More School Districts Receive Similar ‘Non-Credible’ Threats

The district was working Thursday with police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine whether the threat originated from the same source as the one in Los Angeles and NY or was a copycat.

– The Dallas Independent School District received a terroristic threat similar to the ones against Los Angeles and NY schools earlier this week.

Authorities say they inspected all schools and found nothing suspicious. And while officials from these districts chose to keep schools open Thursday, it wasn’t business-as-usual – school officials took extra precautions.

“At this time, we do not believe the threat is credible, but as a precautionary measure, law enforcement officers are in the process of conducting random sweeps of school district buildings to ensure student safety”, the Houston Independent School District, with about 215,000 students, said in a statement.

In their email to parents, they state that the email they received was similar enough to those in larger cities like Los Angeles, Houston and New York City and were deemed as not credible.

Threats can be especially jarring in areas left jittery by recent attacks, such as Southern California, where an attack killed 14 people at a holiday luncheon two weeks ago in San Bernardino.

School schedules were not expected to be affected today or Friday, the email said.

“We had investigators in working through the night last night just combing our own local information, anything we might have locally that’s associated with information that we got from JTTF”, Hansberry said.

The threats – mostly deemed hoaxes – hit districts from New Jersey to Florida, Reuters news service reported. They are pressure cooker bombs, hidden in backpacks around the schools.

After receiving the email, HISD sent an automated voice message to parents on Wednesday night warning them of the threat of violence. “We are very comfortable that this is not a credible threat”.

The district has 356 campuses and more than 320,000 students. Schools are open Thursday. A threat has been directed to the high school, and the safety and security of all students is our highest priority.

On Thursday, the school was placed on lockdown and after-school activities were canceled.

Officials in Long Beach say the district received an email threat similar to the ones in other cities.

School officials in multiple districts have said the threats all appear to be similar. In an abundance of caution, additional resources have been deployed to schools.

Some also question the mechanics of how the city and school district responded to the threat, especially the amount of time it took to notify Garcetti and Beck, and the lack of coordination among various parts of government affected by the shutdown.