IIRC, there was a bomb threat at the mall near my place when I lived in Spokane, and it barely made the news. I only remember because my husband and I looked at the details and could think of a dozen ways that it could have been VERY successful, if they hadn’t been idiots. (Thank God! May all of our enemies have IQs below room temperature!)

Also, in ’99, 11 kids were sent to the hospital by a bomb. Kansas City.

To begin with, you are just making up facts that suit your preconceived notions about this case. No federal authorities were called in; per the linked story, the “Indiana State Police bomb squad was called in.”

Whatever expense calling in the state bomb squad may have entailed:

1. The bomb squad was not called in as a result of zero-tolerance school policies. “Zero tolerance” refers to school policies that call for non-discretionary, often disproportionate punishment for infractions. Such policies simply don’t have anything to do with the events under discussion.

2. There is nothing in the linked story, or any other coverage of this incident as far as I can tell, that suggests any other sort of mandatory school or administrative policy required the school authorities to react in the fashion that they did. That’s just an unsubstantiated assumption on your part.

3. Even if there was such a mandatory policy in effect, it is not hard to imagine the school authorties reacting in the same fashion out of simple prudence or concern for the safety of the students in the absence of a mandatory policy. After all, “surveillance cameras captured a picture of a man dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and wearing latex gloves, concealing a package and leaving without it.” Reasonable folks can disagree about what immediate response these circumstances warrant.

4. What is unreasonable about this case is what has unfolded in the aftermath of the police investigation. After determining that it was just a juvenile prank that posed no threat whatsoever, the county attorney, in an exercise of his discretionary authority, chose to bring felony charges.

5. As for how the prosecutor is going to recover the $8,000 in costs, it is not clear that the costs are even his motivating concern. He’s a county prosecutor; the state bomb squad was called in. Without knowing a fair amount about Indiana state finance, we have no idea who is going to pay the bill for this mess or how.

6. Even if one assumes that cost recovery is the motivating factor behind this prosecution, that does not change the fact that the prosecutor has discretion to bring charges or not, and to decide which charges are appropriate. As a practical matter, the only check on that discretion is his ability to get re-elected. No school policy required this prosecution in any meaningful sense of the word.

So, how is the prosecutor going to recover that $8,000? The easiest way is charge hi, pled low, provided the perp or his parents pay the costs incurred. If that surprises you, you need to spend some time prosecuting.

And, I completely agree with Richard, racism had nothing to do with it. However, what does have everything to do with it is by denying school officials and teachers the discretion to respond, we are effectively criminalizing stupid behavior by teenagers. Since, nearly by definition, teenage behavior is stupid, but, by insisting on full due process rights in all instances and possible civil liability by the school and officials under 42 USC 1982, the result is that behavior which in a prior generation was handled by a phone call by the principal to Dad and Mom, is now handled by the courts. To protect the school from civil liability, a criminal conviction (even negotiated down to a nolo plea to a misdemeanor) is about the best protection the school can have from suit. You can see from the comments to the article why that no longer occurs. For a number, as Richard noted, the knee-jerk response is that “it’s racism.” That would also be the accusation made against any school official who attempted to discipline the kid. So, the disciplinary measure gets kicked up to the DA, who has more leverage when he’s charged a felony both to protect the school and to get the $8,000 paid by the perp’s parents. That this gives the kid a criminal record isn’t the DA’s concern, it’s the defense attorney’s. These are the factors from which a zero tolerance police ends up criminalizing stupid behavior and felony charges. The safest reaction by the school and the DA is the more extreme, and that is true at each level of consideration of the proper response.
But, the kid is getting his Due Process rights, so where’s the complaint? What’s a rap sheet that follows him around for life compared to ensuring that every kid gets full Due Process rights in all instances? (OK, the last 2 sentences were sarcasm).

I do not see how zero tolerance policies have anything whatsoever to do with this prosecution. School policy did not make the county prosecutor bring felony charges. That decision is entirely on the prosecutor, who certainly had the discretion not to charge an 18-year-old with a felony over a dumb high school prank. While I’m not a fan of zero tolerance policies either, this story fairly illustrates that discretion in fact will not produce better results if the folks wielding it happen to be idiots.