GREENSBORO, N.C. — After a TikTok trend started going around this week regarding school threats, several local schools have their own way to combat the bad behavior.
It involves the all-important phrase, "see something, say something."
The app encourages reporting suspicious activity and potentially saves lives. It's the Say Something Anonymous Reporting System and it launched in 2018. It's a program through the Sandy Hook Promise. The program is available nationwide.
"First we train the kids how to recognize when someone needs help, and then to give them a tool a mechanism to report that, and they can do this through the anonymous reporting system knowing that they are doing it safely and that the adults are taking it seriously," Nicole Hockley said.
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Nicole Hockley is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sandy Hook Promise. She said students can report an issue 24/7, 365 days a year. So far, more than 82,000 tips have come in.
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"Of the 82,000 tips that have come through to the anonymous reporting system, so far hand on heart, we can absolutely say we've intervened on mental health interventions for over 2,700 kids, we have stopped around 280 suicides, and we have averted more than 60 acts of school violence that involved a firearm, and that includes seven school shootings," Hockley said. "That means seven Sandy Hooks have not happened as a result of our system."
Hockley's mission is to protect students from gun violence. She said her youngest son Dylan was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
She said it's frustrating to see the latest TikTok challenge is to make school threats.
"Over the years I've had to deal with threats like this around 12/14 and otherwise threats like it's a joke," Hockley said. "This is not something to joke about, this is about human life."
Several school districts in the Triad use this system according to the organization. Those schools include Lexington City Schools, Elkin City Schools and Asheboro City Schools. As well as Rockingham, Yadkin, Alamance-Burlington, Davidson, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and Surry County Schools.
Guilford County Schools use a different, but similar program called CrisisGo.