If your kid is on Instagram, they may have already seen threats made online about their school or one nearby.
On Wednesday, Keisha Taylor’s son took a picture of one such post that was on his friend’s phone. It included a close-up image of a handgun and warned that three schools: Central High School, Kipp Elementary, and Crossland High School were all facing imminent threats.
The threats mentioned a date of Wednesday, Sept. 25.
“I was upset. I was scared because they did give a date of the 25th. But who knows when someone is planning to do something like that?” said Taylor. “You can’t not think something is legitimate nowadays. People have too many opportunities and options to get a hold of guns, kids especially, which is very scary and sad.”
By the time Taylor had seen it, police agencies all over the region were also already aware of it and knew where the post originated from — Kansas City, Missouri.
“We got some threats a couple days ago. We’ve worked with the Kansas City, Missouri, police department (and) the FBI to try to identify it,” said Capt. Matthew Snyder, assistant commander of the Homeland Security Division of Prince George’s County Police.
“We were expecting that we’d probably start seeing some more of these kind of threats as they get reposted by students,” he added.
It’s likely that what’s been circulated at schools like Crossland and Central will be seen in other places sooner rather than later.
“The same template, the same picture and then a lot of times what they’ll do is they’ll just change the names of the schools,” said Brendan Devaney, who commands the Homeland Security Intelligence Unit with Prince George’s County police.
He has a simple request for students.
“We realize a lot of the kids, they’re sending it out to try and warn their friends,” said Devaney. “But the issue we have is: The more they share that, the harder it is to find the original sender, to actually talk to them.”
One forewarning that could have suggested the threat wasn’t legitimate was the fact that some of the dates warning about a threat were on the weekend when kids aren’t in the classroom. But while that should reassure parents, police say they do investigate and trace every threatening post they see, looking to find the original source, even when they’re expecting them.
‘We’re headed in the right direction’
Posting threatening messages online classifies as a misdemeanor. But two years ago, more than half of the 120 or so threats that were made weren’t charged criminally, police said.
Sometimes, police track down the young person who posted threat “and then we realize that there could be mental health issues with this student,” said Capt. Snyder. He said that’s when police will work to get that particular student the help they need instead of going through the judicial system.
Gary Cunningham, director of safety and security for Prince George’s County Public Schools, said the machines that screen students every day before they walk in, as well as the clear backpacks they wear, has led to a big drop in weapons-related incidents inside county schools this year.
By this time last year, four firearms had been seized from students, and so far this year, there haven’t been any. The number of recovered knives has dropped from eight to two this year. No toy guns have been confiscated this year either. Fighting in school is also down.
“We’re headed in the right direction,” said Cunningham.
He said the Maryland Center for School Safety warned the school system the threats were coming, and it prompted PGCPS to send an email on Tuesday afternoon warning parents about it.
“We believe that they’re editing it and inserting schools (that are local into the post),” said Cunningham. “There are a lot of different challenges out there for kids and some of them think it’s amusing. But they are taken very seriously.”
“Anytime there’s a horrendous incident like the one we had in Georgia, historically, we start seeing school threats go up after that,” said Snyder. “So parents should talk to their kids about that. And the key thing now is: When they see this stuff, tell the school administrator, contact the police — but don’t repost, because that creates kind of panic and havoc.”
The advice applies even if your child doesn’t attend a Prince George’s County school.
Authorities there have already begun warning other departments that similarly edited posts are likely to keep spreading around the region.
“I think the same threats are going to pop up in the other jurisdictions as well,” said Snyder.
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