Everything We Know So Far About the Bomb Threat That Closed Los Angeles Schools on Tuesday

On Tuesday, every public school in Los Angeles was closed after officials there decided a credible bomb threat had been made, as the New York Times reports. The threat, issued via email, was vague and contained a few details about a plan using "backpacks and other packages" to harm children, according to Ramon C. Cortines, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is the second-largest in America.

At a press conference early Tuesday morning, Cortines said the threat was made to many schools, and specifically cited events like the terrorist attack that killed 14 and injured 22 in San Bernardino early this month as influencing the decision.

"I am not taking the chance of bringing children any place, into any part of the building, until I know it is safe," he said. The Los Angeles Police Department and FBI are currently investigating, and the schools are to remain closed, Cortines indicated, until every building on every campus in LA is searched and deemed safe. That's no easy task considering that, as the Times reported, the Los Angeles Unified School District is home to more than 640,000 students in nearly 1000 schools spanning hundreds of square miles. Citing School Spokeswoman Shannon Haber, the AP reported that the threat was made against a school board member and was thought to have originated in Frankfurt, Germany.

Around the same time early Tuesday, a similar threat was made against schools in New York City, but was quickly deemed a hoax, and schools there remained open. At a press conference Tuesday morning, Mayor Bill De Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said that, along with several other districts nationwide, New York schools received a generic email threat, but local officials quickly determined it posed no real danger, as a local NBC affiliate reports.

Bratton, who earlier in his career was commissioner of the LAPD, called the the decision to close schools there a "significant overreaction," a criticism the city's current chief, Charlie Beck, retorted was "irresponsible." (Cortines, for his part, said the schools receive threats all the time but deemed this one "rare.")

"Our schools are safe," Mayor de Blasio said. "Kids should be in school today. We will be vigilant. But we are absolutely convinced our schools are safe."

Bratton believes the email threat may have been sent by a fan of the Showtime drama Homeland—the threat "mirrors a lot of recent episodes"—and added that officials believe the emails originated overseas, and did not come from Jihadists. "For example, Allah was not spelled with a capital 'A'," Bratton said, according to DNAinfo.

De Blasio added that the threats were "so generic, so outlandish," they were quickly deemed a hoax.

If the threat does turn out to be phony, LA school officials can be expect some blowback from parents. Though they were asked not to bring their children into school Tuesday, many were already on their way when the order to close came down. Los Angeles school buses, too, had already begun making their morning trips. Children who did arrive to school, and whose parents went about their days, are being kept out of the buildings. Parents have been asked to pick them up at school gates whenever possible.

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