The concentration this week of several attacks against educational centers carried out by teenagers, along with new threats, has put Polish authorities on high alert. Faced with rumors of an alleged coordinated threat or a viral challenge—which the police reject for now—the agents have reinforced internet surveillance, have inspected nearly 35,000 educational facilities in the country and have so far arrested 59 people, according to the latest police report, from six in the afternoon.
Among those arrested so far, reported by various sources, such as the Warsaw police in X, are a 13-year-old teenager from the capital who posted a photo of a knife in his class group chat and threatened other students; a 14-year-old boy, also from Warsaw, who was detained on school grounds with a knife and 11 firecrackers; another 16-year-old, who brought a balisong-type knife to the institute; and two 15-year-olds from Pruszków county, on the outskirts of the capital, who posted a video containing death threats. In Wroclaw, officers arrested a 16-year-old boy at a high school who had generated a photograph of himself with a knife using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and then sent it to a friend, Onet reports.
The authorities call for calm, but panic has already spread among many parents who have decided to leave their children at home this Friday, as Gazeta Wyborcza reports. In the schools of Warsaw, the same newspaper details, even the pencil cases are searched and fear also reaches the teachers. One teacher said, for example, that her husband had gotten her a can of pepper spray. According to the Ministry of Education, 59 educational centers have decided to remain closed.
In a joint press conference between those responsible for the operation to guarantee security in schools this Friday, in which 24,000 officials participate, the chief police commander, Marek Boroń, reported at midday that they have received 300 notices from teachers, parents and students. The police have detailed that they have recorded several instances of teenagers bringing dangerous tools to the centers and in addition to cases related to online threats. As of 5:00 p.m. there have been 172 incidents, according to a statement released in the afternoon.
On Wednesday, a 19-year-old man stabbed and injured nine people at a Vocational Training Institute in Ostroleka, 125 kilometers from Warsaw. The same day, police arrested another 17-year-old teenager who had two knives prepared to attack his school. On Thursday, another 15-year-old boy, equipped with a helmet with a camera to broadcast live, killed a guard and injured two people at his former primary school.
The succession of incidents triggered a wave of comments on Polish social networks about an alleged viral challenge or a coordinated action, but the police are ruling out that hypothesis for now after analyzing the mobile phones seized from this week's attackers and those arrested. Even the Prime Minister, the conservative Donald Tusk, who this Thursday called an emergency meeting with several ministries, pointed out the possibility of challenges on the Internet in an appearance: “This is influenced by a wave of violence on the Internet, but also by different types of challenges and by the unusual activity of some media outlets in promoting violence.” Tusk added that the Government was concerned about “the grim phenomenon of imitation”.
In a statement, the security forces this Friday denounced “a wave of false information” that has caused “enormous social unrest.” The police assure that they investigate the slightest sign of threat, both in educational centers and on the internet. Security has been reinforced at the facilities, 10,000 have been inspected, 13 incidents suspected of constituting crimes have been identified and 10 people have been arrested, mostly for making threats. As the police recall in their text, broadcast on social networks, “each announcement of activating an alarm or committing a crime carries serious legal consequences.”
The Minister of Digitalization, Krzysztof Gawkowski, assured in an interview on TVN24 that “there are no indications that any challenge is occurring on a national scale.” "We cannot rule out the possibility that one, two or three people are communicating in a group, hatching a plan, or that some imitator emerges. However, we see no evidence of a threat coming from a group of people who are coordinating to harm someone today," he added in statements reported by Reuters.
The leader of the ultraconservative Law and Justice party (PIS), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, suggested on social media Thursday that the attacks could be part of Russia's hybrid actions. “It is an open secret that there are Russian portals that encourage young people to carry out these types of actions,” he said.
Gawkowski has refused to enter into these assessments in his interview: “Today I am not going to alarm public opinion by saying that we are facing some type of hybrid war or a planned action,” he said. But he has assured that the police investigate every complaint and every clue they detect online. The minister has called for calm and has warned “anyone who deliberately tries to cause panic in this situation” that such actions may give rise to criminal liability.
