After Parkland, a Flood of New Threats, Tips and False Alarms
A surge of violent threats, tips and false alarms aimed at schools inundated school districts and police departments in the days after the deadly shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
In Hitchcock, Tex., an 18-year-old student told a teacher last week that he would turn their school into “another Florida,” the police said. In Brethren, Mich., a 17-year-old student was arrested after the sheriff’s office received a call from a principal saying that the student had threatened to attack the high school. An AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle was found at the teenager’s home.
A father in Shorewood Hills, Wis., walked into his child’s elementary school on Thursday, entered a classroom and handed the teacher a piece of cardboard with the word “gun” written on it, apparently in an attempt to raise concerns about the school’s security. The move provoked panic, fear and a call to the police department two blocks away. The man was arrested and booked into jail, accused of disorderly conduct.
Every school day in the week after Feb. 14, the day of the attack at the Florida high school, at least 50 threats or violent incidents at schools were reported across the country, according to the Educator’s School Safety Network, an advocacy organization that has tracked news reports of threats and violence since 2016. Normally, the group records an average of 10 to 12 incidents a day. The group’s count includes many incidents that turn out to be false alarms or hoaxes.
Experts said that the sharp increase in threats and false alarms in the days since the Florida shooting reflects the unusually intense public conversation and media coverage that have unfolded since that attack. In the tense days that have followed, the experts said, teenagers are borrowing the language of school shootings to provoke or cause turmoil. And anxious school employees are on high alert, watchful for any sign of a potential shooter and quick to summon the police over behavior that, in a different moment, might have been overlooked.
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