Suspect Arrested in Connection to Several Illinois Library Bomb Threats

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/writer of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/writer of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her subsequent guide, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen.

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From mid-July via mid-September, bomb threats rattled public libraries all through the Chicagoland space. Among the recipients have been Crystal Lake, Addison, Morton Grove, Wilmette, Park Ridge, Oak Park, Warren-Newport (Gurnee), Aurora, Joliet, Schaumburg, Poplar Creek (Streamwood/Hanover Park), Evanston, Libertyville, Vernon Area Public Library (Lincolnshire), and Chicago’s Harold Washington Branch. These are simply the public-facing tales. Other libraries in the realm skilled bomb threats as properly however both didn’t report them to the media and/or didn’t get their tales picked up by the media as a result of they elected not to shut following the menace.

This week, 23-year-old Jacob Spiro from Skokie, Illinois, was arrested in reference to a number of of these bomb threats.

press release from the skokie police department announcing arrest of Jacob Spiro.

Several of the north suburban police departments labored collectively to deliver concerning the arrest. Spiro now faces a pair of felony expenses associated to making false terrorist threats and disorderly conduct. These are in reference to bomb threats in Skokie, Glenview, Morton Grove, Niles, Northbook, and Wilmette that embrace a Goodwill retailer, Wendy’s, Mariano’s grocery retailer, and threats made on the Morton Grove Public Library and the Skokie Public Library.

The two threats acquired by the Wilmette Public Library usually are not but a part of this sequence of expenses. They could also be added.

Digital forensics linked Spiro to the 11 bomb threats in Niles between September and October. 16 threats in Skokie got here in the identical time interval, they usually included native colleges. Five further bomb threats, courting again to March of this yr, have been additionally linked to Spiro.

Spiro had a preliminary courtroom look Wednesday, October 11. Prosecutors in the case acknowledged that Spiro admitted to the threats and did them as a result of he loved being excited. It seems as if Spiro had been enrolled in his center faculty years at a facility that specializes in psychological and behavioral well being challenges. It is feasible that in the approaching weeks, the motivation behind the bomb threats might emerge much less as a part of a coordinated effort by political affect and as a substitute from private psychological well being challenges. Arrest doesn’t presuppose guilt or innocence, as this story continues to unfold.

This arrest represents a big step ahead in uncovering the string of bomb threats that impacted libraries this summer season. Though the present expenses are tied solely to two libraries, it’s probably we’ll start to see extra cross-city and cross-county collaboration from regulation enforcement and the FBI in the approaching weeks.

Library staff and educators have been below assault for almost three years, and whereas it’s unlucky to word that bomb threats aren’t new, their escalation over the past month calls for consideration and motion. These must be nationwide headlines, however they’re hardly making a blip in their very own native media. This stochastic terrorism shouldn’t be solely shutting down public establishments, however surrounding the few public items in terror for staff and for customers — that is, in fact, the purpose, and it ought to enrage each taxpayer who helps fund these establishments.

In an period of ever-increasing guide bans and social media accounts that instigate stochastic terrorism, Spiro’s arrest means that the incidents are being taken critically. Hoax threats are critical federal crimes.

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