Second Brooklyn Private School Shooting Threat Spurs NYPD Probe

BROOKLYN, NY — A Brooklyn private school received a shooting threat Wednesday morning – just days after a Park Slope school received a similarly terrifying message – prompting police to launch an investigation into what may be a malicious bot, Patch has learned.

Brooklyn Friends School's Instagram account received a message Wednesday morning from someone threatening to "shoot up the school," according to the NYPD. A school representative confirmed that the message posed a "safety threat to our community."

"The threatening message mirrored, almost identically, a message received on Tuesday by one of our neighboring schools, Berkeley Carroll," a spokesperson at Brooklyn Friends told Patch.

"The BFS Director of Security was in immediate contact with the NYPD, which confirmed that the cyber threat was generated by a computer 'bot.'"

An NYPD spokesperson would not confirm if the threats were related or the messages generated by automated internet programs, but confirmed the Brooklyn Friends incident is "under investigation."

The downtown Brooklyn private school amped up security at all of its buildings on Wednesday and Thursday "out of an abundance of caution," the spokesperson said.

Police are not the first to suspect a bot. A concerned Berkeley Carroll parent told Patch Monday he hoped the threat — linked to an Instagram account that featured Cyrillic writing — might be "a Russian troublemaker following the Putin playbook of terrorizing America."

Still, the threat of a school shooting — an increasingly common occurrence in the United States — terrified the parent.

"It immediately triggers soul-freezing memories of the Sandy Hook mass shooting," the parent told Patch.

The FBI, which investigated the incident at Berkeley Carroll would not answer any questions, instead directing Patch to the NYPD.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office would not comment on the situation or "confirm or deny the existence of any investigation" into these threats.

The shooting threats in Brooklyn come during a week when a student was stabbed and a security guard was shot outside of a high school in Buffalo, New York.

Related Article: FBI Investigates Shooting Threat At Park Slope School