A new law in Tennessee mandating that police charge both children and adults who make threats of mass violence with felonies, whether the threats are credible or not, has resulted in escalating arrests of young students, some of whom have mental and intellectual disabilities.
Among them is “Ty,” a 13-year-old, Black boy with autism who was arrested on the second day of this school year after he sneaked his favorite plush toy bunny into his backpack before heading off to his Hamilton County middle school, where he told his teacher he didn’t want anyone to look inside of it.
When the teacher asked why, Ty (real name withheld) responded, “Because the whole school will blow up,” he and his mother told ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio, which have co-published an ongoing series about Tennessee’s crackdown on student threats.
Ty’s teacher immediately called a school administrator, who then notified the police. In a counselor’s office, the backpack was opened to reveal only the harmless toy bunny inside. As Ty stood there confused about what he had done wrong, the police handcuffed him, patted him down, then put him in the back of a police car.
The sheriff’s department later issued a press release stating that the backpack was “found not to contain any explosive device.”
Ty was taken to a juvenile detention center, and suspended from his middle school for a few days. His case was dismissed in juvenile court soon after.
His mother was incredulous at the school’s handling of the incident. Ty’s special education plan states that he is social and friendly with other students, but regularly has outbursts and meltdowns in class due to his disability.
Federal law prohibits schools from punishing students with disabilities too harshly for behaviors that are caused by or related to their disability. And a state law requires school officials to expel a student who makes a threat of mass violence for a year, but only if their investigation finds the threat is valid.
But another, competing state law, passed by Tennessee’s Republican-controlled Legislature in the wake of a shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School in March of 2023, where six people were killed, now mandates that police charge all people, kids and adults, with felonies for making mass violence threats of any kind, whether or not they are later found to credible.
As a result, students across the state are now being arrested for making statements that would not get them expelled from school, ProPublica noted.
“Once you looked at his backpack, if there was nothing in there to hurt anyone, then why did you handcuff my 13-year-old autistic son who didn’t understand what was going on and take him down to juvenile?” said Ty’s mother, who decided to transfer him out of Ooltewah Middle School.
“Whenever we go past that school, Ty’s like: ‘Am I going back to jail, mom?’ … He’s for real traumatized,” she said. “I felt like nobody at that school was really fighting for him. They were too busy trying to justify what they did.”
The state doesn’t collect data on how the felony law, which went into effect in July, is impacting students with disabilities. But ProPublica obtained data from Hamilton County, which revealed that in the first six weeks of the school year, 18 students were arrested for making threats of mass violence, even though school officials labeled most of the threats as “low level” with “no evidence of motive.”
Of the students arrested, 39 percent were Black, compared to 30 percent of students in the district overall. And 33 percent had disabilities, more than double the share of disabled students in the district’s population.
Statewide, ProPublica found that at least 519 students were charged with threats of mass violence last school year, when it was a misdemeanor, up from 442 students the year before. Many of the students were middle schoolers, and most were boys.
That uptick in juvenile arrests for making threats at school mirrors a national trend.
In the three weeks after two teachers and two students were killed at Apalachee High School in the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history, more than 700 children and teenagers were arrested and accused of making violent threats against schools in at least 45 states, according to a New York Times review of news reports, law enforcement statements and court records. Almost 10 percent were 12 or younger.
Those arrests came as police and schools confronted an onslaught of threats of violence, gunfire and bombings, the Times noted. The reports terrified students and their parents, caused attendance to plunge and forced the temporary closure of dozens of campuses.
In most instances, the warnings were not credible. But the police must investigate every threat, and the surging numbers have frustrated and exhausted law enforcement agencies. After previous shootings, including the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, and the recent Georgia shooting, law enforcement officials were criticized for ignoring warning signs.
Disability rights advocates say students like Ty should not be getting arrested under Tennessee’s current law, which includes an exception for people with intellectual disabilities, which Ty has, in addition to autism.
They’re also pushing lawmakers to amend the state law to make broader exceptions for students with other kinds of disabilities, including those that make students prone to frequent outbursts or disruptive behavior.
Zoe Jamail, the policy coordinator for Disability Rights Tennessee, met last year with Rep. Bo Mitchell, a Nashville Democrat who co-sponsored the new zero tolerance law on threats, to implore him to add new language to the bill that would make it compliant with federal law, reported ProPublica.
“No student who makes a threat that is determined to be a manifestation of the student’s disability shall be charged under this section,” read one version of the amendment, which was not taken up for a vote in the state Legislature.
Mitchell said he was “heartbroken” to hear that Ty was handcuffed and traumatized. But, he added, “We’re trying to stop the people who should know better from doing this, and if they do it, they should have more than a slap on the wrist.”
Still, Mitchell said he would be open to considering a carve-out in the law in the next legislation session for students with a broader range of disabilities.
The bill’s other co-sponsor, Rep. Cameron Sexton, the Republican House speaker, was less sympathetic.
He acknowledged that school officials and law enforcement may need more training and resources to better implement the law. But he stood firm that students with disabilities are capable of carrying out acts of mass violence and should be punished.
“I think you can make a lot of excuses for a lot of people,” he said.
