Bolandi: Police say MySpace group no threat

By: Cara Latham
   HIGHTSTOWN — Borough police do not believe a chilling group name — "Kill the people of Hightstown High School — found this summer during a search of MySpace.com is a threat, according to Ron Bolandi, superintendent of East Windsor Regional schools.
   Mr. Bolandi was responding at Monday’s school board meeting to the concerns of East Windsor resident Brenda Rosenberg, whose son attends Hightstown High.
   Waving a copy of a Herald story on the Web posting, Ms. Rosenberg said she wanted to know what action the board had taken regarding the group on the Web site so that parents can feel secure.
   "I can’t make you feel secure because that was a police matter, and that’s all they told us," responded Mr. Bolandi. "I can’t tell you what they did with it."
   Mr. Bolandi did say police told him they know the identity of the group’s leader and didn’t think it was a threat or something school officials should be concerned about.
   The posting — particularly worrisome in light of recent school shootings — was found by a Herald reporter in July and indicated the group had three members. The group profile was accompanied by a photo of a naked woman playing with her breasts, a posted forum titled, "We are all gunna die pretty soon," and the comment "heil to hitler."
   At the time, Mr. Bolandi said the district would launch a "formal investigation." Hightstown police Detective Ben Miller previously said he wasn’t alarmed with the posting because it contained no specific threats and he knew the group’s leader, who he said was an ex-student who had been arrested for unrelated offenses.
   The group’s page was no longer able to be found when a reporter did a check for the site on Tuesday.
   Mr. Bolandi explained Monday that students and administrators do not have access to the Web site in the high school, and he said finding such groups like that on MySpace is not easy.
   "The only thing we can hope on MySpace is that local law enforcement contacts us if they see anything on there we should be aware of," he said. "I don’t have someone available to look at MySpace."
   School board member Susan Lloyd said Monday that access to individual pages on the Web site without a user account is also not easy.
   "You have to be a member and you have to be a ‘friend’ to get onto someone’s page, so you just can’t go in there and type in your name and see what comes up," she said.
   However, anyone without an account can go to MySpace.com’s main page, click on the Browse option, and choose to view users —who say they are 18 years old — located within a certain ZIP code. People without accounts can also browse the groups section by ZIP code or search name, which is how the "Kill the people of Hightstown High School" page was found by the Herald.
   If one does create an account, he can have full access to anyone’s profile, just so long as the particular user he is trying to find has not first set his profile to private. If one does not have an account, he can still view unblocked profiles but is unable to view all user pictures.
   After the meeting, Ms. Rosenberg said she was not satisfied with Mr. Bolandi’s response.
   "We need to know that the police are doing all they can do — that somebody has put an end to this issue," she said, adding that "as a school board, or as a principal, or as a superintendent, the police should have addressed this to the school."