Minnesota BCA breaks down viral 'Cat in the Hat' social media trend raising concerns at schools

(FOX 9) - A student in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota was arrested this week for making a school threat, and a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater campus sent out a shelter-in-place alert before police confirmed there was no danger to life safety. Both cases are putting a spotlight on how law enforcement handles school threats and what's driving the surge.

How threats are investigated

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans joined FOX 9 to break down how investigators approach every threat that comes in.

Local perspective:

"We consider all threats to schools a real threat," said Evans. "What we're looking at and probably what the public is thinking is, is there an actual threat that's going to be carried out towards our school? But we need to take every single threat and some of the hoaxes that you've just referenced. We treat those as real until we've determined that they're not."

Investigators look at where a threat originated, track it back to its source, identify who may have sent it and then determine whether that person has the means and intent to carry it out.

Minnesota reported 72 school-related threats in 2024, compared to just 13 the year before. Evans says a few things are driving that number up. Part of it is a real increase in threats at mass gathering locations — schools, faith-based institutions and politically motivated situations. But part of it is also better reporting. Schools are now required by law to report legitimate threats to the Minnesota Fusion Center, and as more schools comply, the numbers will continue to rise.

"We also see a large number of hoaxes that have been happening to our schools that happened throughout all of last year and we continue to see those as school starts in Minnesota this week and the week before and will continue throughout the year," said Evans.

The Cat in the Hat trend and swatting

A disturbing social media trend is also on law enforcement's radar. It involves a sinister version of the beloved children's book character the Cat in the Hat — and it's what authorities say was used in the Sleepy Eye threat this week.

What we know:

Evans explained that the trend takes the Dr. Seuss character and places a threatening version of it outside school buildings, paired with nursery rhymes that are rewritten to suggest a school shooting is being planned.

"These are hoaxes from what we've seen, but you never know until we really track it back and really be able to understand the person that sent it if they have an intention," said Evans. "This viral trend — everybody should know it just isn't funny. It's not something and it's designed and creates fear amongst kids that are going to our schools and parents alike."

Evans says both local law enforcement and the state fusion center are working to identify who is behind these posts and hold them accountable when threatening language is involved. He added that swatting — where someone calls 911 or a school directly to falsely report a crisis, sometimes with fake gunfire in the background — has also been on the rise. These calls divert law enforcement resources and cause widespread fear, and while some cases have been traced back to people in the U.S. who have been held accountable, others have originated from overseas.

AI, tips and what parents can do

Artificial intelligence is adding another layer of difficulty for investigators. Evans says AI can generate realistic-looking threats and even fake images of real people, making it harder to identify who is actually behind a threat — and raising the risk that someone could be wrongly accused.

Big picture view:

"AI is certainly increasingly making our jobs increasingly difficult across everything that we do," said Evans. "This can generate messages, generate threats, generate realistic-looking people that are very hard to distinguish."

Evans says the law enforcement community is actively engaged in national policy discussions about what guardrails should be placed on AI, including things like labeling AI-generated content on social media. He called it an evolving conversation that will need to balance the benefits of AI with the very real risks it poses in the wrong hands.

On the legislative side, a new law passed this year requires schools to adopt a tip reporting system — either through their own school or through a system at the BCA. Evans says physical security upgrades at school buildings have also been a priority. When a threat does come in, local law enforcement is the first call, and the BCA steps in to support through the Minnesota Fusion Center and a behavioral threat assessment and management team made up of agents and analysts. That team works with local agencies to determine whether a threat reflects a momentary lapse in judgment or whether someone is on a genuine path toward violence — and then connects them with the right intervention, whether that's mental health resources or criminal accountability.

What we don't know:

It is not yet clear how many of the 72 threats reported in 2024 were determined to be credible versus hoaxes, or how many cases involving the Cat in the Hat social media trend have been investigated in Minnesota specifically.