Editorial: Terror guesstimates
These are indeed scary times in which we live - and no one wants to put lives on the line, especially the lives of children in the nation's second largest school district.
No one wants to be wrong.
And so it's understandable in the wake of the San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack that Los Angeles school officials and police yesterday should act out of an abundance of caution, closing down a system of 900 schools, serving 640,000 students.
Across the continent, New York City police and public officials received a similar threat and made a very different call, insisting the threat was "not credible."
New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton - who previously headed the L.A. force - said the NYPD began an immediate investigation with the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI.
Then Bratton added, "The language in the email would lead us to believe that this is not a jihadist initiative. That would be incredible to think that any jihadist would not spell Allah with a capital 'A.' "
Gosh, maybe a little too much information to provide to either future hoaxers or serious would-be jihadis.
And that's the problem with both responses - from what appears to be an overreaction in L.A. to the New York exercise in bravado. They both provide, however unwittingly, lessons for those with malicious intent on how to do it better the next time - and how to throw a major American city into chaos.
The ripple effect of such terror threats - lives disrupted, students missing a day of learning, lost productivity - are very real whether the threat is or not. Yesterday was a cautionary tale from which all public officials can learn a little about living with fear while not giving in to it.
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