Terror experts say identically-worded bomb threats emailed to the LA and NYC school districts from a German IP address on Tuesday were “obvious” hoaxes.
New York authorities declined to act on them, but Los Angeles’s unified school system -- second to NYC’s as the largest in the nation -- heeded the warnings, shuttering all 1000+ campuses out of an “abundance of caution.”
Awkward language in those electronic messages, including the misspelling of Allah with a lowercase ‘a’, instantly tipped off state and federal investigators in New York, a law enforcement spokesman there claimed late yesterday.
He also accused Los Angeles of “overreacting” in abruptly canceling classes and then launching costly and sweeping searches of their school facilities.
But California officials, still probing the bloody San Bernardino terror attack which injured dozens of health department employees and killed 14, was unapologetic about taking the threats seriously.
“It is very easy in hindsight to criticize the decision based on results that the decider could never have known,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck stoically countered.
It’s better to be safe than sorry.
