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On Tuesday morning, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, a governmental agency which operates hundreds of schools in Los Angeles and nearby areas, sent all its students home. The agency did not make its buses available, but instead asked parents to pick up their children from outside the schools. Superintendent Ramon Cortines ordered all the schools in the district closed because of a threatening message regarding "many schools" which was received by a member of the school board. Cortines called the closure a "precaution based on what has happened recently." Police and the district's "plant managers" are searching the campuses.
Sources:
From Reuters:
The unprecedented move left some 643,000 students of the Los Angeles Unified School District and their families scrambling to make alternate arrangements and drew criticism as officials in New York said they received the same threat and deemed it not to be credible.
A law enforcement source told Reuters that Los Angeles authorities ordered the closure to allow a full search of about 900 public school facilities without consulting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which takes the lead on any potential terrorism investigation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @08:50PM
We need an example that everyone can grok, about how not every 'advance notice' of a terrorist plot should force cancellation of an event.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @09:51PM
So, let's say that -you- are the public official charged with the safety of thousands of children.
You decide to ignore the threat and it turns out to be a -genuine- thing resulting in deaths and life-altering injuries.
One can only hope that you (and those who would mod you up as Insightful) are never given responsibility for another human.
.
A proper course of action would involve identifying the caller and having him pilloried [google.com] for about a month, allowing every passerby to spit on him.
...and for those who would say "cruel and unusual", I say "Let the punishment fit the crime".
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @10:36PM
Really? A google link when a wiki link would be better? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillory [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @03:01AM
That's precisely the point I was trying to make. Until people have experienced this type of humongous false alarm, they're going to demand that any threat, no matter how farfetched, results in the most prudent course of action, which means disruption of everyday life.
Terrorists and random jerks will undoubtedly notice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 16 2015, @03:33AM
You don't just ignore a threat. You put as many extra cops and/or security people as possible on it. Search the buidlings. If/when you find any evidence that suggests the building is in danger, you evacuate THAT BUILDING. You don't shut down a city because of some vague threat. .6 million students and however many staff were directly affected, and at least a million other people semi-directly affected. (I started to use "indirectly affected" in the previous sentence, but primary care givers are far more affected than the average citizen with no kids.) Several millions indirectly affected. All because no one has any balls, and are incapable of making decisions.
The terrorists have won.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 15 2015, @09:55PM
Even devices shouldn't trigger a bomb scare if they aren't, you know, bombs, as the Boston Police learned in 2007 [wikipedia.org].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday December 15 2015, @10:49PM
Ah, yes, the culmination of years of terror started by that mastermind Osama bin Lite-Brite Clown.