New York dismisses threat that closed Los Angeles schools

NEW YORK (AP) – Officials in New York say Los Angeles school officials overreacted today when they shut down every school in the nation’s second-largest school district because of an emailed threat.

The threat, sent to a school board member, raised fears of another attack like the deadly shooting in nearby San Bernardino.

But New York officials say they received the same threat — and that it was also sent to many other cities around the country. And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says there was “nothing credible” about it. He says it was “outlandish,” and that he’s “absolutely convinced” that there was no danger to schoolchildren in his city.

New York Police Commissioner William Bratton quipped that it looked like the sender of the threat had watched a lot of the Showtime terrorism drama “Homeland.” He says the person claimed to be a jihadist, but made errors that indicated he was really a prankster. For one thing, “Allah” was spelled with a lower-case ‘a’.

Bratton says there was a “significant overreaction” to the email in Los Angeles, where he once ran the police department. He says, “We cannot allow ourselves to raise levels of fear.”