Catherine Barney had reached the end of her rapidly fraying rope.

The water service in her West Baltimore neighborhood had been shut off repeatedly over several days last fall. While the outages persisted, the work areas around her house appeared to sit unattended, according to her attorney.

Barney’s frustration mounted as she called City Hall, the latest of several calls from the 57-year-old on the afternoon of Sept. 30. An operator, working remotely, repeatedly tried to transfer Barney to various city offices, but no one picked up.

That’s when Barney unloaded.

“Now they want someone to kick those f---ing doors in; now they are purposefully not answering the goddamn phone,” she said in a phone conversation that was later entered into court evidence.

“You tell them that now somebody is getting ready to come down there and blow that f---ing building up,” Barney added.

On Tuesday, Barney pleaded guilty to a single count of threatening arson, ending a three-month legal saga that followed the rage-filled conversation with the City Hall operator.

Baltimore Circuit Judge John Addison Howard sentenced Barney to one year of unsupervised probation before judgment.

Charging documents filed against Barney said she “erupted in a tirade of profanity” with the operator. That explosion led police to execute a warrant to search her home. She was initially charged with making threats and false statements, and threatening mass violence. She was held at a women’s facility in Jessup for more than two weeks before she was released on home detention.

“Threats of mass violence can lead to widespread panic, potential harm and a significant presence of emergency resources,” police wrote in their application for charges. “Emergency resources that respond to these types of incidents can be hazardous due to the high risk of injury that can occur before they arrive at the scene.”

Michael Tomko, Barney’s attorney, characterized his client’s statement as an “offhand remark” and noted it came at the end of a three- to five-minute conversation. She made the statement only after it was clear she was “getting nowhere,” Tomko said.

“She says someone’s about to come down there,” he said. “She doesn’t say she’s coming down there.”

“Under the statute, is it enough because you can’t do that? Yes.”

Baltimore Police, who guard City Hall and other city buildings, are bound by policy in the event of a bomb threat. That policy, quoted in charging documents filed against Barney, requires police to conduct a preliminary investigation and assist a building’s owner, in this case the city of Baltimore, with searching a building where a threat has been received.

Additional security measures have been adopted at Baltimore City Hall in recent years as high-profile incidents of political violence have shaken the country. Earlier in September, the same month as Barney’s call to the City Hall operator, Maryland House of Delegates Speaker Adrienne A. Jones and Senate President Bill Ferguson received bomb threats involving their homes.

Jonas Poggi, a spokesman for Mayor Brandon Scott, said the administration takes “any and all threats to the safety of city employees seriously.”

“We are grateful for the diligent work of BPD and our City Hall security officers,” he said.

Tomko said the incident involving Barney was not as serious as all that. In a city like Baltimore, where resident complaints at public meetings, in 311 requests and on social media are often loud and justified, he considered taking the case to trial. Ultimately, his client was eager to end her home detention, but Tomko liked their odds in a courtroom.

“I think a jury of Baltimore city residents would understand her frustration,” Tomko said.