By KPCC staff | http://bit.ly/1OwjAdq
December 15, 05:55 PM
(Updated 5:55 p.m.: Schools to reopen Wednesday) :: All
Los Angeles Unified schools are scheduled to reopen Wednesday following a
district-wide closure prompted by a threat of violence.
The district gave updates on the situation late Tuesday
via news conference and a statement on the district's website.
Officials said the threat turned out not to be credible
and that the motivation for sending the email remains unknown.
Students and employees "who may need additional
support" will have access to crisis counselors Wednesday, according to a
statement from Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines.
Earlier in the day, a city utility truck hit and killed a
17-year-old boy who was heading to school because he apparently
didn't know a threat had shut down all campuses, according to the Associated
Press.
Detective Charles Walton said the crash happened at an
intersection around 7:10 a.m., AP reports.
The school closures in L.A. caught the attention of at least
one candidate in Tuesday night's GOP debate.
As AP reports, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the
closure is evidence that President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton have not done enough to keep people safe.
Updated 5:18 p.m.: Councilman questions lack of district
communication
Councilmember Joe Buscaino took to Facebook today to
voice concerns about the lack of real-time communication around today’s school
closures.
"I urge #LAUSD to learn from today’s events and
embrace technological innovation to ensure that in emergency situations parents
and students are informed in the fastest way possible,” he wrote.
Many parents echoed that sentiment in
comments — some saying that they were notified after 9 a.m.
Buscaino told KPCC’s Priska Neely "We almost on
a daily basis get notified on what’s happened with daily events, PTL events and
bake sales on the phone. I was just puzzled that we didn’t get notified on the
phone immediately.”
He hopes this will be a teachable moment for the district
so it can develop methods to expedite notifications for parents going forward.
Updated 3:56 p.m.: Local congressman reveals more details
of threatening email
An email threatening L.A. Unified School District that
prompted officials to close all schools Tuesday was specific, said Congressman
Brad Sherman of the San Fernando Valley.
Sherman read the email after offering help to the
district as a longtime member of the House Foreign Affairs committee with some
understanding of terrorist threats.
“The email said the author together with 32 accomplices
would be hitting the L.A. Unified School District schools in just about every
way you could think of — pressure cooker bombs, Kalashnikovs, automatic pistols
and even nerve agents,” said Sherman.
The email purports to be from a “devout Muslim” but
doesn’t reflect any knowledge of Islam, the congressman told KPCC. There are no
references to the Quran or life of Mohammed, the email at one point fails to
capitalize the word Allah, and the sender’s address includes a pornographic
name of a body part.
“In that way, it lacks credibility,” Sherman said. He
also questioned whether 33 people could plan an attack and go undetected by law
enforcement authorities.
The threat to New York schools, he said, claimed to have
138 “comrades.”
Sherman said New York authorities knew about the threat
in Los Angeles when it decided the threat was not credible. But he said L.A.
school officials did not know about the threat in New York before deciding to
close the schools. Had they known, Sherman said, it may have influenced their
decision.
But Sherman and school officials said the decision came
in a context, just two weeks after the attack in San Bernardino and a month
after the slaughter in Paris.
“Look, if San Bernardino had not happened, maybe a
different decision would have been reached,” he said. While Sherman said he was
unwilling to second-guess school officials, he said the FBI needs to provide
faster analysis of threats for local authorities trying to decide on proper
precautions.
“We need a better, more centralized system by which
federal experts can advise local authorities,” Sherman said.
Superintendent Ramon Cortinez said he consulted with the
LAPD before deciding to close the schools. Still unclear is the extent to which
he consulted federal authorities and whether they advised him in any way.
Update 10:27 a.m.: LAUSD schools closed; assessment
indicates threat likely a hoax
All Los Angeles Unified School District schools were
closed Tuesday morning due to a threat of violence, LAUSD Superintendent Ramon
Cortines announced at a morning news conference.
House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Adam Schiff
issued a statement early Tuesday afternoon saying that the preliminary
assessment of the threat is that it was a hoax or "designed to disrupt
school districts in large cities."
"In an environment in which it is very easy to
transmit threats, real and otherwise, and when fear and disruption may be the
goal as well as the effect, communities and law enforcement will need to make a
difficult judgment as to how to respond in a variety of circumstances,"
Schiff went on to say in the statement.
Cortines said that the threat was made to students, and
that the threat was to many schools. He said that the threat was related to
backpacks and other packages.
Cortines called for all schools to be searched Tuesday
for bombs or other threats to make sure they were safe for students to return
on Wednesday. Between 75 and 80 percent of LAUSD schools had been cleared as of
early Tuesday afternoon, ABC7 reported, citing the LAPD. They hoped to clear
the remaining LAUSD schools by 7 p.m.
New York City officials said they received the same
threat as the one that closed LAUSD, but they concluded that it was a hoax, the
Associated Press reported. Former LAPD chief and current New York Police
Commissioner William Bratton said he thought the LAUSD closure was an
overreaction by L.A. officials. Bratton said that a note was sent to a
school superintendent from someone who claimed to be a jihadist, but that they
made errors indicating it was a hoax.
Bratton said that one of those indications is that
"Allah" wasn't spelled with a capital "A," CBS
New York reported.
"That would be incredible to think that any jihadist
would not spell Allah with a capital ‘A,'" Bratton said.
The LAPD was contacted "very late last night"
about a message delivered to multiple members of the school board, LAPD Chief
Charlie Beck said at a 10 a.m. news conference. They became concerned, Beck
said, and tried to vet the information with the FBI and the Joint Terrorism
Task Force.
"I think it's irresponsible to criticize the
decision," Beck said. "I would say this to people who are
critical: It's very easy to criticize the decision based on an outcome you
don't know. It's also easy to criticize the decision when you don't have
responsibility for people's lives."
Beck said that the original email was routed through
Germany, but that its actual origin has yet to be determined and that officials
believe it's from somewhere "we believe to be much closer than
Germany." He said that it was specific to LAUSD and was a threat to
all LAUSD schools, with the threat including explosive devices, assault rifles
and machine pistols.
"I understand the concern families must be feeling
this morning, but it is critical we remain calm," Garcetti said in a
statement. He noted that the decision had been made by the school district, but
in a later press conference, he said, "The decision to close schools was
not mine to make, but it is mine to support."
Cortines said at the same press conference that school
authorities would not be answering questions from the press at that time.
"The author [of the email] claims to be an extremist
Muslim who has teamed up with local jihadists," California Rep. Brad
Sherman said in a statement, saying that he had reviewed the email sent to
an L.A. school board member. "We do not know whether this email is from a
devout Muslim who supports jihadists or perhaps a non-Muslim with a different
agenda. ... The only thing we know is that the email was sent by an evil
person ... The text of the email does not demonstrate that the author has
studied Islam or has any particular understanding of Islam."
School authorities said at a morning news conference that
they had received a threat, prompting them to alert the L.A. School Police
Department, the LAPD and the FBI. The LAPD was deployed near schools, L.A. Mayor
Eric Garcetti tweeted.
The decision to close schools was made in light of the
recent shooting in San Bernardino, as well as national and international
events, Cortines said.
"I as superintendent am not going to take a chance
on the life of a student," Cortines said. All students were safe at the
time, according to Cortines.
L.A. School Police confirmed that students who were already
at schools were going to be sent home. Students and staff were being
directed to stay away from schools.
LAUSD is
asking parents who've sent their children to school to return and pick them
up at the school's reunion center. Parents who haven't sent students off are
asked to keep them at home.
The district had set up a hotline for parents to get more
information at (213) 241-2064. You can also sign up for updates
from L.A.
school police by texting "laspd" to 888777 on your phone.
School Police said on Twitter that the threat was
credible and that students who had already arrived at school would be with
staff until their parents or guardians could be contacted. They also told
parents that ID would be required when picking students up from school.
"This is a rare threat. We get threats all the
time," Cortines said.
"We are taking this action in an abundance of
caution to make sure that every child in L.A. Unified School District, every
employee is absolutely safe," said LAUSD School Board President Steve
Zimmer. "Right now, we ask parents, families, if you have not yet sent
your children to school, do not send them to school."
Zimmer said he would have families meet their children at
the reunion gates of all schools.
"We need the cooperation of all of Los Angeles
today. We need families and neighbors to work together with our schools, and
with our employees, to make sure our kids are safe throughout the day,"
Zimmer said.
Zimmer also asked for employers to show flexibility with
parents.
"Based on the information that we have, this was a
very generic piece of writing sent to a number of different places
simultaneously and also written in a fashion that suggests that it’s not
plausible, and we’ve come to the conclusion that we must continue to keep our
school system open," Mayor Bill de Blasio said, CBS New York
reported. "In fact, it’s very important not to overreact in situations
like this."
"We're just, y'know, we're wondering if this is
actually real. Pretty sure i'm not the only one who's afraid," Wilmington
Middle School eighth grader Brian Gonzalez told KPCC media partner NBC L.A.
Garcetti
tweeted that he'd arranged for LAUSD students to ride Metro buses and trains
for free Tuesday due to the school closures.
L.A.'s emergency operations center has been activated due
to the threat.
Buses were returned to their lots because they're not
picking up students, Cortines said.
LAUSD is the nation's second largest school district,
with more than 640,000 students at more than 900 schools and 187 public charter
schools. This is the first time in the district's history that it has closed
all schools, responding to a bomb threat.
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