'Credible terror threat' prompts closure of all LA public schools

'Credible terror threat' prompts closure of all LA public schools

Published December 15, 2015 FoxNews.com

DEVELOPING: All of Los Angeles' public schools were closed Tuesday due to a "credible terror threat," officials said.

The emailed bomb threat apparently came from overseas late Monday and was directed to a member of the LA Unified School District Board of Education, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It was unclear which school board member received it, but the situation prompted the district to close all schools effective immediately, and order students and staff to stay away from all campuses. Police and the FBI were investigating.

Schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines said every school in the 640,000-student district would be searched. The district, the nation's second-largest, includes more than 900 schools and 187 public charter schools. It covers Los Angeles as well as all or parts of 31 smaller municipalities and employs nearly 60,000 people.

"I think it is important that I take this precaution based upon what has happened recently and what has happened in the past," Cortines said.

"I, as superintendent, am not going take a chance with the students."

- Superintendent Ramon Cortines

"We received an electronic threat that mentioned the safety of our schools," said LAUSD Police Chief Steven Zipperman.

Cortines stressed at a morning news conference that the threat was broad, and had to be taken seriously.

"It was not to one school, two schools or three schools, but to many schools," Cortines said. "It was 'to students at school.'"

The announcement comes less than two weeks after a terror attack in San Bernardino, some 50 miles to the east, left 14 dead and 22 wounded. On Monday afternoon, San Bernardino Valley College announced that classes Tuesday would be canceled, citing a bomb threat.

Cortines alluded to both the San Bernardino attack as well as "international" events.

"I, as superintendent, am not going take a chance with the students," he said.

"We need families and neighbors to work together with our schools and with our employees to make sure our schools are safe throughout today," school board president Steve Zimmer said.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/12/15.../?intcmp=hpbt1

What's in the Bogus Email Threatening NYC, Los Angeles Schools

• By BRIAN ROSS
• AARON KATERSKY

Dec 15, 2015, 4:24 PM ET

http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/US/ap..._12x5_1600.jpg

Richard Vogel/AP Photo

WATCH NYPD Investigated Threat to Schools as Hoax

The first tip-off for New York City police that the alleged emailed threat to schools there and in Los Angeles today, which has been obtained by ABC News, may not be real was that it seemed remarkably similar to a plot line of the Showtime TV program “Homeland.”

“The instigator of the threat may be a ‘Homeland’ fan,” NYPDCommissioner Bill Bratton told reporters. “Basically, watching ‘Homeland’ episodes that it mirrors, a lot of recent episodes of Homeland... This is not a credible threat. This is not something we’re concerned with.”

ABC News obtained a copy of the email that was sent to New York City school officials that Bratton said was “almost exactly the same” as the one that prompted school closings today in Los Angeles. The message says in part, “I am a devout Muslim, and was once against violence, but I have teamed up with a local jihadist cell as it is the only way I’ll be able to accomplish my massacre the correct way.”

LA Public Schools Shut Down After Unspecified Threat, but NYC Deems Similar Threat Not Credible

“Something big is going down. Something very big. It will make national headlines. Perhaps, even international ones,” the message reads. The writer claims he was bullied and rejected at “one of the district high schools,” but does not say which.

“Every school in the New York City district is being targeted.

We have bombs hidden in lockers already at several schools,” the email says. In addition to explosives, the email says “nerve gas” would also be a part of the attack. Bratton presumably drew the “Homeland” comparison from this portion, since a nerve gas threat is part of this season’s story line.

While thousands of children were kept from school in Los Angeles, New York officials said they knew almost immediately that it was a hoax.

“It was so generic, so outlandish and posted to so many school systems simultaneously,” NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio said.

Bratton indicated that an analysis of the email indicated to the NYPD that it was not actually an Islamist threat.

“The language in the email would lead us to believe this is not a jihadist initiative,” he said. “For example, that Allah was not spelled with a capital ‘A’. That would be incredible to think that any jihadist would not spell Allah with a capital ‘A’.”

Los Angeles police and Congressman Brad Sherman, D-Calif., indicated that the Los Angeles threat contained some differences, including a graphic reference to explosives hidden in the body of a female suicide bomber.

An official briefed on the situation who spoke to ABC News said that in addition to New York and Los Angeles, two other school districts were also threatened. The email to Los Angeles originated in Germany, school officials there said, and Bratton said the one to NYC came from “abroad.”

Nick Casale, a former NYPD detective, told ABC News it should have been clear the threat was not legitimate early on.

“Once they saw that [threats to other places], it was a cut-and-paste job,” Casale said. “How can one person be in Los Angeles and New York at the same time?”

Los Angeles school officials said the mass closings came out of an abundance of caution in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings in which authorities say an ISIS-inspired couple gunned down 14 people earlier this month.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/bogus-email...ry?id=35783878