Lawson: May Need To Further Penalize Students, Parents

15th District Attorney General Jason Lawson said officials are discussing new options to curtail the recent rash of school violence threats across the Upper Cumberland.

Lawson said he believes the school threats come from various places. Lawson said a big portion of threats are not credible and come from attention seekers.

“You do have some people who just want to cause trouble,” Lawson said. “So they make these sorts of threats and then in addition to that you have kids in the school who don’t take it seriously the severity of these threats and oftentimes will end up spreading these threats.”

Lawson said the threats are troubling as they are causing kids to be scared to go to school. Lawson said he has spoken to legislators to consider changing the law to better enforce threats of violence being made against schools.

“We were talking about these very issues and about what needs to be changed under the law,” Lawson said. “Hopefully we will see some different aspects that could be changed that maybe we require full payment of restitution. Maybe even requiring parents to pay full restitution for school threats when law enforcement has to respond and do overtime.”

Lawson said legislators made changes last year to try and discourage threats.

“I believe our juvenile judges are pretty regularly putting kids in juvenile detention for making these types of threats,” Lawson said. “Last year the legislatures suspended driver licenses for kids and prohibited them from buying handguns in the future. There are also mental health evaluations that are required of kids and community service. You name it everything the juvenile court system can do they are doing.”

Lawson said he hopes the possible new changes will educate the public and make students second guess before making a threat. Lawson said the law will have threats against the school will be given to law enforcement instead of spreading the threat on social media.