Authorities in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez are investigating extortion threats posted outside local schools demanding payments from teachers, a state official said Friday.
Messages threatening violence if teachers didn’t fork over their Christmas bonuses were posted in recent weeks outside five elementary and secondary schools.
An investigation determined the messages at two of the schools were hoaxes, probably posted by students as a joke, said the official, who agreed to discuss the case only if not quoted by name because he wasn’t authorized to release the information.
The officials said the messages left outside the three other schools were still under investigation.
He declined to provide any further details about the content of the messages, but said that all but one were left on cardboard signs posted near the schools. The first of the messages was spray painted on a school wall, he said.
He added that authorities were taking the threats seriously.
A report Thursday in Ciudad Juarez newspaper El Diario said security cameras had been installed at some city schools to bolster security. Recordings from the cameras are to be used to identify and prosecute the extortionists, the report said.
Located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juarez is Mexico’s most dangerous city. Drug violence over the past two years has killed about 5,000 people in the city of 1.3 million inhabitants.