DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) — Several districts across the area have received threats to their schools in the last week, with many implementing new safety measures to keep kids safe. 

In Decatur, an 11-year-old and 13-year-old were put into custody after making separate social media threats towards local schools. The two did not conspire on the threats and the Decatur Police Department believes the 11-year-old was a copycat incident. 

Both threats were made on social media, but DPD has invested significant resources into streamlining their investigation process when it comes to online comments. 

"In this particular case it was a ghost account, and what that means is its basically a fake account set up through fake emails," said DPD Chief Shane Brandel. "So we have investigative strategies and abilities to be able to still track those type of accounts and see where they come from."

Chief Brandel says the department wouldn't have been able to catch the suspects as quickly if the department didn't have these resources. He says his approach is to handle threats like these aggressively and assume they are all real.  

"Sometimes, and it's part of the problem, is that these threats are viewed as 'they're just kids, they're saying stupid things, and they don't mean it,'" said Chief Brandel. "To be fair a lot of times that's true. But we don't want to find ourselves in the position where it is real and we didn't do what we should have to prevent it." 

Chief Brandel says the department always seeks to detain suspects regardless of age as they want to ensure no one is at risk. This is the case with the 13-year-old who threatened a DPS school. They are currently being detained at Peoria County Juvenile Detention Center. 

DPD and DPS worked together to take extra precautions to keep students safe today and through the rest of the week. Chief Brandel says there are no ongoing threats at DPS schools. 

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