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Teen Arrested Over Police Threat Posted on Twitter

Police in Fort Worth, Texas, have arrested a teen for posting a photo of a replica gun pointed at a police car with a caption reading in part: "Should I do it?"

Montrae Toliver, 17, was arrested Monday for allegedly making a terroristic threat.

Police say he posted a photo to Twitter of a pellet gun pointed at the front of what appears to be a parked police car in the distance. A separate tweet from the same account says the gun is an Airsoft replica, which was confirmed by Fort Worth officers investigating the photo, department spokeswoman Tamara Pena said.

Someone saw the photo on Twitter, took a screenshot and submitted it to Fort Worth police's Facebook page, she said.

"Either way, it's a threat," Pena said. "And so it's going to be looked into."

The message accompanying the photo read, "Should I do it? They don't care for a black male anyways!"

The killings of two unarmed black men by white police officers in Missouri and New York this summer touched off protests and a national debate over police conduct that intensified after grand juries declined to indict the officers. Tensions escalated further after two New York City police officers were killed last weekend by a man who suggested in online posts that their slayings were in retaliation for the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City.

Pena did not know if Toliver had received a bond, and his name was not yet listed in jail records Thursday evening. A phone number for Toliver's family could not be found, and it was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.

The photo in the tweet was taken on the 1100 block of Mustang Ridge Drive. Teens and parents in the neighborhood confirmed Toliver was a student at Northwest High School, where he is involved in athletics.

NBC 5's Ray Villeda contributed to this report.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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