NYC: We Got Same School Threat, It Was a Hoax

New York City officials say they received the same threat as the one that led to the closure of the Los Angeles school system, but unlike the LAUSD, they quickly concluded that it was a hoax. "Our schools are safe," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday morning, per the New York Times. "There was nothing credible about the threat. It was so outlandish." New York Police Commissioner William Bratton says he thinks Los Angeles officials made a "significant overreaction" in deciding to close the nation's second-largest school system. He quipped that it looked like the sender of the threat watched a lot of the Showtime drama Homeland.

The threat, de Blasio and Bratton said, came in the form of a "generic" email to many cities around the country. In New York, it was received by a superintendent early Tuesday. Bratton said the person who wrote the note claimed to be a jihadist but made errors that made it clear the person was a prankster, including spelling the word "Allah" with a lowercase "a." (More NYPD stories.)