How Twit­ter­ers acted to head off tragedy in St. Louis

I just heard a fas­ci­nat­ing story that speaks to how the com­mu­nity is tap­ping into social media on life-and-death mat­ters — in this case, a bomb threat at a high school. Let me tell it to you.

Short ver­sion:

Tues­day night a his­tory grad­u­ate stu­dent at at George Mason Uni­ver­sity in Vir­ginia stum­bled across a threat made by a stu­dent against a St. Louis school on the Wikipedia page for Langston Hughes. (See accom­pa­ny­ing screen shot, which names the school’s prin­ci­pal as a tar­get.) He alerted his­tory pro­fes­sors and other fol­low­ers on Twit­ter. One of the his­tory pro­fes­sors, Mar­jorie McLel­lan (@margiemcl on Twit­ter), grabbed a screen shot of the threat before Wikipedia removed it — with­out, appar­ently, noti­fy­ing police or offi­cials at Lift For Life Acad­emy char­ter school, south of down­town St. Louis.

About six or seven his­to­ri­ans and librar­i­ans tracked down the user ID and other infor­ma­tion about the teenager who made the threat. They then used Twit­ter to exchange infor­ma­tion and ideas about what steps to take. McLel­lan phoned the St. Louis Police Depart­ment — which sent her to voice­mail. She per­sisted but the offi­cer said he “did not have access to the Web” and didn’t know how to get on the Web.

Give up, right? No.

McLel­lan, a his­tory pro­fes­sor at Wright State Uni­ver­sity in Ohio, then called a nearby police depart­ment known for being smart about cyber­crime. Those cops called the school. Offi­cials there then called the St. Louis police, who closed down the school, con­ducted a search and sent every­one home on Wednes­day. (Over­re­ac­tion? Not a chance, given the recent his­tory of school vio­lence in this country.)

The police tracked down the teen who wrote in a friend’s name on the Wikipedia post; he’s no doubt in for a long round of coun­sel­ing. McLel­lan notes that she she wouldn’t have known the local Ohio town was smart about cyber­crime with­out read­ing her local news­pa­per, the Day­ton Daily News. She may not have decided what steps to take with­out the con­tin­ual feed­back loop that Twit­ter provides.

Aston­ish­ing. A new ecosys­tem of news and civic responsibility.

McLellan’s sis­ter, jour­nal­ist Michele (a jour­nal­ist and friend), told me: “I think it says a lot about the value of social net­works to gal­va­nize spon­ta­neous com­mu­ni­ties in response to prob­lems.” It does. And we’ll be see­ing a lot of sim­i­lar actions gal­va­nized by aware “smart mobs” in the years ahead.

Erica Van Ross, a spokesper­son for the St. Louis police depart­ment, would later tell her, “We cer­tainly thank you and your group for your dili­gence in mak­ing sure some­one was aware. This is cer­tainly proof of the power of the inter­net and good people.”

Here is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s report on the inci­dent: How Twit­ter warned of death threat at St. Louis school.

JD Lasica works with major com­pa­nies and non­prof­its on social media strate­gies. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact JD or leave a comment.