By ADAM NAGOURNEY, RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and J. DAVID GOODMAN | NY Times | http://nyti.ms/1NTvMZq
DEC. 15, 2015 | LOS ANGELES :: The
nation’s two largest school systems confronted threats of a terrorist attack on
Tuesday and reacted in sharply different ways: New York City reviewed the
warning and dismissed it as a hoax, but officials here abruptly shut down all
public schools, upending the lives of parents, students and teachers.
The emailed threats to school officials on both coasts —
which spoke of teams of jihadists using guns, bombs and nerve gas to attack
public schools — were largely identical in their wording, and both had been
routed through a server in Frankfurt, apparently by the same person, officials
said.
The Los Angeles schools chancellor, Ramon C. Cortines,
reviewed the threat, which came in to several school board members around 10
p.m. on Monday, with police officials here early Tuesday before deciding to
send out an alert closing nearly 1,100 schools and asking parents to keep the
district’s 640,000 children home. “I as superintendent am not going to take a
chance with the life of a student,” he said at a 7 a.m. news conference.
In New York, the police commissioner, William J. Bratton,
reviewed the New York version of the threat and decided it was “a hoax.” Later
on Tuesday, officials said that they believed that the email in Los Angeles was
also most likely a hoax and that schools will reopen Wednesday.
“We can now announce the F.B.I. has concluded this is not a
credible threat,” said Mayor Eric M. Garcetti of Los Angeles. “It will be safe
for our children to return to schools tomorrow.”
The contrasting responses, and the not-so-subtle
cross-country backbiting that marked the day — Mr. Bratton said Los Angeles had
overreacted, and officials here defiantly said they had not — was to some extent
a reflection of the long and subtle competition between these two coastal
cities, whose leaders have sometimes shuttled back and forth. Mr. Bratton once
served as police chief in Los Angeles, and Mr. Cortines once ran the schools in
New York. Both cities have grappled with major terror attacks and threats.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that we must continue to keep
our school system open,” said Bill de Blasio, New York’s mayor. “In fact, it’s
important — very important not to overreact in situations like this.”
But the reaction in Los Angeles was as much an insight into
the tense times that have gripped this region since Dec. 2, when an attack 50
miles from here left 14 people dead and 22 injured. Southern California has
been on edge much the way the New York region was after the terrorist attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001.
Officials here said that they were prepared for
second-guessing but that given the fresh memory of the San Bernardino massacre
— and that investigators were exploring whether the husband and wife attackers
might have also been targeting schools — Mr. Cortines had made the prudent
call.
“It is very easy in hindsight to criticize a decision based
on results that the deciders could have never known,” said Charlie Beck, the
chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, who is close to Mr. Bratton. “All
of us make tough choices. All of us have the same goal in mind: We want to keep
our kids safe.”
“These are tough times,” he said. “Southern California has
been through a lot in recent weeks.”
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said in a
briefing that the administration would not “second-guess the decisions that are
made by local law enforcement officials in any community across the country” in
responding to terror threats.
Officials in New York said they were not aware of the email
that had been sent to Los Angeles when they made their decision. Similarly, Mr.
Garcetti said officials in Los Angeles were not aware of the threat to New York
when they made their choice.
The decision here threw the lives of millions of people —
students, parents, teachers — into disarray and sent a wave of concern across
an already tense region. “If they sent an alert, I never received it,” said
Christine Clarke, who showed up at Hollywood High School looking frantically
for her son after hearing the news on the radio. Parents scrambled for
last-minute day care or called in sick at work, while students suddenly found
themselves with a day off — during final exams week, no less.
“When are finals going to be now?” John Guanzon, 16, a
junior, asked a school guard as he arrived, books in hand, at Hollywood High.
Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat who represents parts
of Los Angeles, said in an interview that the writer of the threat claimed “he
has 32 jihadist friends” ready to attack the schools using bombs, nerve gas and
rifles. The writer identified himself as an observant Muslim who had been
bullied while attending a Los Angeles high school, according to Mr. Sherman,
who said he had been given a copy of the email by a school board member who had
received it.
Mr. Sherman said elements of the message did not appear
credible, including the number of potential attackers and the claim that they
had access to nerve gas. (Mr. Bratton, in New York, suggested that the writer
might have been inspired by recent episodes of “Homeland,” with its plotline of
a sarin gas attack on Berlin.) The message was signed by a male
Arabic-appearing name, Mr. Sherman said, but added: “The word ‘Allah’ appears
several times in the email, but once it’s not capitalized. A devout Muslim or
an extremist Muslim would probably be more careful about typing the world
Allah.”
The author appeared knowledgeable about the structure of the
Los Angeles Unified School District, referring to the system by its full name,
which added to the concern, Mr. Sherman said. “Just because parts of the email
are false doesn’t mean it’s all false,” he said.
The threat to New York schools was sent to an Education
Department official around the same time as the one to Los Angeles but was not
seen until around 5 a.m. Tuesday, said a law enforcement official who spoke on
the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss
details of threat publicly. The official said the writer in this case said he
had 138 jihadist friends who would abet him.
Stephen Davis, the New York
Police Department’s top spokesman, said the emails threatening the two
cities “were the exact same wording with the exception of putting in the
cities’ names and changing the number of people who were supposed to be
participating in it.”
Across the country, Mr. Cortines said he saw no choice but
to close the schools. “It was not to one school, two schools or three schools —
it was many schools, not specifically identified,” he said of the threat.
Mr. Cortines initially said schools would remain closed
until the police and school administrators had searched every building. The
logistical task was immense: The Los Angeles district has more than 640,000
students enrolled in 900 schools and 187 public charter schools across more
than 720 square miles. In the end, officials said, they cut the search short
after 1,531 school sites had been inspected as of Tuesday evening.
While some people around the country criticized Los Angeles
for setting a precedent — showing that pranksters, or worse, could hobble a
major city — many Angelenos said they sided with the city.
“We’re part of the impact zone of San Bernardino, so the
ripple effect can be felt,” said Rudy Perez, the first vice president of the
Los Angeles School Police Association. “So it’s better to be cautious.”
- Adam Nagourney reported from Los Angeles, and Richard Pérez-Peña, and J. David Goodman from New York. Reporting was contributed by Ian Lovett and Rachel Abrams from Los Angeles, Marc Santora from New York, and Gardiner Harris from Washington.
- A version of this article appears in print on December 16, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: 2 Cities Differ in Responding to Terror Email
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