WILSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — Early in the school year, the number of school threats across Middle Tennessee shot up, alarming parents, students and law enforcement. News 2 talked with the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office about the uptick of school threats this year, and how they’re working to stop them.
“One thing that we want to do is that every red flag that comes up, we want to make sure that we check that off,” said Captain Scott Moore with the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office.
In September, the red flags kept coming. School districts across Middle Tennessee saw an alarming uptick in school threats. Captain Scott Moore said Wilson County saw 23 threats in the first three months of the school year, and 18 of those 23 threats came over a nerve-racking two-week time span.
“Someone was texting/messaging the mobile crisis hotline. And basically stating that they were about to walk through the front door of Watertown Elementary with an assault rifle to hurt others, as well as themself,” said Moore.
Turns out that incident was a false alarm, a fake threat; students were not in any harm. But law enforcement say these fake calls are still a massive drain on their resources. Called swatting, they force law enforcement to spend large amounts of money providing costly SWAT team resources for a threat that was never real in the first place.
Unfortunately, social media allows the fake threats to spread like wildfire.
“We’re responding as though we have an active shooter,” said Captain Moore.
“You talk about the financial resources. That’s money when everyone gets called out and goes there too. What kind of financial hit is this?” News 2 asked Moore.
“Thousands of dollars,” said Captain Moore. “Because not only do you have the officers that respond, but you have detectives that are working to try and figure out where the threat came from.”
School threats spread well beyond Wilson County. According to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, 321 school threats were investigated from August first through Sept. 14.
To combat this, in 2023 the General Assembly approved funding to put a Homeland Security agent in every Tennessee county. Moore says that extra resource has been helpful investigating online threats.
“Using their intelligence, a lot of times we can know in minutes where that originated as,” said Moore. “You can’t 100% prevent anything. But what you can do is put yourself in the best possible position to prevent something like that from happening.”
Law enforcement say tougher laws, like the one passed last session making a school threat a felony, are helpful in deterring crime. But, it also takes education programs like DARE, more K-9 officers, SROs in every school, as well as parents at home monitoring their children.
“As parents, we all need to be more proactiv,” said Moore. “Little factors like that. Just to be vigilant and know the red flags that are out there.”
Using the SAFE TN app, you can report a school threat and stay anonymous, or reach out to your local police department.
