The problem isn't so much treating potential threats as credible until proven otherwise. The problem is there's so very little subtlety applied. Things that should not be perceived as threats are, and even when they're determined to be either unfounded or not actually a threat, some schools decide their misperceptions are more important than the reality of the situation. (h/t Reason)

The graduating class of Truman High School in Independence, Missouri brainstormed senior pranks. Kylan Scheele came up with a pretty decent idea. He posted his school for sale on Craigslist.

The ad read:

Truman High School - $12725

Huge 20+ room facility.
Newly build football field.
Baseball Field to the SE.
Newly added 4 modern day rooms.
Has: Centralized air, heating, plumbing.
Next to Walmart for convenience
Huge parking lot, great for partygoers looking for somewhere to park
Bigger than normal dinning room.
Multi stove, oven, fridge and other appliances in the kitchen.
Reason for sale is due to the loss of students coming up.
Named after hometown resident U.S. President Harry S. Truman and his family.

About as innocuous of a prank anyone could have played on the school, one would think. But one would probably not be Truman High School administration. They turned it over to law enforcement.

Detectives with the Independence Police Department investigated the incident and found no probable cause or reason to pursue criminal charges. The had Scheele delete the post and advised him to talk to school adminstrators.

“They [detectives] didn’t see a credible threat,” Clark said. “They all kind of had a little chuckle about it but they wanted him to understand you could see how other people could see it as a threat.”

And how could people see this as a threat? Well, the school seized on one line of the faux ad: "loss of students coming up." Obviously, this referred to the pending graduation. The school, however, somehow read this to mean Scheele planned on harming the student body. That prompted the handover to police. And when it was handed back, the school doubled down on its "seriousness."

We take student safety very seriously and appreciate the students and parents who brought this to our attention. Out of an abundance of caution, administrators and police investigated and determined there was not a credible threat. A student who makes a real or implied threat, whether it is deemed credible or not, will face discipline. Due to the heightened concern nationally with school violence, we have extra police officers for the remainder of the school year and will have additional officers at graduations for all of our high schools.

Good lord. So, the non-threat the police considered non-threatening has resulted in Scheele's suspension and his ban from the graduation ceremony. The "implied threat" the school somehow read into a statement about graduating seniors is keeping one student from getting his diploma with his classmates.

It's also resulted in a lawsuit [PDF]. The ACLU represented Scheele in his demand for a restraining order blocking the school from blocking him from picking up his diploma at the graduation ceremony. Filed May 25th, the court has already ruled in favor of the school.

The school has also refused to back down, claiming the bogus ad caused "substantial disruption" and resulted in multiple parents retrieving their kids from school. (Wonder how much of that was due to the school informing parents it had turned over a "credible" threat to law enforcement?) As the lawsuit pointed out, there's no way the student intended to cause a disruption and no "reasonable" person could have imagined the outcome would have been school officials attempting to turn a satirical "for sale" ad into a criminal offense. The disruption was of the school's own making, but the punishment will be borne solely by the student who posted the ad.