Los Angeles schools closed due to ‘credible threat’

Los Angeles officials abruptly closed the nation’s second-largest school district Tuesday, ordering 640,000 students to stay at home after a bomb threat was emailed to the city’s school board, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

Beck said a “very specific threat” was “delievered via email” to members of the school board and that authorities in LA became “very concerned” and “contacted the FBI” before the decision to close the schools was ultimately made.

Los Angeles schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines said he was told about a threat “to not one school, but to many schools in the school district”.

“Earlier this morning, we did receive an electronic threat that mentioned the safety of our schools”, school police Chief Steve Zipperman said.

The threat was reported to have been sent via email from an overseas account and was aimed at “not one, but many schools” in the Californian city.

The threats in Los Angeles resulted in the city closing all schools.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the concern started over suspicious backpacks and packages that were left at several campuses. NYPD is investigating the threat with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a joint terrorism task force as a precaution.

Addressing a news conference, New York Police commissioner Bill Bratton suggested Los Angeles school officials had been over-cautious in deciding the shutdown. Anyone at a school building when the notice went out around 7 a.m. PT (10 a.m. ET) Tuesday was asked to go home. “I think the circumstances in the neighboring San Bernardino, I think what has happened in the nation, I think what happened internationally”.

More than 1,000 schools in Los Angeles will reopen later, after an anonymous email threatened widespread attacks with bombs and assault rifles.

The decision appears to have been taken as late as when buses were ferrying kids to school, with some being ordered to turn back.

Ninety-five percent of the Los Angeles public schools have now been swept.

What we don’t need is someone in NY sticking his nose in our crisis by telling reporters there that L.A. officials are guilty of “overreacting” to the threat.

Law enforcement has been called in to search all 900 public schools and 187 charter schools to make sure that students and staffers will be able to return to safe campuses.

It comes amid a heightened alert after 14 people were killed by a radicalised Muslim couple in San Bernardino, 60 miles east of Los Angeles.