ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – St. Johns County Sheriff Robert Hardwick says his office is treating every school in the county as a potential target amid a national AI-generated social media trend known as the “Cat in the Hat.”
“We treated it as every school in St. Johns County to protect them,” Hardwick said.
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The trend involves AI-generated images — often of a menacing figure — sometimes paired with threatening captions. Hardwick says the images have been circulating widely online, with some posts containing explicit threats of violence.
“Again, it’s a national trend, so some of the images actually have some type of post with it, too, as well, with some specific threat, you know, causing some type of violence,” he said.
Hardwick says the threats have not been isolated to school hours. He and the deputy superintendent were at a makeup football game between Tocoi Creek and Beachside High Schools Monday night when threats were received in real time.
“At this time, we have no local suspect with those threats here in St. Johns County,” he said.
The sheriff says much of the local activity stems from residents sharing and resharing existing posts — sometimes adding their own commentary.
“We physically said, don’t fall into sharing this post. It’s kind of pouring salt on the wound,” Hardwick said.
Superintendent urges parents to use Fortify Florida
St. Johns County School District Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen echoed the sheriff’s message, urging families to rely on verified information rather than social media rumors.
“There’s a lot of posts or different social media that goes out that’s not even true. They’re rumors, they’re made up,” Asplen said. “I would hope that parents would contact us or put it on Fortify Florida so they can get the facts.”
Asplen says the district follows through on every report, even when threats are determined to be fake.
“Even when it’s fake, which is 99.9% of the time, we still follow through with our processes, our protocols, and exhaust resources every single time just to make sure that we are all safe,” he said.
St. Johns County has a youth resource deputy sheriff assigned to each of its 46 public schools, with the exception of some schools in the city of St. Augustine.
