The Reason Officials Closed 900 California Schools Following Threat

LOS ANGELES, CA- Even before the bomb squad made entry to any Los Angeles schools closed because of an overseas bomb threat, the decision to close more than 900 schools came under fire.

While the Los Angeles Unified School District opted to close down all schools, New York City schools received the same threat and deemed it a hoax. New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, a former LAPD chief, even went so far as to criticize the decision to close all LAUSD schools, calling it an “overreaction.”

How could the nation’s two largest school districts react so differently to the same threat?

There are probably two factors that played a deciding role in this tale of two cities: New York’s vast experience in dealing with terror threats and Southern California’s experience as the vanguard of a new kind of terror attack in which operatives go after entirely unpredictable targets, said Michael Sweiback, a former federal prosecutor and Chief of the for the U.S. Attorney’s Office Cyber Crimes Section and Deputy Chief of the organized crime and terror division in LA.

“Judgements are made all the time about what is and isn’t a threat. In those circumstances, there is really no right or wrong,” said Sweiback. “It’s hard to sift through that information and say which one is the lunatic and which is the radical Islamist who is actually bent on doing something.”

Within moments of the threats, local law enforcement likely received briefings from the FBI and NSA, said Sweiback. The various national security agencies have already traced the threatening email back to Frankfurt, Germany. They’ll also be looking at clues from the email, spellings, misspellings, similar threats on social media for ties to groups considered a credible threat, said Sweiback.

The final decision on whether to close the schools would be made at the local level.

“We see that New York, unfortunately, they are a little more used to dealing with terrorist threats. We don’t have that level of experience,” added Sweiback.

But in Southern California, we are still reeling from the San Bernardino terror attacks, he added.

“That unexpected aspect of it has put a lot of people on edge,” he said.

That edginess is likely to be exasperated in the aftermath of Tuesday’s school closures.

“The dissemination of these kinds of threats emboldens others who have a penchant for doing this kind of thing. Everyone knows people are on edge. I think there are people looking to take advantage, in a very sick way, of that jumpiness,” said Sweiback. “From the standpoint of parents, LAUSD may have taken an extreme measure, but they looked at the fact that our most important asset is our children, and they wanted to get this right. It’s really not something they should be criticized for.”

The White House today refused to second-guess local authorities.

“Local officials are ultimately responsible for making the decision they believe based on their knowledge of the community makes the most sense and is consistent with their judgment about the best way to protect the community,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. “And the federal government certainly has a responsibility to support local officials as they make those decisions as they implement them.”

While New York officials deemed the threat a hoax, openly scoffing at the reaction in Los Angeles, LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines stood by his decision to close all the schools.

“Based on past circumstances, I could not take the chance as it related to one student or our staff that serves our students,” Cortines said. “We are doing everything possible to make sure that children are safe but also that students and parents understand that the precautions we are taking are done in a calming way, are done in a way that is in the best interests of everybody in this particular city.”

“It is also very easy to criticize a decision when you have no responsibility for the outcome of that decision,” LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said.

“These are tough times. ... Southern California has been through a lot in recent weeks. Should we risk putting our children through the same?” Beck said.