Threats of school violence on the rise in Connecticut

More than 50 Connecticut school districts have been affected by “death threats” made on social media since the beginning of the school year. Public schools were evacuated and locked down in Winchester, Bristol, Bridgeport, Ansonia, Westport, Meriden, Norwalk, Waterbury, Fairfield, Uniondale, West Babylon, and Torrington as school officials erred on the side of caution. As of Oct. 25, 20 juveniles have been arrested.

Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker of the Connecticut Department of Education sent out a letter on Oct. 22 addressed to parents and guardians. The letter, also signed by Governor Ned Lamont (D) and Commissioner Ronnell Higgens of Emergency Services and Public Protection, serves to address parents’ fears and asks them to support safe schools.

“Plans focus on prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery. Safety and security begin at home. We encourage parents and caregivers to help us with this.”

In a recent discussion concerning the “dangers of technology,” Governor Lamont highlighted “Kids Online Safety Act” (KOSA) introduced by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) (which passed the Senate on July 30, 2024), and Blumenthal was asked about statewide online school threats.

KOSA, according to Blumenthal, “Creates a duty for online platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors.”

“Social media is an accelerant, like in a fire,” said Blumenthal. “It can spread and deepen harmful comments, threats and bullying.” Blumenthal continued, “I think effective law enforcement, as we’ve seen in Connecticut, as well as disapproval from contemporaries, peers and fellow students, can have an enormous effect.”

“Police are being very careful to see which is a serious threat and which is maybe some lark. Or somebody thinking it’s a mischievous prank,” said Lamont. Blumenthal added, “This is no joke.”

According to The Children’s Defense Fund: “Gun violence remains the number one cause of death for children ages one to 19, with the gun death rate for children at almost five in every 100,000 in 2020. Babies born the year of the watershed Columbine massacre are now 24 years old. No youth today knows a world without the threat of sudden deadly gun violence.”

The Lakeville Journal interviewed Winchester Chief of Police Christopher Ciuci following recent threats and school closings affected Winsted.

Almquist: Chief Ciuci, when did you begin working with the Winchester Police Department?

Ciuci: I’ve been in Winsted for a year and a half, after just shy of 29 years in Berlin. I grew up in Fairfield County and now I’m learning Litchfield County.

JA: Parents on social media said they were afraid to take their kids to Pearson School in Winsted (elementary school serving 300 children grades 3 to 6) recently. There was talk of a boy threatening with a gun on their school bus. There seemed to be a lot of confusion — parents concerned about what’s real and what isn’t. There was also a lot of criticism of the response from various authorities, including school administrators and police. After school shootings like the recent one in Georgia, there is usually an uptick in copycats on social media, but this seemed different. The threats were more prevalent — more national and widespread. Do these threats seem different to you?

CC: There was a contagious effect throughout Connecticut. What exacerbated that really was the social media. Once it got out there, it just kind of spiraled. It is hard dealing with all these different social media platforms. Getting out the proper message — there is a lot of misinformation. We have dealt with things like this in the past, so there are plans in place. We have a good relationship with the schools, and Emergency Management in Winsted. When you’re talking about school safety, it’s really that partnership between all of us — the parents, the community, the town, the Police department, the Fire department, and Emergency and Emergency Management — everybody. There are plans in place at the school required by state law — school safety plans, lockdown drills.

JA: Was the school’s response adequate?

CC: I thought the principal over at Pearson School did a good job. They were dealing with a child that is only 9 years old. In Connecticut you can’t even charge a child under 10 with a crime. To be honest with you, we don’t even want to get involved with a child so young. With juveniles, our first default mechanism is to divert from the criminal justice system. Especially with a child that age. We have diversion programs; a juvenile review board here, but in this situation, nothing really fit that criterion, because of the age of the child. The school had procedures in place. They met with their social workers, and threat assessment team. They did what they were supposed to do and made an assessment.

JA: Why were parents so critical of the response?

CC: I know where things got carried away because instead of the parents dealing directly with the school, or dealing directly with us, they just started putting stuff out on social media. Then that triggers and creates alarms, and that is what we want to try to avoid. After any incident like this it’s important to sit down, look at how it was handled, and determine what can we do better next time.

JA: It was reported that recently in Ansonia, a 13-year-old girl confessed that she made a threatening school post. She was charged with first-degree threatening and second-degree breach of the peace. In Florida, Sheriff Mike Chitwood perp walked an eleven-year-old suspect into custody, and a video of the child being arrested was shown to the public. The authorities said they wanted to publicly shame the parents and their child. How do you respond to that approach?

CC: It is hard to determine a lot of these threats that that are circulating now, because the technology allows them to know they’re anonymous. We don’t know where they’re coming in. They are disguising the numbers, disguising emails, disguising the social media posts. So, it’s difficult to track that back to the source and pursue it criminally. Make no mistake, if we can identify them, we really have a zero-tolerance policy at this department when it comes to threats. If a child was of age to be criminally charged, we would still follow through with that referral process, but we would divert them to the juvenile review board. But if there was a crime committed by someone of age, the message we want to send the child is that we’re going to pursue criminal charges.

JA: How do you determine a real threat?

CC: It is a multi-layered problem when the threat is real — you have the actual perpetrator, you have an actual crime that’s going to be committed. I think probably the hardest thing is determining whether a threat is real or not. We’re a small department without enough staffing. When you talk about school safety it takes a town-wide commitment. Not just supporting the people involved in public safety, but financially supporting them as well. Providing public safety is not cheap. But it’s in between handling calls for service such as dealing with school incidents which pulls everybody away from everything else.

The Children’s Defense Fund states: “Our nation’s young people deserve the chance to have a childhood free from violence and a country with leaders who ensure that they are safe in their schools, neighborhoods, and communities.”