A Florida sheriff who says he has been driven to frustration by students making false threats of violence against schools is taking a new approach to deterrence: publicly sharing the mug shots of juveniles accused of such crimes and videos of them in handcuffs.

“Since parents, you don’t want to raise your kids, I’m going to start raising them,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said in a news conference last Friday. “Every time we make an arrest, your kid’s photo is going to be put out there. And if I can do it, I’m going to perp walk your kid.”

This week, Chitwood posted videos of three juveniles ages 11, 16 and 17 who are accused of making school shooting threats - a felony in Florida - being led into a holding cell in handcuffs. Florida law permits the release of the name and images of children arrested for a felony, but juvenile justice advocates expressed concern that Chitwood’s approach would not effectively rehabilitate young offenders.

“While it might feel good in the moment to shame and scare a child … these kinds of tactics ultimately don’t work,” Melissa Goemann, senior policy counsel for the National Youth Justice Network, told The Washington Post.

Chitwood said in an interview with The Post that he was “pushed … over the edge” after responding to 54 threats that were reported in a 12-hour period between Thursday evening and Friday morning last week, which cost $21,000 in overtime for his department to investigate. He said the threats taxed his officers, disrupted Volusia County schools and subjected students to stress and trauma.

“Everybody’s wondering, ‘Oh, the 11-year-old; oh, the 16-year-old,’” Chitwood said. “How about the other 66,000 students that are trying to do the right thing in the public school system, who are consistently living on lockdowns? … That’s where my position is.”

Schools in Florida have faced a deluge of violent threats made by students in recent weeks, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported. Chitwood said that as of last Friday, 207 threats have been reported in Volusia County this school year through FortifyFl, a state app for reporting threats and suspicious activity developed after the Parkland school shooting. The total during the last school year was 352.

Some of those reports have been legitimate concerns from vigilant citizens, Chitwood said, but in the mix are a number of hoax reports by students who later claim they were only joking.

Volusia County Schools said in a statement last week, which it shared again on Thursday, that the school district had experienced an increase in threats and that students found responsible for spreading false information would face disciplinary and legal consequences. The school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.

Chitwood told The Post that he felt powerless amid the burden to adequately investigate each threat and avert a potential shooting.

“I get all the tips - there’s days that my cellphone just is consistently, ‘Ding, ding, ding, ding!’” Chitwood said. “It’s one school after another: ‘It’s a bomb. Somebody saw somebody with a gun.’ It’s all hands on deck on these things. And you’re like, ‘What do we do?’ And I don’t know the answer, but you’ve got to do something.”

Alongside the public outing on social media, Chitwood said his department is working with prosecutors to seek severe sentences for any juveniles accused of making threats against schools, including 21 days in juvenile detention, 60 days with an ankle monitor and a six month ban on using electronic devices except for school. He also wants to charge the parents of children involved.

“If you parent your kids, tell them … what the consequences are, there’s maybe a chance that you can cut these things down,” Chitwood said.

Roy Miller, the president and founder of Florida-based children’s advocacy organization American Children’s Campaign, said he understood Chitwood’s frustration, but added that Florida has underinvested in supportive services for juvenile offenders in Florida.

“Sheriff Chitwood is saying, ‘I’m very frustrated, and the parents need to take charge,’” Miller said. “Well, guess what? I talk to parents all across the state of Florida, and they tell us that when we try to go out and find services to help our children, the services aren’t available.”

Goemann, of the National Youth Justice Network, said publicly outing the children on social media before they’re tried for the crimes they are accused of could also have damaging impacts on their ability to continue their studies or find employment.

“It’s going to be hard for them to ever put this behind them, which is the opposite of what we want to do,” she said.

Goemann also likened Chitwood’s strategy to controversial “Scared Straight” programs that place juvenile offenders in prison or jail facilities to scare them and discourage criminal behavior. Studies found such programs to be ineffective and potentially harmful, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice reported in 2018.

Chitwood said he has received “overwhelming” support from parent-teacher associations in the county and has also received encouragement from families whose children died in the 2018 Parkland school shooting since announcing his decision. Max Schachter, whose son Alex was killed in the shooting, told the Associated Press he approved of Chitwood’s decision.

“I’m not really interested in what the country thinks,” Chitwood said. “What I worry about is what my parents and teachers think.”