School threats: your opinion?
 

Los Angeles schools, New York respond differently to threat - CNN.com

So we have two cities, New York and LA, on opposite sides of America, both getting apparently the very same email threatening attacks against their students. One (LA) takes the threat seriously and shuts down its schools. The other (NY) believes the email to be a hoax and keeps its schools open.

Which do you think acted correctly, or is there any way to decide that?
I personally have never yet heard of an attack by ISIS or their agents which was warned of in advance, though I admit I'm not that au fait with their actions, so I would think it is a hoax. But put in that situation, I guess you would have to put the kids and staff safety first. I'm not sure how I'd react.

What do you guys think?

Coinflip. If schools shutdown every time they received a threat our education system would be even worse than it already is. I think the obvious knee jerk reaction is to say, "shut it down for safety" which makes sense, but you have to draw the line somewhere. It should be a case by case decision based on the intelligence(if any) we have about the threats while keeping in consideration the current state of society(threats directly after 9/11 vs threats during times of "peace").

Yeah, like I say, my main point is that I have never heard of ISIS emailing "We're gonna blow you up" or anything. They seem always to strike without warning so why change tack? They're also into more killing than just spreading panic/discontent/fear, so given a choice between uncertainty and bodycount, I feel they're always going to go for the latter.

Also, the NYPD seemed to think that the threats were very generic and had no keywords or special characteristics that would mark them out as being genuine. Interesting how the two cities reacted though?

Apart from the unlikelihood of people announcing their crimes that TH had mentioned, the fact that this is going down while a lot of students are taking finals makes me side with NY a little more.

I thought it's K-12. No finals for them right now.

You didn't have finals in high school?

He's from New Jersey.

Meanwhile my college has had three armed robberies in the past 12 hours and they sure as hell didn't cancel any finals. The campus emergency alert call system has been blowing up my phone all day.

Homeschool your kids. Problem solved. ;)

But that's what crazy people do.