The two largest school districts in the country received the same bomb threat on Tuesday. One shut down all its schools; the other said it was just a hoax.
The threat came via email, targeted "many schools" and it reportedly originated overseas. But officials' reactions varied as widely as their coasts. Los Angeles asked all 640,000 of its students and staff to stay home. New York, however, said that same threat was not only "outlandish," but it also sounded like an episode of Homeland.
LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines told reporters that while the district gets threats "all the time," this particular one was "rare."
But New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said there was "nothing credible about the threat."
"It was so outlandish," Mayor de Blasio said. "It would be a huge disservice to our nation to close down our school systems."
NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the threat included a reference to Allah -- the first official statement linking the message to Islam -- but that the author failed to capitalize the name, suggesting it was merely a hoax. He also said Los Angeles' decision to call off school was a "significant overreaction."
We don't see this as a credible terrorist threat, @CommissBratton says pic.twitter.com/I83bN9rkG8— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) December 15, 2015
“We affirm that we do have an investigation underway, but it's an investigation into a hoax," Bratton said. "We do believe the email originated overseas. The language in the email would lead us to believe that it was not a jihadist."
He added that the threat "mirrors a lot of recent episodes on Homeland," the Showtime drama that follows a CIA agent as she tries to protect the U.S. from terrorists.
New York City Mayor @BilldeBlasio: "It would be a huge disservice to our nation to close down our school systems" https://t.co/EjiP18PvsZ— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 15, 2015
Hoax or not, Los Angeles school officials took no chances, as they asked parents and families who have not yet sent their kids to school to keep them at home. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck warned against anyone who might criticize the school district for overreacting to its decision to close schools.
"It is very easy in hindsight to criticize a decision based on results the decider could never have known," Beck said.
"I think it is irresponsible, based on facts yet to be determined, to criticize that decision at this point," he said. He added that the threat was very specific about the campuses targeted, as well as the "explosives, assault rifles and machine pistols" the would-be attackers would employ.
"We are still vetting this threat. I will not categorize it as credible or non-credible," he said.
At the federal level, Texas Congressman Michael McCaul said on MSNBC that the threat "may have come from an IP address out of Germany."
"We are doing that attribution now, back to possibly Europe," he said, cautioning that officials didn't know its source or how credible it was. "We do know that the terrorists have looked at exploiting this means of social media as a device to shut things down," he added.
While no individual group has claimed credit for the threat, ISIS loyalists reportedly created a thread in an online forum dedicated to discussion of jihad with the title “Panic in the American Los Angeles," according to Vocativ. “Thank God, they are panicked of everything," one supporter reportedly wrote.
A 17-year-old student was hit and killed by a truck while walking to school in Highland Park but his school is under the purview of the County Board of Education, not LAUSD.