This, to us, is the definition of child abuse. Allison Slater Tate at Today.com reports:

An unannounced active-threat drill at a Florida high school caused panic this week — and raised questions about how far authorities should go to try to protect children from school shootings.

The 2,800 students at Lake Brantley High School in Altamonte Springs, Florida, have been practicing "Code Red" drills since they were young. "You know when they come around and jiggle the classroom door handle that it's just a drill," 16-year-old Joseph Cirillo, a junior at Lake Brantley, told TODAY Parents. But this week, an unannounced Code Red drill left students and teachers at the high school emotionally and physically shaken. Officials said it's a necessary practice to protect schools. Just after 10 a.m. on Thursday morning, an administrator announced a Code Red on the school intercom. "This is not a drill," he added — something the students and their teachers had never heard before. "He sounded scared," said 16-year-old Lake Brantley junior Avery Brennan. "His voice was trembling." Immediately, students said, their teachers jumped into action, locking classroom doors, shoving tables against the doors as barricades, turning off the lights and sending students to hide in closets or under their desks. At the same time, an ominous message was sent to teachers via email and text: "Active Shooter reported at Brantley/Building 1/Building 2/ and other buildings by B Shafer at 10:21:45. Initiate a Code Red Lockdown."

Kids vomited and passed out in fear. Kids at a nearby junior high thought their siblings at the high school were about to die. We can't imagine what the parents getting their children's texts felt.

And yet the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said that the drill was created to make the campus believe there was an actual threat.

Captain Francis said that the unannounced Code Red drill was necessary and mandated by the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, enacted after the February, 2018 mass shooting at the school in Parkland, Florida. He explained that the sheriff's office conducts both announced and unannounced drills to test the schools' protection plans.

Read the rest here.

This is why our government should always wait a good, long while after a tragedy before passing a new safety bill. A good rule of thumb is to press pause on any law with a child's name on it, because generally those are passed in haste, in sympathy and outrage, with almost no thought to the possible unintended consequences.

Like kids going through what they thought were their last 24 minutes on earth. - L