“You’re never going to suspend, expel or charge your way out of targeted mass violence. Did those charges make that school safer? No.”
Tennessee charged sixteen middle school cheerleaders with disorderly conduct for a 45-second TikTok where they pretended to be school shooting victims. A 16-year-old got felony charges for an AI-generated video that was clearly a joke shared with ten friends. The cop who filed charges on the cheerleaders said they needed to be “held accountable through the court system.” This is what happens when the adults in the room are more interested in performing toughness than actually assessing threats. Real threat assessment experts say this approach does nothing to make schools safer.