by Aliyya Swaby, ProPublica, and Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio

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In late September, Torri was driving down the highway with her 11-year-old son Junior in the back seat when her phone started ringing.

It was the Hamilton County Sheriff’s deputy who worked at Junior’s middle school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Deputy Arthur Richardson asked Torri where she was. She told him she was on the way to a family birthday dinner at LongHorn Steakhouse.

“He said, ‘Is Junior with you?’” Torri recalled.

Earlier that day, Junior had been accused by other students of making a threat against the school. When Torri had come to pick him up, she’d spoken with Richardson and with administrators, who’d told her he was allowed to return to class the next day. The principal had said she would carry out an investigation then. ProPublica and WPLN are using a nickname for Junior and not including Torri’s last name at the family’s request, to prevent him from being identifiable.

When Richardson called her in the car, Torri immediately felt uneasy. He didn’t say much before hanging up, and she thought about turning around to go home. But she kept driving. When they walked into the restaurant, Torri watched as Junior happily greeted his family.

Soon her phone rang again. It was the deputy. He said he was outside in the strip mall’s parking lot and needed to talk to Junior. Torri called Junior’s stepdad, Kevin Boyer, for extra support, putting him on speaker as she went outside to talk to Richardson. She left Junior with the family, wanting to protect her son for as long as she could.

Richardson quickly made his intentions clear. “We’re coming to arrest him,” he told the parents.

In Torri’s memory, everything that happened next is a blur. Both parents began pleading with the officer: They told him Junior is autistic and would feel claustrophobic in the back of a police car in handcuffs. They said he wasn’t a danger to anyone. Could they drive him to the juvenile detention center themselves? “‘There’s no reason for you to put bracelets on an 11-year-old. He doesn’t understand,’” Boyer recalls saying.

It didn’t work. Torri went inside to get Junior, holding back tears as she tried to explain what was happening. Boyer heard Junior crying on the other end of the phone and began to give him a pep talk. “‘Hey, listen, they got it wrong. I’m on my way down to the jail, and I will not leave until you come home with us. But you have to go with them,’” he recalls telling Junior. “‘Just let them take you.’” Family members followed Torri and Junior into the parking lot to see what was happening, and strangers watched from their cars. Junior’s 5-year-old brother was sobbing.

Richardson put handcuffs on the 11-year-old and locked him in the back of the patrol car. In a police report written later that day, Richardson cited a new state law as the basis for the arrest. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment or to a detailed list of questions.

After a shooter killed six people at Nashville’s Covenant School in 2023, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature ignored calls to pass gun control measures. Instead, they passed a series of increasingly punitive laws aimed not only at preventing future violence but dissuading kids from making threats that disrupt school and terrify other students.

Two contradictory laws went into effect before this school year began. One requires school officials to expel a student only if their investigation finds the threat is “valid,” a term that the law does not define. The other mandates that police charge people, including kids, with felonies for making threats of any kind, credible or not. As a result, students across the state can be arrested for statements that wouldn’t even get them expelled.

Police in Tennessee say that even when kids make threats that are not credible, they need to be held accountable for their actions — including with arrests and felony charges. The Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association announced in September that law enforcement would “not tolerate anyone making threats and inciting fear within our schools and our community. Those responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Rep. Cameron Sexton, Tennessee House speaker and the Republican sponsor of the felony law, said his legislation is working as intended and will lead to safer schools. “Unfortunately sometimes you have to make examples of the first few who are doing it so that others know that it’s going to be taken seriously,” he said.

Tennessee has not yet released statewide data on how many arrests for threats of mass violence have been made since school started in August. But Hamilton County arrested 18 students in the first six weeks of the school year, more than twice as many as Nashville’s Davidson County — despite Hamilton having far fewer students. Data that ProPublica and WPLN obtained through a records request shows that at least 519 students were charged with threats of mass violence last school year, when it was a misdemeanor, an increase from 442 the........

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