BATON ROUGE — Three schools in the capital area faced three separate threat scenarios this week, and while none turned out to be real, each response came at a high cost.

The first threat came Monday at Tara High School, where a prank call triggered a major law enforcement response. Helicopters flew overhead, and officers with rifles sprinted to the scene.

Parents at the school described the experience as alarming.

"Fear, anxiety," one parent said. "They didn't know what was happening. Police just started knocking on the classroom doors."

A similar threat was made the night before at Plaquemine Senior High in Iberville Parish. Then on Tuesday night, a threat was sent on social media at LSU's PMAC during a memorial for baseball legend Skip Bertman. Officials say a student sent the threat because she was upset about not receiving a package at the student union.

Former Baton Rouge Police Chief Greg Phares said law enforcement has no choice but to treat every threat as real.

"A SWAT team, when it goes out, has to assume that what they're going out on is a real situation and there is danger," Phares said.

He added that the response always comes at a cost.

"They can cost a lot of money, and they're very dangerous," Phares said.

According to data from the K-12 School Shooting Database, hoax calls cost $100,000 per emergency response during the 2022 to 2023 school year. Phares said that cost will never stop officials from responding.

"When you go out on something like that, you're not calculating dollars," Phares said.

Experts also say the impact reaches students directly, as school day interruptions cause them to lose valuable learning time.