In September, police say a 14-year-old boy killed four fellow students at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Over the next two weeks, authorities around the US arrested 477 people—the vast majority of them students—for making threats against schools, according to a Washington Post investigation. The gist of the story is that more police departments are adopting a zero-tolerance policy on such threats, whether they were intended as jokes on social media or not. Backing that up: The figure of 477 is "nearly 100 more than in the aftermaths of the three previous mass school shootings combined," write John Woodrow Cox and Hannah Natanson. The story focuses on Florida's Volusia County, where Sheriff Mike Chitwood might be the most aggressive law-enforcement official on this path.
"Since parents, you don't want to raise your kids, I'm going to start raising 'em," he said at a news conference. "Every time we make an arrest, your kid's photo is going to be put out there. And if I can do it, I'm going to perp walk your kid." The story explores how his stance has drawn plenty of support online, but it also has raised concerns about overkill. "There's absolutely no evidence that is going to be helpful in reducing the level of threats," says Stony Brook University psychiatry professor Deborah Weisbrot. "I do think it's possible that could further humiliate and embarrass a child, and they could go further underground in whatever the distress was that led them to make the threat in the first place." The full story includes interviews with two young students arrested in Volusia, one of whom is an 11-year-old boy who spent 15 days in a detention center. (Read it here.)
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