Enough With The Threats
- By Lindsay Page
- April 01, 2017
By Now, I’m Sure Everyone Has Heard About The Constant And Unnecessary Stream Of Bomb Threats That Jewish Community Centers And Day Schools Have Been Experiencing. This Has Got To Stop. At The Time Of Writing This, Another Wave—the Third In One Month—of Threats Took Place In Chicago, Florida And New York. More Than 100 Threats Have Taken Place In At Least 17 States. When And How Is This Going To Stop, And What Can Be Done Before Things Get Worse?
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-
Defamation League said this is not “normal”,
but “we will not be deterred or intimidated.”
The Senate has also sent a letter to the Trump
administration asking for help in dealing with
these bomb threats. And even the FBI and Justice
Department’s Civil Rights Division are
investigating possible connections. This makes
me hopeful that the culprits will be brought to
justice soon, because enough is enough.
As the mother of two small children, I
couldn’t imagine what it would be like to get a
phone call from their school and be told to
come pick them up because of a bomb threat. I
know I’d be in a worried frenzy, but I’d also be
mad. Mad at whoever emailed or called in such
a claim. Mad at the fear that someone made my
kids feel. Mad at the lost hours of school, and
the time that police had to waste looking for a
bomb that was (hopefully) never found.
One of our April stories by Scott McGrath
covers bomb threats and how schools and
other institutions can prepare for “bomb
scares.” He writes that these threats can be
made via phone calls, emails, verbal and written
threats, and even by social media posts. It
is then up to the school to open up communication
and get agency responders on site as
quickly as possible. I think this is a very fitting
article to have in this issue, and it provides an
incredible amount of insight for dealing with
these incidents.
These threats, which have unfortunately
become a pattern for the Jewish community,
have caused police departments to put emergency
response procedures in place. So far the
FBI has made one arrest in connection to the
bomb threats, but authorities think he may be
a “copycat.” Let’s all hope that this first arrest
leads to the end of this terrible trend.
This article originally appeared in the April 2017 issue of Campus Security Today.
About the Author
Lindsay Page is the editor for Campus Security & Life Safety magazine, and the senior editor for Security Today.