The new, old world of bomb threats

Last updated on: February 28, 2017 at 9:40 am by Jane the Actuary

The new, old world of bomb threats 2017-02-28T09:40:35-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Every day, it seems like, there’s a new report of a bomb threat made to Jewish community centers, causing chaos and disruption, especially when preschool classes are in session. According to the Washington Post,

[threat-assessment consultant Steve] Albrecht said that he would not recommend evacuating a JCC each time a threat does come in. For decades, bomb threats have nearly never indicated that an actual bomb was present in a building.

“If we evacuate the facility every time somebody makes a bomb threat, that just encourages them to do more,” Albrecht said. “It’s a tremendous waste of time and energy, and it frightens people.”

Instead, he recommends sending bomb-sniffing dogs to check the building without evacuating and interviewing employees about whether they have noticed any suspicious packages or anything else amiss.

[JCC Association’s director of strategic performance David] Posner said each JCC has its own protocols for responding to risky situations, and in many cases that does mean evacuating.

Who’s behind the bomb threats? Nothing in the Post article, or anything else I’ve read, gives me any reason to think that there’s much of a chance of catching the culprit(s) — for all we know, it is just one individual, who is using a voice-masking device and an untraceable phone, and has just done a google search of “Jewish Community Center.” And despite the statement above that a complete evacuation is not recommended, this seems to be happening in each instance.

Based on a reader hint that bomb threats were routine in the days of the IRA, I did a bit of a google search. Apparently, both bombs, and bomb threats, and bomb threat hoaxes, were routine, and the entire point of the bomb threat was, in fact, to allow the IRA to destroy property while at the same time at least in principle not causing deaths. The IRA developed “code words” that they used in communicating with the police, so that their threats would be authenticated and hoaxes would be identified as such. (See this article in the Baltimore Sun and this one in the Independent.)

But then there was a clearly-defined adversary. In this case, there is none. Instead, there’s a practice of evacuating at every threat (unless I’m mistaken). Could that practice be changed? I don’t know. Who would be willing to make that first move, and put lives at risk, even if the risk is small? Sure, any one person can choose whether to evacuate, but we’re talking about administrators making the decision for small children.

(There does not seem to be much information out there on bomb threats, and the likelihood of the bomb being real vs. a hoax. An old data source says that 90% are hoaxes, but this page is so old that it recommends monitoring the school’s pay phone, and its source for the 90% figure is a bad link.)

But it’s scary how much power a single person can claim for himself in this manner, whether it’s to harm a group, as in these calls, or just for personal gain (a bomb threat just before an exam was supposed to take place). And this latest wave, whether one person or a series of copycats once the first happened, illustrating the ease of the crime, could easily continue indefinitely and cause lasting harm, if JCCs become fortresses and parents leave because of it.

Readers, how do you solve it? And how would you react if you were the recipient of such a call?

Image: the Osher Marin JCC. Not a target of bomb threats so far as I can tell, but as a stand-in for all the others. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOsher_marin_jcc.JPG; By Kiddo27 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

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