A fed-up Florida sheriff recently warned parents that his department will start to "perp-walk" children and release their mug shots over bogus school shooting threats. Days later, the department followed through on its warning.
During a press conference last week, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood told the community that his department has been inundated with hoax school shooting threats, noting that his office has already spent $21,000 investigating the reports.
'We're going to publicly shame them and their parents.'
He started the presser by stating, "This is absolutely out of control, and it ends now."
Chitwood noted that over a one-day period, at least 54 tips were reported to Fortify Florida, an application that allows residents to report suspicious activity. According to Chitwood, many of the reported tips are phony.
"That means investigators in the school district have been running around the clock to investigate these tips, which are all turning out to be false," he explained.
So far in 2024, the department has arrested seven people "for written threats to kill," Chitwood said, noting that one student was arrested for attempting to bring a loaded firearm to a school game. He also stated that 11 weapons had been brought onto school property.
"Since parents, you don't want to raise your kids, I'm going to start raising them," Chitwood declared.
He explained that moving forward, when a child is arrested for making school threats, the department will release their mug shot and conduct a "perp-walk."
"Every time we make an arrest, your kid's photo is gonna be put out there. And, if I could do it, I'm going to perp-walk your kid so that everybody can see what your kid's up to," Chitwood said. "If I can any way find out that a parent knew what was going on and wasn't doing anything, your ass is getting perp-walked with them."
Chitwood stated that the department would put up a poster with photographs of every child who has been arrested and which school they attend.
"From there on out, we're going to publicly shame them and their parents," he remarked. "So, parents, do your job. Don't let Sheriff Chitwood raise your kids."
He called the situation "absolutely ridiculous."
"Go talk to the families who have lost a loved one in a school shooting. These little knuckleheads think it's funny. Go talk to those parents and see how funny this is," Chitwood said. "It's not. We're going to come and get you. We're going to put you out for public embarrassment. And I know a set of parents right now that they're looking at $11,000 each because somebody's paying this bill."
Days later, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office delivered on its promise, releasing a mug shot and a video of deputies perp-walking an 11-year-old boy into custody for allegedly threatening a school shooting.
According to the department, the boy "had a written list of names and targets." He told law enforcement that "it was all a joke."
Chitwood posted on X, "As promised. We just arrested a Creekside Middle School student who made threats to commit a school shooting at Creekside or Silver Sands Middle School."
The post included a video and a photograph of items confiscated from the boy's house, which included "airsoft guns, fake ammunition, knives, swords and other weapons he was showing off to other students on video."
The child has been charged with a felony.
"I can and will release the names and photos of juveniles who are committing these felonies, threatening our students, disrupting our schools and consuming law enforcement resources," Chitwood remarked.
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When there’s a tragedy, there is a politician exploiting the tragedy to push their political agenda — and the Apalachee High School shooting in Georgia is no different.
The horror began when a 14-year-old student shot and killed two students, Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, and two teachers, Christina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall.
Upon further investigation, the police have reported that the shooter was clearly obsessed with mass shootings, specifically the Parkland school shooting in 2018, which left 17 people dead.
Now, the Biden administration is using the shooting to suggest that guns need to be taken out of the hands of citizens and placed only in the arms of the government.
Sara Gonzales of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered” couldn’t disagree more.
“Obviously, if you’re paying attention, you know that murder is illegal. You know that schools are gun-free zones, and you can’t make murder more illegal, okay? It’s already illegal, and bad people are going to do really bad things. So, the least we can do for our kids is provide meaningful security for them,” Gonzales says.
The Apalachee High School was outfitted with an armed School Resources Officer, and the damage might have been much worse had they not been on the scene.
However, Kamala Harris has gone on record claiming that our schools need to be “demilitarized” and police officers don’t belong in them.
“Eliminating police officers, school resource officers, from the schools will do nothing except make our children sitting ducks. And Kamala says she wants to demilitarize,” Gonzales says.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wasted no time using this moment to capitalize on the Biden administration's agenda, telling Americans that “we need universal background checks” and to “ban assault weapons.”
“The bodies aren’t even cold, yet let’s not waste a moment of our time to grandstand, to take away your Second Amendment rights,” Gonzales comments.
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The Associated Press has once again furnished the Harris campaign with propaganda to further mislead voters about its political adversaries.
Following a horrific school shooting in Georgia on Wednesday, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) expressed his sympathy for the victims and their families and lamented the fact that such tragedies happen.
The AP mutilated Vance's remarks both in a now-deleted social post and in a since-re-titled article with the ostensible aim of painting him as callous and accepting of the school-shooting status quo.
The Harris campaign did not miss a beat, seizing upon the AP's deceptive framing to engage in some deception of its own — providing a damning characterization of Vance's remarks and recommendations wholly divorced from reality.
'More bulls*** from the Fake News AP.'
Although the Associated Press has walked back its misleading titles, the false narrative it inspired lives on in the propaganda shared by the Harris campaign and its boosters.
A school shooting took place Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, claiming the lives of two teachers and two students.
Vance told the crowd at a campaign rally in Phoenix the following day:
First of all, what happened in Georgia is just an awful tragedy. And I know we've got a lot of parents and a lot of grandparents in this room — I mean, I cannot imagine. You know, little kids so excited to go back to school, God love them, and they're at their first week back from the summer, and an absolute barbarian decides to open fire and take their lives and also a couple teachers.
The video the Associated Press shared to YouTube omitted the following from its playback of Vance's speech:
We gotta think about these people. If you're the praying type, and I know I am, we gotta hold them up in prayer. We gotta be hoping for the best for this incredible community because no parent should have to deal with this. No child should have to deal with this. And yes, after holding these folks up in prayer and giving them our sympathies — because that's what people deserve in a time of tragedy — then we have to think about how to make this less common. Now look: the Kamala Harris' answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens' guns away from them. That is what Kamala Harris wants to do. But we have to ask ourselves, we actually have been able to run an experiment on this because you've got some states with very strict gun laws and you've got some states that don't have strict gun laws at all. And the states with strict gun laws — they have a lot of school shootings, and the states without strict gun laws, some of them have school shootings too, so clearly strict gun laws is not the thing that is going to solve this problem.
The AP resumed sharing footage from Vance's speech at the point where the senator discussed a potential remedy to this problem, stating, "I don't like this. I don't like to admit this. I don't like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets."
Vance added, "We have got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they're not able to."
The Ohio senator noted further that this is not the reality he wants, particularly not for his own children, but this is the reality "that we live in."
The Associated Press covered the speech Thursday. Although the body of the article was relatively accurate in its characterization of Vance's remarks, the corresponding title and social media post, which netted millions of impressions and thousands of retweets prior to its deletion, told a different story.
The original article title — which survives on the pages of various publications that recycle the Associated Press' content and has lookalikes in the pages of the Washington Post and other liberal publications — read, "JD Vance says school shootings are a 'fact of life,' calls for better security."
Noticeably absent from the title was the indication he "lament[ed]" the reality of school shootings; specifically that he said, "I don't like that this is a fact of life."
The post on X, like the original article, said, "JD Vance says school shootings are 'fact of life,' calls for better security."
Critics cognizant of the difference between the Associated Press' framing and the actual content of Vance's remarks lashed out. Soon, a community note was appended to the post, prompting the liberal publication to change the article's title and delete its tweet.
The Trump War Room on X wrote, "More bulls*** from the Fake News AP."
Vance spokesman William Martin told Fox News Digital, "This is yet another case of the fake news media brazenly lying about a Republican politician. Senator Vance said exactly the opposite of what the Associated Press claimed."
"It should come as no surprise that the AP lost any and all credibility it had years ago, because they will lie about literally anything in order prop up the Democrats," continued Martin. "Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has called for all police officers to be removed from schools, putting children all over America at risk. It's yet another example of how Kamala Harris's weak, failed, and dangerously liberal agenda makes her unfit for office."
The new title for the article is "JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a 'fact of life' and calls for better security."
The new tweet reads, "JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a 'fact of life' and says the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia."
The AP said in a subsequent message, "This post replaces an earlier post that was deleted to add context to the partial quote from Vance."
The Harris campaign ran with the Associated Press' framing, hyperlinking it to an internal communications plan then tweeting, "JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just 'a fact of life' and attacking common sense gun safety reform."
'Instead of addressing her own failures, she lies about what I said.'
In an official statement, the Harris campaign wrote, "Yesterday, Vice President Harris said 'it doesn't have to be this way' in response to another senseless school shooting. Donald Trump and JD Vance think school shootings are a 'fact of life' and 'we have to get over it.'"
— (@)
The Trump campaign responded, "Kamala's interns just released a statement pushing FAKE NEWS that the Associated Press just retracted. Watch the full video and you'll clearly see that JD Vance does not say what they claim he said. These morons do nothing but lie every single day."
Harris' campaign was not alone in peddling the falsehood, however; its leader had similarly gone in on the action, tweeting, "School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn't have to be this way."
Vance responded directly, writing, "Kamala wants to take security out of our schools instead of protecting our children. Instead of addressing her own failures, she lies about what I said. More desperation from the biggest fraud in American politics."
Late last month, the Associated Press supported another false Democratic narrative.
Blaze News previously reported that the liberal publication parroted the false Democratic claim that Project 2025 is the "Republican blueprint for a second Trump term in the White House."
Project 2025 responded on X, "Is this the AP or the DNC account? Project 2025 does not represent any candidate or campaign."
Only after the damage was done did the AP correct its error and delete its post, noting it had "misidentified the blueprint as Republican."
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Georgia police said one suspect is in custody after a high school shooting Wednesday morning that resulted in casualties and injuries.
The shooting was reported at the Apalachee High School in Winder about 10:45 a.m. Winder is about an hour northeast of Atlanta.
'I have directed all available state resources to respond to the incident at Apalachee High School and urge all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state.'
Administrators sent a message to parents saying the school was "currently in a hard lockdown after reports of gunfire." The message said law enforcement had arrived and cautioned parents against going to the school while officers worked to secure the area.
“Casualties have been reported, however details on the number or their conditions is not available at this time,” the Barrow County Sheriff's Office said in a brief statement.
Grady Hospital in Atlanta received at least one shooting victim from the high school, the Athens Banner-Herald reported, citing a USA Today report.
Officials around 11:30 a.m. said the school had been cleared, and students were being released to their parents.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the FBI said on social media they were at the school to aid in the investigation.
"I have directed all available state resources to respond to the incident at Apalachee High School and urge all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state," Republican Gov. Brian Kemp wrote on social media.
"We will continue to work with local, state, and federal partners as we gather information and further respond to this situation," he added.
Around 1,900 students attend Apalachee High School; Winder's population is about 18,000. It's one of two high schools in the Barrow County school system, the Banner-Herald reported, adding that the sheriff's office said other nearby schools were placed into lockdown as a precaution.
This is a developing story and may be updated with additional information.
- YouTube youtu.be
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The former school district police chief who oversaw the failed response to the May 24, 2022, elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, has been indicted on 10 counts of felony child endangerment.
An 18-year-old gunman entered Robb Elementary School and slaughtered 19 children and two teachers in adjoining classrooms 111 and 112. It was not until 77 minutes after police first arrived on the scene that U.S. Border Patrol neutralized the shooter. In the meantime, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department Chief Pete Arredondo ostensibly worked against an effective solution and wasted precious time down the hall.
The Department of Justice's 600-page January report on law enforcement's response to the shooting concluded that Arredondo, the de facto incident commander on the day of the incident, "had the necessary authority, training, and tools" but did not ultimately "provide appropriate leadership, command, and control, including not establishing an incident command structure nor directing entry into classrooms 111 and 112."
Extra to ordering officers not to enter the classrooms where the shooter was located, Arredondo dropped his radios at the time of arrival, treated the incident "as a barricaded subject scenario and not as an active shooter situation," and waited for SWAT to arrive.
The DOJ's report made clear that rather than "push forward immediately and continuously toward the threat until entry was made into classrooms 111/112 and the threat was eliminated," Arredondo and those with him retreated after the initial burst of gunfire.
The Texas House of Representatives' 2022 interim report similarly indicated that while in the position to act, Arredondo impotently "remained in the hallway where he lacked reliable communication with other elements of law enforcement, and he was unable to effectively implement staging or command and control of the situation."
The Ulvalde Leader-News reported that Arredondo's indictment this week accused him of "intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, and with criminal negligence" placing 10 children in imminent danger of bodily injury or death by failing to identify the situation as an active shooter incident despite hearing gunshots in the classroom.
The indictment further indicated that upon learning children had been injured, Arredondo elected to direct officers to evacuate the wing before confronting the shooter; failed to ascertain whether the door to classroom 111 was even locked; and failed to "timely provide keys and breaching tools to enter classrooms 111 and 112," reported NBC News.
The DOJ's report had noted the likelihood that the door was unlocked.
Shortly after turning himself in to the Uvalde County Jail Thursday, Arredondo was released on bail.
The Uvalde Police Department noted that it had not been contacted by the district attorney's office regarding any of its staff and presently had no comment on the matter.
The Austin American-Statesman reported that a grand jury also indicted former UCISD officer Adrian Gonzales. Arredondo and Gonzales each face up to two years in jail and a $10,000 fine if convicted.
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A radical transvestite marched into a Christian elementary school in Nashville on March 27, 2023, and murdered three 9-year-old children — Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and Hallie Scruggs — and three adults — teacher Cynthia Peak, custodian Mike Hill, and head of school Katherine Koonce.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department refrained from announcing a possible motive for the attack, prompting months of speculation about its anti-Christian nature as well as the likelihood that LGBT activists' alarmist rhetoric and destabilizing sex-change drugs were factors. The FBI appeared especially keen to hide the transvestite shooter's motives from the public.
After a year of uncertainty and Democrats exploiting the massacre to push gun bans, the truth has become abundantly clear, thanks to Michael Patrick Leahy, the CEO of Star News Digital Media and the editor of the Tennessee Star, who published the shooter's suicide note and other writings, which his paper obtained from an unnamed source some have suggested is close to the MNPD's investigation.
It appears Leahy may ultimately pay a price for doing his job and protecting his source.
After Stacy Cameron, a reporter for a local Fox News affiliate, effectively snitched on the Tennessee Star for detailing the shooter's leaked writings, l'Ashea Myles — the Democratic judge for Part III of the Tennessee 20th Judicial District Chancery Court — ordered Leahy last week to court for a show cause hearing.
'This very lower, lower, lower court judge is being pressured by somebody far above her pay grade.'
The purported point of the hearing, set to take place Monday, is "to determine why the alleged publication of certain purported documents by Petitioners Star Digital Media and Michael Leahy, as the Editor-in-Chief, does not violate the Orders of this Court subjecting them to contempt proceedings and sanctions."
Blaze News investigative reporter Steve Baker, who himself was arrested earlier this year for working in a journalistic capacity, will be on the scene for the hearing and has spoken with Leahy concerning the hazards of reporting on what the liberal media appears otherwise keen to ignore.
"My feeling is that this very lower, lower, lower court judge is being pressured by somebody far above her pay grade to bring action here against a local journalist who legally acquired documents and information about one of the most substantial shootings in the country last year," Baker told Blaze News. "This was obviously a situation where the FBI did not want these documents out, did not want the manifesto out."
Baker suggested that the apparent aim is to stop the release of documents that the powers that be "see as inappropriate because, once again, we have a favored class of citizens — a subclass — of transgender people," and such damning information might also implicate the use of profitable antidepressants and puberty blockers.
'The documents are public record, and they should be released.'
Blaze News reached out to the ACLU as well as its Nashville chapter about the prospect that a newspaper man might be punished for doing his job. Neither responded by deadline. PEN America and Freedom House similarly did not respond to questions about their ostensibly selective support for embattled reporters.
When it became clear that officials weren't going to cough up a motive or the shooter's writings, the Tennessee Firearms Association and the Nashville Police Association unsuccessfully sued, demanding that officials release the killer's manifesto and other writings.
When the FBI denied its public records request, Leahy's Tennessee Star also filed a lawsuit.
"The documents are public record, and they should be released. Metro government failed to release them; we asked them nicely. They didn't. They shared those documents with the FBI, and we asked them nicely in accordance with the law. When government entities don't comply with the law, we have recourse through the courts," said Leahy.
Extra to pressure from the free press and local organizations, law enforcement officials were met with a request from 77 Tennessee House Republicans for the transvestite shooter's "writings as well as relevant medical records and toxicology reports."
The MNPD dragged its feet and asked a court to first permit family members of the victims and other interested parties to raise objections to the release of the documents.
Sure enough, the Covenant Presbyterian Church and the associated school filed a motion to block the release of the manifesto, citing privacy concerns. Parents with children at the school also filed a motion in May 2023 against the release of the manifesto, expressing concern that its content might inspire future shootings — a line of argumentation nearly identical to that advanced by the FBI that same month.
Blaze News previously reported that officials with the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group wrote to Nashville Police Chief John Drake on May 11, 2023, about the value in suppressing so-called "legacy tokens," claiming that "public access to legacy tokens will contribute to future attacks."
The FBI also warned that a failure to hide the truth from the public "will also facilitate false narratives and inaccurate information" — and possibly even inflammatory "conspiracy theories" by unsanctioned experts.
The success of this apparent federal-supported coverup was endangered when conservative commentator Steven Crowder released three pages of the manifesto, which were later authenticated. Nashville's Democratic mayor vowed to investigate the leak, and seven MNPD officers were placed on administrative duty.
The investigation proved fruitless.
The matter of the release of the remainder of the documents remained under consideration in Myles' Davidson County court.
Deborah Fisher of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government noted that Myles issued an order in February stating that documents pertaining to the case about the documents, "no matter how obtained ... SHALL NOT be filed with the Court but SHALL BE submitted for in camera review following the procedures delineated in this case. … Any efforts to usurp the Orders of the Court by any Party, Counsel and/or Amici regarding the matters currently under in camera review shall be sanctioned to the fullest extent of the law, including contempt of court."
This and a follow-up order appear to be the orders Leahy is imagined to have run afoul of.
After the Fox News affiliate asked Myles about the Tennessee Star's reports earlier this month — which revealed, among other things, that the FBI floated the idea of destroying the shooter's writings and the shooter received decades of treatments at Vanderbilt Psychiatric, where she allegedly expressed violent fantasies — the judge ordered Leahy in his individual capacity to show up for a show cause hearing.
Daniel Horwitz, counsel for Leahy, stated in a June 12 court filing that the court's show cause order violates Tennessee's shield law protecting journalists' sources and information, whether obtained confidentially or not. Horwitz also suggested that the newly minted Democratic judge's order also contravenes Tennessee's contempt law, "deprives Mr. Leahy of minimum due process guarantees," and suffers from "other serious constitutional infirmities."
The court filing further indicated that Myles' order did not specify the "Orders of this Court" that were supposedly violated.
'This is what the free press is for.'
"In contempt proceedings, 'the order underlying the charge must be clear, specific, and unambiguous,'" wrote Horwitz. "The conduct detailed in the Court's Show Cause Order does not plausibly violate any of [the court's] previous mandates."
Myles refused to rescind her order, noting that if she concludes "a leak did in fact occur by any party to this case and that such action was in violation of the Orders of this Court, or that there has been any abuse of, or unlawful interference with, the process or proceedings of the Court, or any violation as set forth in Tennessee Code Annotated § 29-9-102, this Court may then enter an order and notice appointing an attorney as amicus curiae to the court for investigative purposes, and to initiate and prosecute a contempt citation."
Baker indicated that if held in contempt, Leahy noted he could get 10 days for each supposed violation. With at least 30 offending stories published this month, it is apparently possible that the newspaper man could land hundreds of days in the slammer.
When speaking to the newspaper man this week about the prospect of legal strife over the faithful execution of journalistic duties, Baker said, "Welcome to the club."
Leahy suggested to Baker that 10 days would be a walk in the park. Hundreds of days for fulfilling his obligation as a newsman would, however, be a different story.
Former acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark spoke out in defense of Leahy Thursday, noting, "What's being threatened against Mike Leahy seems to be a strange amalgam of 1) violating the First Amendment ban on prior restraints on speech; 2) a threatened mystery violation of law just like the Alvin Bragg case against Trump ('step right up, ladies and gentlemen, pick a plus-up crime, any plus-up crime'); and 3) weaponization of contempt law, like what's going on down in Fulton County with Judge Glanville in the Young Thug trial."
"What's going on in America? It's like a slice of the state judiciary across multiple States has lost its collective mind," added Clark.
"The American people deserve to know the details of how Hale was radicalized by the trans agenda. And the victims' family especially deserve to learn that information. This is what the free press is for," continued Clark. "It's not designed to coddle the trans movement or keep secrets that could get people killed through ignorance."
State Rep. Jeremy Faison (R) noted the Tennessee Legislature "will not stand for an activist judge who weaponizes their courtroom. [Leahy] is the press and does not have to prove to any courtroom that he is innocent."
Republican state Sen. Ken Yager said he would sponsor Faison's resolution to remove "judges engaging in abuse like this."
Concerning the liberal media and supposed press freedom groups' relative silence on Leahy's court appearance Monday, Baker indicated that either the First Amendment "is fundamental to the freedom of all people or it's only based on ideological preference."
"Very interesting to me that over and over and over again I hear conservatives, libertarians say, 'I will die for your right to say what you want to say even if I disagree with it. But we never get a reciprocal response from the other side," added Baker.
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The AP's misleading quote was quickly exploited by the Kamala Harris campaign.
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