Where’s the outrage from SC lawmakers about fake school shooter calls alleged to start on TikTok?
Aren’t you tired of the fear? The fear that your child’s school is the next Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland or Uvalde?
It’s sick enough we live in a time when such concerns are real. We don’t need our anxieties heightened by social media “challenges” and “swatting,” or calls to make fake reports of incidents to draw a large police presence.
Thousands of parents and students were sick with that fear on Wednesday when almost 20 schools across South Carolina were subjected to false reports of active shooters being on campuses or similar hoaxes because of an alleged challenge on TikTok, according to reports.
In Richland County, Blythewood High School went through a full-on active shooter response Wednesday before police discovered the call was fake, as reported by The State’s Noah Feit. Sheriff Leon Lott said the fake call stemmed from a TikTok challenge.
Parents and students are not only fearful of active shooters, they’re angry that they have to live with such fear. If they’re numb to such fears and anger, that only demonstrates how engrossed they are in that fear.
But we can’t give in to feeling helpless.
Why aren’t South Carolina lawmakers and elected officials feeling the same way? Where’s their anger at what was practically an act of terror against thousands of South Carolina children, parents and anyone working in the schools that were targeted?
If lawmakers are sick and angry of this atmosphere of anxiety over shootings we live in, they aren’t being loud enough about their emotions, and they sure aren’t doing anything about the cause of those feelings.
If they want to serve South Carolinians and better our lives, they can start by saying that they’re with parents and students and know their feelings. Then they can take actions.
Where are lawmakers priorities?
A caucus of Republicans opened an inquiry into Dawn Staley’s cancellation of the BYU basketball games; legislators wasted months on doomed abortion legislation; they spent time on the bigoted “Save Women’s Sports Act” that had no practical application. But lawmakers barely say a word on an incident that induced dread in thousands?
Similar swatting or social media challenges have caused harm across the country and in South Carolina in the recent past.
In December, the Washington Post wrote about school threats and social media hoaxes that forced closures and created time-consuming investigations. That same month, Lexington 1 warned parents of a TikTok challenge to call in fake threats against schools, The Post and Courier of Charleston reported. Two months before that, The State’s Bristow Marchant wrote about schools being vandalized and having items stolen because of the “devious licks” challenge on TikTok. Scores of news outlets in cities throughout the United States have reported this year on an alleged TikTok challenge that involved airsoft guns shutting down schools.
Richland 2 Superintendent Baron Davis said of the incidents on Wednesday, “To see that (these hoaxes) happen simultaneously across our state, and probably other parts of the country because of a TikTok challenge, we have to take some action.”
Davis nailed it.
We need lawmakers and other state leaders to take action. What action? That’s for state leaders to figure out. But inaction is not an option. South Carolinians should not accept that its most powerful officials can’t do anything about this.
Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann, who called for full prosecution of any crank callers, and Attorney General Alan Wilson are a couple of elected officials, other than county sheriffs, who have said something about what happened Wednesday.
“False claims aren’t a joke and prosecutors across the state will not treat them as jokes,” Wilson said in a statement on social media. “I am disgusted by the recent numerous reports of false active shooter situations at South Carolina schools.”
Wilson’s words should not be hollow. Prosecuting those who made the phony calls is one part of what needs to happen. But figuring out how to combat these hoaxes can’t just be a police and prosecutors project.
Gov. Henry McMaster said Wednesday: “I hope that they find who’s doing that, I hope that kind of conduct will stop immediately” adding that the calls were thought to come from a foreign country.
South Carolina deserves more than “hope” that this will stop.
On Friday, McMaster took a productive step and requested that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division “work with local law enforcement and public school district officials to analyze the response” to the fake reports.
“These events require extensive training and preparedness, and I am confident this review will further enhance law enforcement’s ability to combat such criminal attacks,” McMaster said.
That’s a commendable response for a time in which school shootings are all too frequent. But McMaster’s response doesn’t address the cause of the problem.
Can South Carolina lawmakers bring TikTok leaders to our state to discuss solutions so that the chance of this happening again is reduced, if in fact what happened Wednesday originated on the social media company’s platform? And if the social media company won’t come, what can lawmakers do next?
Social media companies, like TikTok, could help themselves and the nation by banning all challenges and punishing users who engage in swatting. Any users who post those items either should be subject to lengthy suspensions if not permanently kicked off.
Whatever is done, we have to refuse to let South Carolina leaders act helpless.
This story was originally published October 8, 2022 at 5:00 AM.