A threat to schools nationwide circulating on TikTok has caused confusion and panic among parents and school administrators across the country; some schools are closing for the day, others are increasing their police presence and some parents are keeping their children home.
The vague threat, with origins that are unclear, features text singling out Friday, Dec. 17, and warns of school shootings and other violence on that day.
No specific schools or locations are mentioned in these viral threats, and law enforcement officials in several school districts across the country have said they have not found any credible threats to specific schools. Still, schools and local police departments are issuing statements and some are increasing the amount of police at schools to calm the public, as some parents opt to keep their children home.
The Naugatuck Police Department in Connecticut says in a written statement posted on Facebook that it will increase its presence and patrols at local schools. The statement cites an "uptick in unrelated threats at schools in the region," and says that while there has been no threat against Naugatuck schools specifically, "The public can anticipate our presence to increase the community's sense of safety during the coming school days."
Parents in the Iowa City Community School District received a statement from superintendent Matt Degner, describing the anonymous nationwide threats and reassuring worried parents.
"We have partnered with local law enforcement to vigilantly investigate whether there are any local connections to these social media posts," Degner wrote in a email obtained by TODAY Parents. "At this time, law enforcement has not acquired any evidence that would deem these threats as credible in our area. Out of an abundance of caution, our schools will be in continual contact with law enforcement throughout the day on Friday."
Similar statements have been sent to parents in the Sudbury Public School District in Massachusetts, Shodack Central School District in New York, a number of school districts across Wisconsin, and multiple school districts in Connecticut.
The FBI issued a statement regarding threats nationwide and in the Los Angeles area: “The FBI takes all potential threats seriously. We regularly work with our law enforcement partners to determine the credibility of any threats. As always, we would like to remind members of the public that if they observe anything suspicious to report it to law enforcement immediately. While we continue to monitor intelligence, we are not aware of any specific threats or known credible threats to schools in the Los Angeles region at this time."
Dr. Amy Klinger, the director of programs for the Educator's School Safety Network, a national non-profit, says these types of threats are nothing new — they've been tracking them since 2013.
"We had this hiatus during the pandemic, when schools were largely closed, where people kind of forgot that prior to the pandemic we had seen a significant increase every single year," Klinger tells TODAY. "This is not 2021 phenomenon."
Klinger says these types of threats have evolved, and their different forms — including on social media platforms like TikTok — have increased the reach and impact of threats of targeted violence against students in schools.
"It's not just somebody in a classroom of 15 people hearing someone make a threat," she explains. "It's 15,000 people on social media, because it gets passed around and it becomes larger and larger and larger."
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