School shooting threats disrupt Manatee County students. What’s being done to stop them?

Social media threats against Manatee County schools may start off as a joke to some kids, but law enforcement and school officials want students to know they are no laughing matter.

There have been over 100 threats against Manatee County schools in the past three years, according to a spokesperson with the district. Many of these threats come via social media, where law enforcement officials say students often feel like they can get away with saying things they wouldn’t say in person.

But according to Julio Jordan, a lieutenant and head of the school resource officer unit with the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, the opposite is usually true.

What students say online is getting them in trouble, he says.

“Things can turn ugly on social media. Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of them understand just how bad it can be,” Jordan said.

What many students fail to realize, Jordan says, is that despite feeling more anonymous or distanced from their remarks online, threats posted to social media are more likely to follow them and turn into something serious.

Social media threats lead to arrest

In Florida, written threats are treated differently than verbal threats, Jordan explained. He said making a threat on social media usually means putting it into writing, which can easily lead to criminal charges.

That’s what happened on March 1, when deputies arrested a 13-year-old Manatee County student for threatening to “blow up” his Palmetto middle school.

Buffalo Creek Middle School administrators learned on Feb. 28 about comments made in a Snapchat group, according to the sheriff’s office.

Investigators said a person using a fake name joined a Snapchat group with other students and said, “This is a warning tomorrow I will blow Buffalo Creek Middle School up.”

The student then sent a photo of a handgun with three magazines to the chat, detectives said.

Despite not having his name attached to the message, detectives tracked the location to the student’s home and searched the house. During the search, detectives said they did not find weapons or any evidence that the student could use or create an explosive.

The student confessed to sending the message in an interview with detectives and because the threats were written, specific and on social media, he was arrested and charged with false report of a bomb, a second-degree felony, according to the sheriff’s office.

The scenario is not unfamiliar to Jordan, who explained that false school threats are often linked to bullying, pranks or students seeking attention.

This often turns into a game of telephone, he said, where one student hears something and repeats it second-hand without knowing all of the information or how credible the source is.

False school threat investigations

Jordan cited a string of bomb threats last year at Parrish Community High School as a prime example.

In February 2023, officials received threats via the FortifyFL app, a tool used for giving anonymous tips about school safety. The threats forced evacuations of the school and the Bradenton Herald previously reported that the sheriff’s office was working with the FBI to find the source of the anonymous threats.

But no credible threat was found. Jordan said it all came back to an upset student posting a false threat.

Jordan said while the FortifyFL app is a useful tool to combat school violence threats, the anonymity can send law enforcement officers on a wild goose chase.

“You’ll have girlfriends mad at boyfriends and reporting them, and boyfriends reporting their girlfriends. It bogs the system down because now we have to do a consensual encounter with the kid and it takes them away from class,” Jordan said.

Regardless of where the tip comes from, Jordan said detectives check out every threat and take them seriously. But social media remains a prominent force for school threats, due to the anonymity and how quickly things can circulate, he said.

Following one of the evacuations during the 2023 Parrish threats, law enforcement arrested two students at Parrish Community High School for posting videos to TikTok that imitated mass shootings on campus, the Bradenton Herald previously reported.

A Buffalo Creek Middle School student was also charged with a second-degree felony last year after a TikTok video showed rounds being fired in a classroom with a toy gun was received by FortifyFL.

“The biggest driver of this whole situation is social media. It’s really a situation where kids make bad choices,” school district spokesman Mike Barber said.

But the district said bomb threats are rare compared to other kinds of reported social media and verbal threats.

The majority of the more than 100 threats Manatee County schools have received over the past three years are students posting inappropriate comments on social media threatening violence or “it could just be a photo of themselves with a weapon,” Barber told the Bradenton Herald.

Next most common are students saying something verbally that is threatening or someone reporting that they heard something threatening would happen at the school, Barber said.

The problem, Jordan says, is that students often “don’t realize how serious it is.”

“A big percentage of these cases are just kids being kids, but our hands are tied,” Jordan said.

Parents should ‘be more involved,’ officials say

Law enforcement and school officials are pushing to educate students and parents in an effort to reduce school threats.

The school district collaborated with the sheriff’s office on a video that was sent out to all secondary schools in 2023.

In the video, called “Don’t Make the Big Mistake PSA,” Sheriff Rick Wells warns students about the seriousness of bringing a weapon to school or making threats.

“You will face life-changing consequences, you will be arrested, you will go to jail and you will have a criminal record,” Wells says in the video.

Manatee School Board Chair Chad Choate also spoke in the video, urging students to report anything suspicious.

“Students, if you see something dangerous, speak to someone at school who can help,” Choate said.

But Jordan said not all students heed the warnings of PSAs, which is why he said it is essential for parents to stay on top of their kids’ online activity.

“90% of the time we hear the same thing from parents: ‘Oh my god, I didn’t know.’ I can only tell parents to be more involved with your kids on social media,” Jordan said.