NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. — If your child is a bully, you're going to pay the consequences.

That's the message North Tonawanda officials are sending with their new anti-bullying law that passed common council unanimously and is now in effect.

Parents can now face up to 15 days in jail, a $250 fine, or both if their child is found to have bullied someone twice in 90 days.

The law defines bullying broadly as, "the intentional course of conduct which is reasonably likely to intimidate, emotionally abuse, slander or threaten another person and which serves no legitimate purpose."

The city attorney says this comes after several bullying incidents in North Tonawanda.

"Those are really going to be the worst-case-scenario, last-ditch effort. The goal is to get the parent in, engaged with the city, the school, the juvenile aid officer and figure out what the root problem is here and get them back on the right path. Can we get them into counseling, anger management, community service, something like that,” said Luke Brown, North Tonawanda city attorney.

North Tonawanda is the first municipality in New York to implement an anti-bullying law where the city can take action. The NT law is based on a similar one in Wisconsin, which was upheld there.

"Really, you have to focus on criminal conduct. You can't really get too much into limiting speech, because then you run into first amendment rights. So if it's psychological, there needs to be a pattern there, some conduct that's being done. So that's what you need to criminalize, the conduct, and not what they're saying or anything like that," said Brown.

Even though the law is already in effect after passing the common council unanimously, at least one person has brought up the concern that if and when this does go to court, that the language of the law may be too broad.

"As it stands right now, it's somewhat ambiguous, and that leaves a lot of interplay and leeway. The tighter that you can drill down in a definition, the better off you are in terms of recognizing whether this is an act of bullying or whether this is an act of rudeness or meanness," said Krista Vince Garland, a SUNY Buffalo State professor and certified Dignity for All Students Act instructor.

This law would keep the issue on a city level. There's already a state law that could deal with bullying, but requires a family-court appearance at the county level. It falls under the "Person in Need of Supervision" law.

Legal analysts say other municipalities could use this state law to address bullying in their communities.

"I think family court, if utilized more often, could address it. I don't think it's been effectively used enough to address bullying in New York State. The whole family could be placed in a family assessment program. The kid could be placed on probation. The kid could be placed in foster care, directed to get counseling,” said John Elmore, a legal analyst.

North Tonawanda city officials say they've already been contacted by other local cities, and some as far away as Ohio, about their law.