The Butler Area School District is staying on the cutting edge of school security with a new dedicated school police officer responsible for monitoring online threats.
His name is John Stepansky.
Stepansky is now the officer in charge of cyber security at the district after action taken by the Butler School Board earlier this month. He is well-qualified after a 25-year career with the Pennsylvania State Police, half of which was spent investigating computer crimes.
This program is still getting off the ground but Stepansky will be using his unique set of skills to investigate situations involving online threats and presenting evidence to police officers and the Butler District Attorney’s Office.
“One of the methods that we would use to try to enhance the protection of the students and staff is monitoring. A lot of these mass shootings that have occurred at schools or otherwise, the individual or individuals have leaked that information out onto social media prior to the incident occurring. That is a good source of intelligence information,” Stepanksy said in an interview Thursday.
Stepansky will also be available to Butler administrators to assist with online problems that do not rise to the level of crimes but are still a concern to student well-being.
“Our goal is to put this into a nice package for the DA’s office, a local police department or the state police and say, ‘here’s the information that we gathered, we did an investigation, here’s who we think may be suspect or who did it’, and then give it to them and then they can run with it from there,” he said.
