False alarm: School threats spike after Florida shooting

“Help,” she whispers, whimpering into the phone.

The 911 operator asks for her address, but the girl doesn’t give it. “He’s got a gun,” she says instead. “He’s got the gun in my mouth.”

A second caller says in a hushed voice that police need to get to Withrow University High School in Hyde Park “real quick.”

A third says there’s a shooter somewhere in the school.

Between 9:12 and 9:44 a.m. on Feb. 22 – a week and a day after a gunman killed 17 at a Florida high school – police got nine 911 calls about Withrow.

It was all a hoax.

In Ohio and across the nation, schools are seeing a rash of threats following the Florida shooting. In some cases, kids clearly think they're being funny. In others, it's more difficult to determine how serious is the intent.

There are no state or national databases tracking school threats, so exact data is hard to come by. But the Ohio-based Educator’s School Safety Network does its best to keep a list, mostly using media reports.

On a typical day, the network tracks roughly 10 or 11 school threats nationwide, said Director of Programs Amy Klinger.

On the first six weekdays following the Florida shooting, the average was 66threats a day, a 503percent increase from normal.

There is always a spike after a school shooting, Klinger said, but these numbers are unusually intense. She thinks it reflects the intensity of the Florida shooting, one of the worst in America’s history, and the intensity of the conversation surrounding school safety and gun laws.

Central Middle School at Licking Heights and Lakewood Local Schools closed in February because of threats. Licking County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Brock Harmon previously said the reports of threats and threatening comments have increased and is concerning to law enforcement.

People are paying attention, Klinger said, and students interested in causing chaos know that now is their time.

“I would expect this to continue for a while,” she said.

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There’s no way to make a blanket statement about the typical punishment for a school threat, said Julie Wilson, chief assistant prosecutor and spokeswoman for the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office.

“But I can tell you,” she said, “we take these things very seriously. We always have.”

In Licking County, police arrested three teens for a threat at the middle school and a freshman for a separate threat involving the high school. The 8th-grade students were charged with making statements on a bus about killing other students. A seventh grader from Licking Heights Middle School was arrested regarding reported statements about a school shooting.

“We will respond to every threat and if we find probable cause, we will absolutely make an arrest," Harmon said. "It doesn't matter if they were joking or didn't mean it or if they didn't have the means to do it,” Lt. Harmon said.

Enquirer reporter Cameron Knight contributed to this story.