HARRISBURG – One of the Democrat state lawmakers threatened by a Lebanon County man has responded to the incident. Bucks County Sen. Steve Santarsiero said “I’m grateful to the local and state police who investigated and arrested the individual responsible for the threats. This particular case involved an individual with a clear history of mental illness. But in a broader sense, this is another example of how political violence is becoming normalized in our country. We need to continue to speak out against that trend and we need to address one of the root causes: a completely unregulated and unaccountable internet and social media environment that too often reinforces the most extreme content because it feeds a sense of outrage that, in turn, makes it too easy to accept violence as an alternative. Congress needs to act, and if it doesn’t, the states need to step in.”
HARRISBURG – PA Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward and Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman issued a statement in reaction to news that twenty Democrat members of the General Assembly were targeted with threats from a Lebanon County man. “It is past time to set aside the extremism of a mindset of violence against those who serve the rule of law. With public officials facing increased threats both in PA and across the nation, they must always be on high alert. The safety of our members is our top priority and thankfully everyone is unharmed, but there were delays in communicating the threats to targeted legislators. As a result, the communication processes between the PA State Police and the Sergeants-at-Arms in the House and Senate chambers are currently under review and being updated to ensure legislators are immediately contacted and made aware of any threat as we would have expected to have occurred.”
SEN. JOE PITTMAN
SEN. KIM WARD
SEN. STEVE SANTARSIERO