Threats to Treasure Coast schools, students not frequent but keep deputies alert

Major disruptions on school campuses in Indian River County more than doubled in recent years as incidents in Martin and St. Lucie counties held steady and declined, respectively, state records show.

Disruptions can include bomb threats, inciting a riot or a false fire alarm, according to the state Department of Education.

Top sheriff’s officials in all three Treasure Coast counties noted the prevalence of smart phones and social media and how they rapidly can spread information, as the culprits.

“Information spreads farther and at a much faster pace than it did a decade ago,” St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara stated via email.

Sheriffs' officials spoke of the impacts devices and social media have on young minds, and said solutions could be challenging, pointing to shifts in societal norms, technology and parenting.

“We live in a different society, a different culture with technology right now,” said Capt. Joe Abollo, Indian River County sheriff’s spokesperson.

School safety and security statewide were overhauled following the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Then-Gov. Rick Scott signed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, which addressed a variety of issues, including having a school resource officer or guardian at every school and raising the age to purchase guns to 21.

“Without hyperbole, Parkland caused a radical transformation in Florida law enforcement in so far as tactics, personnel assignments, policy and our overall thought process when it comes to school safety,” Martin County Sheriff William Snyder said in a 2019 interview with TCPalm.

‘No matter how it starts, social media exacerbates the problem’

In the 2021-2022 school year, the most recent year for which statistics are available, there were 34 major disruptions on campus in Indian River County; nine in St. Lucie County; and 11 in Martin County, according to the state Department of Education’s School Environmental Safety Incident Report.

The reporting system, which began in the mid 1990s, collects information on 26 categories of crime, disruptive behavior and violence on school grounds, on school transportation and at off-campus, school-sponsored events.

The disruptions category is defined as “major disruption of all or a significant portion of campus activities, school-sponsored events, and school bus transportation,” according to the Department of Education. Examples include bomb threats, inciting a riot or a false fire alarm.

The previous school year, 2020-2021, schools switched to online learning because of COVID-19, and disruptions were minimal on campuses: three in Martin County; six in St. Lucie; and five in Indian River.

But in the 2019-2020 school year, there were 11 in Martin County; 13 in St. Lucie; and 15 in Indian River.

Snyder said issues at schools can come through social media, students communicating with others, threats written on bathroom mirrors and notes found by teachers.

“It's just all over the board,” Snyder said. “I think, though, in all cases, no matter how it starts, social media exacerbates the problem.”

He said one example was a “kill list” of students found at Jensen Beach High School.

Another incident involved the entire county school district on lockout for nearly two hours in January − indicating a possible threat outside school buildings − prompted by a teacher spotting someone with a gun near Hope Rural School in Indiantown. The person turned out to be the teen grandson of the private school's groundskeeper who had a BB gun, according to a Martin County School District alert.

Mascara said “indirect threats” that begin outside the area and circulate via social media “have been by far the biggest disruption on school campuses in recent years.”

One incident in Indian River County that caused alarm at a school came in April 2022.

An after-hours voicemail that a school official said was “threatening in nature” led to a daylong lockdown and an increase in deputies at Oslo Middle School.

Abollo noted a social media hoax in which a person from West Palm Beach made a threat and named a teen who was going to shoot up the school or shoot students.

“That kind of started spreading through social media, and then it went to different communities and everyone within those communities thought it was their own school,” Abollo said.

Snyder suspected issues on campus stem from something larger.

“I think there's a general fragmenting, and I hate to say decaying, but an unraveling of long established societal norms,” he said.

“Things that kept us in our place in decades past - family, friends, community, faith - are giving way to a general malaise where society, in general, is losing respect for old established traditions, like 'be kind to your neighbor', 'turn the other cheek,' so society continues to unravel.”

How school threats are handled

Martin County Sheriff’s Capt. Josh Kloster said handling school threats depends on the situation.

When information comes in, everything stops and it’s the top priority.

Investigators must backtrack to find the original source, potentially interviewing students in a number of classrooms.

“If school got released, now we're going to each individual residence across the county trying to talk to (each) student,” Kloster said. “We'll have to call out teams of detectives.”

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Sometimes the information is incomplete.

“They'll just say, 'some kid named Will said it' walking in between the hallways in third period,” Kloster said. “So then I have to go to the school database and research every ‘Will’ student that we have that may have attended a classroom in that wing.”

It becomes time and resource intensive “just to get to the root cause and have an interview with that person who may or may not have even said that.”

Such efforts can take all night, and if the source isn’t identified, steps may need to be taken to increase security to that school.

Kloster said it’s a big expenditure of tax dollars, and has a significant impact.

“The whole student body, these kids, they share everything on social media. So now it puts the entire community in fear,” he said. “People aren't going to school; parents are afraid to drop their kids off at school; kids are missing school. It's just very disruptive to the entire community.”

What can help?

Snyder said parents must discuss with their children what they post on social media matters. Consequences to making threats can be significant, including suspension, expulsion or even arrest.

Abollo said parents should be aware that having a cell phone comes with large responsibility. He's concerned some parents don’t monitor their children as they should or have appropriate limits on their cell phones.

“Kids are too plugged in, they constantly have their devices – to their detriment,” Abollo said.

Will Greenlee is a breaking news reporter for TCPalm. Follow Will on Twitter @OffTheBeatTweet or reach him by phone at 772-267-7926. E-mail him at will.greenlee@tcpalm.com

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Social media, society changes influence threats to schools, students