Police arrest Lawrence man in connection with threats

Lawrence police said they tracked Thursday’s early-morning bomb threats to phone calls from a Lawrence resident, 47-year-old Michael E. Parker.

They arrested him in the afternoon after questioning him and serving a search warrant at his home at 1202 N.Y., where they found a wireless phone believed to have been used to make the calls. No evidence of explosives was found.

City Manager David Corliss said Thursday night that city officials were investigating whether the bomb scare was linked to the city’s recent denial of an insurance claim from a man with the same name as Parker. But Corliss said he didn’t know enough details of the claim to say whether they were conclusively linked.

“We’re still trying to check all of that,” Corliss said. “We’ve given some records to the police department. : City staff is reviewing a claim from a Mr. Parker that we had previously denied, on a claim for an alleged injury on a city sidewalk.”

Police Capt. David Cobb said he couldn’t discuss the suspected motive, but that police didn’t think it was linked to the Virginia Tech shootings.

“We have no indication that this was a copycat situation,” Cobb said. “We have an educated guess (about motive) that we will pass on to the district attorney’s office.”

According to court records, Parker has a paralyzed right hand and suffered a work injury in 2005. His recent criminal cases include a January 2006 no-contest plea to second-time DUI and a 2003 aggravated battery case in which a jury found him not guilty.

Parker’s neighbors said Thursday that he enjoyed cooking, being outdoors and listening to oldies on the radio.

They also said he spoke openly at times about his disputes with the city.

“He told me he had a suit against the city for that church that the bricks were falling off of, that he walked by there and some of the bricks hit him,” said Diane Lagrone, who lives below Parker.

She said if Parker did call in the threats, she couldn’t understand what his motivation could have been.

“He shouldn’t be doing immature, childish things like that,” she said. “He’s a grown man, and I don’t understand why a grown man would do a thing like that.”

Police arrested Parker for three counts of making an aggravated criminal threat. The law covers bomb threats that result in the evacuation of a public building, and the severity level of the crime depends on the loss of productivity from the evacuation.

At the lowest extreme, a threat resulting in less than $500 of lost productivity is a Level 6 felony, with a maximum punishment of 46 months in prison per count. If the threat results in $25,000 or more in lost productivity, the punishment can be up to 172 months per count. Sentences also depend on the person’s criminal history.

Police initially said Thursday morning that someone had made a series of three or four bomb threats to 911 dispatchers.

Later in the day, police cited just two specific calls they believed were linked to Parker: a hang-up call around 5 a.m., and a call at 6:46 a.m. in which a male voice told dispatchers there was a bomb at a school and at City Hall. The caller didn’t say what city or what school he was referring to, police said.

Lawrence police began investigating and started notifying schools. Broken Arrow School Principal Brian McCaffrey said he first learned of the situation after the school’s 8 a.m. start.

County system struggles to track source of 911 call

Despite the county’s enhanced 911 system that’s capable of giving the location of wireless emergency calls, police said they had difficulty Thursday tracking the location of the bomb threat calls.

Normally, if someone calls from a cell phone, Douglas County’s system is able to access data from a chip inside the phone within seconds and translate it into latitude and longitude coordinates.

But that wasn’t the case Thursday.

Lawrence police Capt. David Cobb said the phone believed to have been used to make the threats was only equipped to dial 911 calls. That’s either because the phone’s service had expired or because it was a prepaid phone that had run out of minutes, he said.

Jim Denney, Douglas County’s emergency communications director, said that when a phone is no longer in service – and is only equipped to dial 911 – phone companies are required to continue providing the computer function that can help dispatchers track the phone.

“Whether they do or not is a whole different story,” Denney said.

Also, if a call is short – such as a 911 hang-up, which police believe the suspect made around 5 a.m. – dispatchers may not have time to mine the information from the phone.

So if police weren’t able to track the phone by its coordinates, how did they find the suspect? Cobb declined to comment on that Thursday.

Bomb threat