In three weeks since two teachers and two students were killed at Apalachee High School in the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history, more than 700 children and teenagers, including at least one fourth grader, have been arrested and accused of making violent threats against schools in at least 45 states, according to a New York Times review of news reports, law enforcement statements and court records. Nearly 10 percent were 12 or younger. The arrests come as the police and schools confront an onslaught of threats of violence, gunfire and bombings. The reports have terrified students and their parents, caused attendance to plunge and forced dozens of schools to close temporarily. Some schools have canceled homecoming parades, middle school dances and Friday night football games. In Georgia, 98 students in 56 counties were taken into custody within two weeks of the Sept. 4 attack at Apalachee High School.
A high-profile shooting routinely unleashes a wave of copycat threats, and experts expect an uptick at the beginning of every school year. The combination of the two appears to have amplified the problem. Prosecutors, school safety consultants and district superintendents said they were working overtime to investigate social media posts that seem to leap across platforms, broadcasting images of guns, lists of schools and menacing warnings to stay home. “The number of recirculated, reshared, reposted threats we’re seeing is a number that we’ve never seen before,” said Theresa Campbell of Safer Schools Together, which trains law enforcement agencies and schools on how to handle threats and maintains a database of social media posts from around the globe. The vast majority of threats have proved to be unfounded. Incidents of gunfire on school grounds from Sept. 4 to Sept. 20 remained below the average of recent years, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group.