anybody for that,” said Tom Marshall, spokesman for the CHP statewide. “That’s part of our service that we provide, part of our law-enforcement duties.”
As it turned out, neither of the CHP aircraft was used in the lockdown. Gilroy police requested them early in the incident, fearing an active shooter situation similar to that at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999.
The helicopter was in operation for about two hours, according to CHP aircraft staff in Napa. The cost per hour was not available. The sheriff’s helicopter costs $700 per hour to operate, according to Deputy Terrance Helm, the sheriff’s spokesman. The sheriff will not try to recover the cost.
If the students are found guilty, Gilroy police could ask the judge to include restitution in their sentences. The city of Gilroy also can sue the defendants’ families in civil court.
