The Culpeper County, Virginia, emergency dispatch center received a series of calls commencing at 11:31pm on Wedesday, October 3. At some point a bomb threat to the counties schools was received, causing all public and private schools and also day care centers to be closed down the next day and searched(nothing found).
Now most of the time anonymous bomb threats are so common, especially after highly publicized school attacks, I don't even bother with them. But this one was a little different. Excerps from the link:
www.timesdispatch.com/ser...9190988378
"Officials took the unusual measure of closing the community's schools because phone calls from an unidentified male late Wednesday night did not target a specific school. ....
"....school officials have received bomb threats in the past, but it has been years since the last one (but) could not recall a communitywide school closure. ....
"Closing so many schools and day-care centers left many parents in a bind. Wal-Mart, McDonalds and the heart of the town of Culpeper were filled with parents and children.
....authorities believe the same person made multiple calls, at least one of which was lengthy and included the threat of a bomb at schools. ....
The sheriff would not discuss his department's ability to trace phone calls through its enhanced-911 system. ....
Search dogs sniffed around schools and in hallways yesterday as authorities checked out buildings. The searches involved an estimated 20 dogs and 60 officers, including from the FBI, Virginia State Police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and surrounding jurisdictions."
The oddities:
1) The time of the call, late at night. If you wanted to screw with the schools, wouldn't you want to do it during school hours, to cause maximum disruption, instead of giving everyone a day off? And wouldn't you mention a specific school, so you could watch the fun from afar? By making a vague threat against some school, wouldn't you risk that police do nothing at all? And who the hell calls in a bomb threat directly to the police?
2) The bomb threat itself. None of the recent events involved bombs. Wouldn't a copycat have theatened to shoot up a school instead?
3) The Culpeper area was involved in the post-Columbine hysteria. At least one student was arrested there as part of the response at that time.
4) Is it believable that anyone could make a phone call to a 911 comm center and not have that call instantly traced? Around here, if you call "911" and hang up, you will have the cops at your door sooner or later. Maybe he was using a disposable cell phone, but that implies a level of dedication and planning beyond the profile of the kids that usually do this.
5) The massive response from both the state and federal level. Since when do the Feds come running for an anonymous bomb threat?
Conclusion
This whole things sounds like a pre-planned crisis training drill. The fact the phone call came in a night gave the cops plenty of time to get to the scene in an organized response. And the closing of more than 15 campuses over a wide area, invaded by so many cops, is an ominous escalation of police response. Disrupting so many lives in the process is apparently no problem to these people.
Now most of the time anonymous bomb threats are so common, especially after highly publicized school attacks, I don't even bother with them. But this one was a little different. Excerps from the link:
www.timesdispatch.com/ser...9190988378
"Officials took the unusual measure of closing the community's schools because phone calls from an unidentified male late Wednesday night did not target a specific school. ....
"....school officials have received bomb threats in the past, but it has been years since the last one (but) could not recall a communitywide school closure. ....
"Closing so many schools and day-care centers left many parents in a bind. Wal-Mart, McDonalds and the heart of the town of Culpeper were filled with parents and children.
....authorities believe the same person made multiple calls, at least one of which was lengthy and included the threat of a bomb at schools. ....
The sheriff would not discuss his department's ability to trace phone calls through its enhanced-911 system. ....
Search dogs sniffed around schools and in hallways yesterday as authorities checked out buildings. The searches involved an estimated 20 dogs and 60 officers, including from the FBI, Virginia State Police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and surrounding jurisdictions."
The oddities:
1) The time of the call, late at night. If you wanted to screw with the schools, wouldn't you want to do it during school hours, to cause maximum disruption, instead of giving everyone a day off? And wouldn't you mention a specific school, so you could watch the fun from afar? By making a vague threat against some school, wouldn't you risk that police do nothing at all? And who the hell calls in a bomb threat directly to the police?
2) The bomb threat itself. None of the recent events involved bombs. Wouldn't a copycat have theatened to shoot up a school instead?
3) The Culpeper area was involved in the post-Columbine hysteria. At least one student was arrested there as part of the response at that time.
4) Is it believable that anyone could make a phone call to a 911 comm center and not have that call instantly traced? Around here, if you call "911" and hang up, you will have the cops at your door sooner or later. Maybe he was using a disposable cell phone, but that implies a level of dedication and planning beyond the profile of the kids that usually do this.
5) The massive response from both the state and federal level. Since when do the Feds come running for an anonymous bomb threat?
Conclusion
This whole things sounds like a pre-planned crisis training drill. The fact the phone call came in a night gave the cops plenty of time to get to the scene in an organized response. And the closing of more than 15 campuses over a wide area, invaded by so many cops, is an ominous escalation of police response. Disrupting so many lives in the process is apparently no problem to these people.
