A year ago, Georgia Deputy Sheriff appear at the door Portrait of high school student Colt Gray. There they questioned him about online threats to shoot up his school. The 14-year-old is accused of shooting four people at Apalachee High School last week.
As details continue to emerge, the question now before Georgia lawmakers is: How should officials respond to such warnings in the future?
Lawmakers have said they intend to take tougher action against students who make threats. House Speaker Jon Burns wrote in a Sept. 12 letter to members of the state House Republican caucus that one of his goals in the next legislative session will be to “increase support for our The school strengthens penalties for making terrorist threats and makes it clear that threats of violence against our students will not be tolerated in Georgia and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. (Burns did not respond to a request for comment.)
But, as ProPublica reported this year, tightening penalties could have consequences: trampling on the rights of children who pose no threat to anyone.
Two weeks before the Apalachee shooting, We published a story about a 10-year-old in Tennessee Got kicked out of school for a year for pointing his finger angrily at the shape of a gun. The article explores how a state law passed in response to last year’s shooting at Covenant School in Nashville that left six people dead requires schools to expel students who threaten mass violence.
Another Tennessee law took effect in July, raising charges for threats of mass violence from a misdemeanor to a felony but not requiring officers to consider actual intent. Many experts and some officials believe both laws are too broad.
There is no indication that the 10-year-old Tennessee boy we investigated posed a danger to his school or community. According to his mother, the fifth grader cannot handle a gun. She said school officials described him as a good kid and expressed regret that they had to expel him. (His district’s assistant director declined to comment, even though his mother signed a form allowing school officials to do so.)
Meanwhile, Georgia law enforcement officials were warned a year ago that Gray was making threats, and they learned directly from his father that the teen had access to a gun. (School officials said these warnings were never communicated to them.)
As Georgia lawmakers consider how to keep students safe, experts say they should consider the impact their decisions could have on a wide range of children — from 14-year-olds with access to assault rifles to 10-year-olds pointed at finger guns. People who study warning signs of school shootings and legislative responses have long warned that zero-tolerance policies adopted by Tennessee have not been proven to make schools safer and may actually harm students.
Experts insist that to stem the violence, research shows the most effective strategy is not forced evictions and felony charges but another tactic, federal officials draw on decades of interviews with mass shooters, political assassins and survivors And touted strategic attacks. Threat assessments, when done effectively, can bring together mental health professionals, law enforcement and others in the community to help school officials identify credible threats from simple disruptive behaviors and provide students with the needed help.
“This is our best option to prevent these types of shootings from happening,” said Dewey Cornell, a psychologist and a leading expert on school threat assessments. The Threat Assessment Team should interview anyone involved in the threat to assess whether the student poses an imminent risk to others. It should warn any expected victims of significant threats, take precautions to protect them and seek ways to resolve the conflict.
Cornell said law enforcement involvement and harsh discipline should only target the most serious cases — the exact opposite of a zero-tolerance policy. tennessee, and 20 other statesa threat assessment needs to be conducted in schools. But with the state also mandating expulsions and felony charges, many students end up ostracized and isolated instead of receiving the ongoing help that experts consider one of the biggest advantages of the threat assessment process.
Mark Follman, a reporter for Mother Jones magazine and author of the 2022 book “Trigger Point: Inside the Mission to Stop,” said recommendations that schools and authorities should closely monitor and assist students who make threats are likely to It feels counterintuitive, especially when fear and frustration are soaring.
Foreman said it’s also understandable that people would want to respond punitively to threats, but that could make the problem worse. Expelling potentially dangerous students means school officials and others have little ability to monitor them. And, crucially, “you may also exacerbate their sense of crisis and dissatisfaction, especially when it comes to school,” he said, by steering them toward the point of attack rather than away from it.
For his book, Foreman interviewed leading experts in threat assessment and embedded himself with a team from an Oregon school district. He noted that for the threat assessment process to be effective, it must be performed correctly. “Most, if not all, of the stories I’ve seen about threat assessments negatively impacting students and families are instances where they were not performed correctly,” Foreman said.
Our report last month found that threat assessments conducted by Tennessee school officials were inconsistent. Some allow police to take the lead in minor incidents, leading to criminal charges against children who school officials themselves deem to be implausible threats.
At least one Tennessee lawmaker responded to the Georgia shooting by saying it validates the harsh penalties for students who make threats. Tennessee Senator Jon Lundberg is a co-sponsor of two punitive laws in Tennessee, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press this week“The Legislature has been looking at, what else can we do?”
