NYC Schools Received Same Threat as LAUSD: Police

MANHATTAN, NY — New York City schools received “almost exactly the same” threat as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on Tuesday, yet decided the threat was not credible enough to close schools, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton announced at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines decided to close every campus in his district — the nation’s second largest — in response to the threat.

“I, as superintendent, am not going to take the chance with the life of students,” Cortines reportedly said.

Bratton would later call Cortines’ decision “a significant overreaction.”

The unprecedented decision in L.A. was made after a school board member received a bomb threat that was considered “credible.” The threat was emailed to the board member from an IP address in Frankfurt, Germany, according to local law enforcement, and reportedly referenced a potential threat inside packages and backpacks.

A massive LAPD effort was underway Tuesday to search the roughly 900 schools in the LAUSD system.

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said he supported the decision.

“We will continue to hope that this is nothing and that our children can be back at school tomorrow, but as a parent and as a mayor, certainly I am here to support this school district as it seeks our help to ensure that we can look at each one of these campuses, and make sure that they are safe for all of our children,” Garcetti said. “An abundance of caution is something that I think that all who have children will appreciate it.”

Meanwhile, in New York, where a superintendent in the NYC schools system is said to have received an almost identical email, city officials deemed the threat a hoax.

“There were wording choices and other indicators that suggested a hoax and not anything we could associate with jihadist activity,” de Blasio said at the Tuesday press conference. He said it would have been “a huge disservice to our nation to close down our school system.”

Commissioner Bratton said the NYPD was “very comfortable that this is not a credible threat” and was “concerned with people overreacting to it.”

Elements of the email threat appeared to mirror recent episodes of the Showtime series “Homeland,” Bratton said at the press conference.

“It was so generic, so outlandish,” De Blasio added.

“Any time we believe a threat actually signifies a real danger, of course we’ll alert New Yorkers, we’ll take all the proper measures,“ the mayor said. “But it’s very important to realize there are people who want us to fundamentally change our lifestyle and our values, and we will never give into that.”