Los Angeles public schools closed due to threat

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/los-angeles-public-schools-closed-due-to-threat/article7992761.ece

A lock holds the gate shut at Edward Roybal High School in Los Angeles on Tuesday morning. All schools in the vast Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest, have been ordered closed due to an electronic threat Tuesday.

Officials said they received the electronic threat and were still analysing it. Authorities in New York City said they received the same threat but quickly concluded that it was a hoax.

The nation’s second-largest school district shut down Tuesday after a school board member received an emailed threat that raised fears of another attack like the deadly shooting in nearby San Bernardino.

Authorities in New York City said they received the same threat but quickly concluded that it was a hoax.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters that he was “absolutely convinced” there was no danger to schoolchildren in his city. “There was nothing credible about the threat. It was so outlandish,” de Blasio said.

New York Police Commissioner William Bratton agreed, quipping that it looked like the sender of the threat watched a lot of the Showtime terrorism drama “Homeland.”

Los Angeles officials defended the move. “It is very easy in hindsight to criticize a decision based on results the decider could never have known,” LA Police Chief Charlie Beck said at a news conference.

The shutdown abruptly closed more than 900 public schools and 187 charter schools attended by 640,000 students across Los Angeles.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines said every campus would be searched, and he asked for a report on the searches certifying that all buildings are safe.

The threat, the New York officials said, came in the form of a “generic” email to many cities around the country. In New York, it was received by a superintendent early Tuesday.

Bratton called the closure a “significant overreaction.” “We cannot allow ourselves to raise levels of fear,” said Bratton, who once ran the Los Angeles Police Department.

The person who wrote the note, Bratton said, claimed to be a jihadist but made errors that indicated the writer was really a prankster, including spelling the word “Allah” with a lowercase “a.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he would not second—guess the decisions made in Los Angeles or New York. He said the FBI has been in touch with California authorities.

The decision to close the district disrupted the morning routines of many Los Angeles families.

Lupita Vela, who has a daughter in the third grade and a son who is a high school senior, called the threat “absolutely terrifying” in light of the San Bernardino attack, which killed 14 people earlier this month.

She got an automated phone call informing her of the closure. “I know the kids are anxious,” she said.

District spokeswoman Shannon Haber said the threat was sent by email to a school board member and was believed to have come from an IP address in Frankfurt, Germany.

Beck said the email was specific to all the campuses in the district and included implied threats about explosive devices, assault rifles and machine pistols.

The city schools commonly get threats, but Cortines called this one rare.

“It was not to one school, two schools or three schools,” he said at a news conference. “It was many schools, not specifically identified. But there were many schools. That’s the reason I took the action that I did.”

The San Bernardino attack influenced the decision to close the entire district, Cortines said.

The superintendent said the district police chief informed him about the threat shortly after 5 a.m.

“He shared with me that some of the details talked about backpacks, talked about other packages,” Cortines said.