“You’ll end up in prison for that”

A sheriff in Florida is fed up with the “false” rumors about school shootings circulating in his district – and is so tired that he has a whole series of clear words and actions ready aimed at students and parents: If you make a threat, “we will come after you.”

“You don't stand on a plane and scream 'hijack.' You don't go to a movie theater and scream 'fire.' And you don't go online and post that you're going to rob a school,” Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood said in a video on social media. “You go to jail for that.”

Chitwood's comments follow the arrest of an 11-year-old middle school student in Port Orange, Florida, on Monday. He is charged with a felony after making a false threat to carry out a shooting at a middle school, authorities said. CNN is not naming the 11-year-old, who was charged as a juvenile.

In addition to his pithy words, Chitwood is also attracting attention with his practice of posting students' names – and their parents – as well as mugshots and “perpetrator walk videos” on social media for all to witness.

“Sometimes you have to fight fire with equal weapons,” he told CNN on Wednesday. “Under Florida law, I have every right to release your child's photograph, the video of his arrest and the police report, and I can criminally or civilly prosecute you for child endangerment or endangering the welfare of a child at the expense of the investigation.”

“And then we show pictures of you, the parents,” he said. “Because you don't want to raise your child, Sheriff Chitwood will raise it.”

Some parents of teenagers who have killed people in school massacres are being held accountable. They include the Georgia father charged with second-degree murder in connection with the Apalachee High School school massacre and the parents of the teenager who killed four students in the 2021 Oxford, Michigan, school massacre. Both were sentenced to prison for manslaughter – charges that in both cases exceed the legal limits of parental responsibility for an alleged gun offense committed by a child.

On Wednesday evening, Chitwood posted two more videos online showing two teenagers being led to jail in handcuffs for making threats at school.

“This happened RIGHT AFTER her school played our message about how seriously we take these 'jokes,'” he wrote on X. “Simply unbelievable.”

In the days following the deadly high school shooting in Winder, Georgia, threats of school shootings across the country have increased and become more frequent. It is the worst shooting at a U.S. school since the Covenant School shooting in Nashville in March 2023 and the 49th this year.

Chitwood said the department has received 357 written death or shooting threats for the 2022-2023 school year in Volusia County. As of Wednesday, there were already 282, and classes have only started for three weeks this school year. In a 12-hour period from Thursday evening to Friday morning, the department received 54 threats, all of which turned out to be “false,” Chitwood said. The department has so far arrested 12 juveniles and confiscated 11 weapons, he said.

Some authorities are going beyond investigating school shooting threats – they are holding students accountable. In addition to the 11-year-old in Florida, students in Kentucky, California, New Mexico, New Jersey, Missouri and South Carolina are also being charged this week.

What students “do online could result in them becoming victims of a crime or worse. On the other hand, a police officer could knock on your door and arrest your child,” he said, urging parents to be careful about what their child says online.

“(The 11-year-old) had written a list of names and targets,” Chitwood said in a social media post announcing the arrest. “He says it was all a joke.”

But after last Friday's incident, Chitwood told CNN that he was tired of the jokes.

“Talk to the families who lost a loved one in a school shooting,” Chitwood said during a press conference last Friday. “These little fools think it's funny. Talk to the parents and see how funny it is. It's not. We're going to come get you and publicly humiliate you.”

Public exposure of young people will “affect their lives”

“In some ways, what Chitwood is doing is bullying,” Yalda T. Uhls, founder and executive director of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers and an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, told CNN.

“Publicly shaming someone in a sustained, shared way has very lasting mental health effects, probably more extreme than traditional face-to-face bullying. It will affect their lives,” says Uhls, who researches how the media affects the social learning and behavior of children and adolescents.

For some young people, however, public shame and embarrassment may be enough to motivate them to change their behavior, says Uhls. This may be accompanied by additional support through building empathy or changing the school culture.

Without this secondary approach, the plan could backfire, said Uhls.

And because the Internet brings a sense of permanence, future employers or universities will have access to such things, says Uhls.

“Fifteen years ago, people were worried about drinking or traditional teenage behavior, but today it's about violence, sexism or racism, and these kinds of things ultimately really harm children and society,” she said.

Nationwide, the number of threats of school shootings is increasing

The events in Florida are not an isolated case. In several states, reports and arrests for threats against schools are occurring again and again.

As CNN partner KCRA reported, several students were arrested in Northern California this week for threatening shootings online.

“You're going to go to jail, you're going to go in handcuffs and you're going to be led away in front of all your friends and classmates,” Sacramento County Sheriff's Office spokesman Amar Gandhi told the station. “We're not worried about your feelings at this point. You're going to go to jail. Don't try to be a hero, don't try to be a joke among your friends. There are consequences.”

In New Jersey, Franklin Township police announced they would charge a 10-year-old student in the area with a false alarm after a video circulated on social media showing “a disturbing video of a school” in the borough, the police department said in a news release Wednesday. It was determined to be a potential threat, so security protocols were activated at all borough buildings — which included deploying police officers to all schools in the area.

And in South Carolina, 21 teenagers were charged this week in connection with threats against local schools, authorities said.

The South Carolina State Law Enforcement Agency is aware of more than 60 threats against schools in 23 counties since Sept. 4. The agency has been asked to assist in investigating six school threat investigations, each in a different county, the agency said in a news release Tuesday.

According to research, one possible reason for the increase in violent threats in schools could be the so-called “peer contagion”. This occurs when two people influence each other to behave or act in a certain way through aggression, bullying, carrying weapons or other means.

“In a way, the public announcement could become a kind of badge of honor,” said Uhls. “It could be that colleagues copy other colleagues.”

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