Over in NY city, a threat to its public schools was received as well but it was not deemed credible, the mayor said.
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Cortines noted the school district often receives threats.
Law enforcement sources also said that the person who made the threats could have masked their location and that the origin is believed to be much closer than Germany.
Bratton, who previously served as Los Angeles police chief from 2002 to 2009, said the person behind the threat may have been inspired by the television series “Homeland”.
Members of the LA school board, the second-largest school district in the United States, received an email threatening terror attacks on schools using explosives and assault rifles.
On Wednesday morning (AEDT), local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation evacuated and searched more than 1000 schools within the nation’s second-largest school district, which has nearly 700,000 enrolled students.
Los Angeles city officials on Tuesday defended their decision to shut down all public schools following an emailed threat, as authorities in NY dismissed a similar message as a hoax. 14 people were killed in that incident.
Law enforcement teams were seen swarming outside a number of schools, including the Ramon C Cortines Visual and Performing Arts School. “I, as superintendent, am not going to take the chance with the life of students”.
Meanwhile, Cortines said, he ordered district “plant managers” to examine school grounds for “anything out of line”.
The threat “was not to one school, two schools or three schools”, he said at a news conference.
The chief of the Los Angeles school police department, Steven Zipperman, also stressed the decision was an extreme precautionary measure.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters that he was “absolutely convinced” there was no danger to schoolchildren in his city.
Bratton’s comments prompted a rebuke by the Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck, who insisted the school shutdown was justified with the children’s safety paramount.
The city schools commonly get threats, but Cortines called this one rare. It said, “The students at every school in the New York City school district will be massacred, mercilessly”. As mayor, we have shared our support and our intelligence and LAPD is working in collaboration with LAUSD School Police to fully investigate this threat.
Jordan Tama, an assistant professor at American University specializing in USA counterterrorism policy, said it’s not unreasonable for authorities in different places to make different decisions based on the same information. “It is very easy for people to jump to conclusions and I have been around long enough to know that usually what people think in the first few hours is not what plays out in later hours”, Garcetti told a press conference.
“This decision has been made by the school district in an abundance of caution”.
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Officials are notifying parents to keep their children at home.
