Nearly five years ago to the day, a gunman entered the doors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, leaving 17 people dead and 17 wounded. Fast forward to today, and school safety continues to be a top priority for district leaders as gun violence continues to plague K12 institutions. But new and unusual threats have emerged that are causing severe disruptions to school operations and student learning: falsified threats.
In recent weeks, several schools have been forced to undergo lockdowns or temporarily suspend operations due to swatting, the act of reporting dangerous, yet false threats to spark fear among students and staff. On Monday, one high school in Wheaton, Illinois had to shelter in place after an individual reported a threat. Police later concluded that it was a false “swatting” tip. Last week, law enforcement identified one middle school student in Michigan as the instigator of another swatting incident after the student made a false report to a national crisis hotline.
According to Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, falsified threats typically originate from a handful of sources: current or former students, individuals from a local level or swatting reports, which are typically made digitally through proxy servers or other avenues to disguise their source, which may come from across the state or even international borders.
What’s most concerning, he adds, is that the recent spur of swatting threats that have occurred nationwide over the past six months appear to be related to one another, and the solution may not be that simple.
“Swatting threats have, in the past, had origins from outside of the United States,” he says. “Given that there have been no publicly referenced arrests and the incidents are continuing, I suspect that the FBI may be investigating and working with international law enforcement to get to the bottom of this, which typically takes longer than if the threat originated within the U.S.”
While the source of these threats must be dealt with on the federal level, he says schools can mitigate the effects of falsified threats like swatting in several ways:
- Establish threat assessment teams, protocols and training
“The first time school leaders and their first responders work together to evaluate threats should not be in the school parking lot in the middle of an evacuation after a threat has been received,” he says.
- Schools need to identify “heightened security” procedures that they will put in place when they determine threats are not credible and continue on with education while the threats are being investigated to identify the threat maker.
Asses and then react, not react and then assess, he explains. By partnering with local first responders, threats can be collaboratively evaluated and taken care of without severely disrupting school operations.
- Schools must have crisis communications plans as well as social media strategies to engage in timely and accurate communications with their school community when they are exposed to such threats.
According to Trump, social media has dramatically increased the speed at which rumors and misinformation are spread, resulting in panic and fear.
“School leaders need to have crisis communications plans with social media strategies of their own so they can hit the ground running to put out accurate and timely information so that they are the source for credible information that their school community turns to in a crisis,” he says.
One of the most important aspects of falsified threat prevention and mitigation is simply getting the message across to students. District leaders must ensure they know the consequences of making up threats against their schools.
“Educators and parents need to talk with young people to get across the message that threats will be treated seriously, investigated thoroughly, and consequences delivered even though it may take days or weeks to investigate in some cases,” he says. “Teens and others need to understand that once you press send, you can’t put the threat back into the smartphone. A ton of bricks will eventually fall—suspension and expulsion if you’re a student and criminal prosecution with demands for restitution for the costs of massive police response and heightened security at schools where threats are targeted.”
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