Man charged after threats forced lockdowns at San Francisco schools

Parents in Pacific Heights and the Richmond were jolted as threats spread from one elementary campus to another, forcing a brief lockdown at a Richmond primary school and putting new pressure on how San Francisco schools warn families in real time.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said Anatoly Smolkin, 41, was charged in connection with a series of criminal threats at local elementary and middle schools. He was scheduled to be arraigned at 1:30 p.m. on May 15 at the Hall of Justice, and prosecutors said they planned to seek his detention pending trial.

The first threats were made on May 11 against a primary school in Pacific Heights, where Smolkin allegedly posted a message on the school’s social media page describing shooting people. The next evening, he allegedly showed up at another primary school in the Richmond and made grave threats to people inside the building. The following morning, he returned to that school, made similar threats while students and teachers were on campus, and briefly forced the campus into lockdown before San Francisco Police Department officers detained him later that day.

The case has quickly moved beyond a single frightening morning. Internal school communications said the threats began in 2011, suggesting a longer pattern that has now followed Smolkin across neighborhoods and institutions. In August 2023, prosecutors announced that he was convicted of making criminal threats after threatening to blow up a synagogue in the Inner Richmond.

A judge later denied bail after citing Smolkin’s courtroom outburst, underscoring the seriousness prosecutors and court officials are placing on the case. Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, who represents the area, said the repeated threats are deeply frightening to families and argued that Smolkin should be in a locked facility receiving treatment rather than on the street.

For San Francisco Unified School District, the episode exposed how quickly fear can move through a campus network even when a threat is brief. SFUSD says it educates around 50,000 students each year and relies on crisis plans, locked doors after the start of the school day, surveillance cameras, visitor check-in procedures, school resource officer support at many sites, and parent notification systems such as ParentVUE and SchoolMessenger. The district also says it coordinates closely with city emergency management officials and law enforcement on crisis planning.

The broader backdrop is troubling. RAND has found that anonymous social-media-based threats against K-12 schools rose by as much as 60 percent between 2021 and 2022, a reminder that even threats that turn out to be brief can disrupt classrooms, unsettle families, and test whether school safety systems work when they are needed most.