At Least 18 N. Jersey Schools Receive Bomb Threats Wed. Morning

It began with an automated, anonymous phone call at 8:21 Am this morning.

Now 18 schools in 13 different towns have received bomb threats. Some of the schools targeted are actually on Spring Break right now.

The article mentions this occurred

...on the heels of a presentation at Passaic High School Tuesday warning students of the serious consequences of reporting hoaxes.

www.northjersey.com...

Students in all six schools were evacuated away from the schools and parking lots, the chief said. There were not enough borough police officers, so borough firefighters and officers from the State Police, Garfield and the county sheriff’s office helped. All of the schools have been deemed safe.

Was some teenager just being a rebel, thinking "Challenge accepted!"? Hopefully they're able to track down how this happened/ "who doneit"

The school that had the presentation about the consequences of reporting hoaxes was not targeted today. It's unclear if the presentation is related:

Technicians from the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad met with half of the city’s high school on Tuesday following eight bomb threats this year to the school. They were scheduled to meet with more students today. As of 10:20 a.m., Passaic High School had not received a threat. It’s not yet clear if today’s threats are related to the presentations.

a reply to: FamCore

Interesting. There was another incident of mass bomb threats being made against schools a few months ago if you'll remember.

30 EAST COAST SCHOOL BOMB THREATS CALLED IN; 10 IN NEW JERSEY

Tuesday, January 19, 2016 CLIFTON, New Jersey (WABC) -- Bomb threats were made against schools in at least ten New Jersey towns Tuesday, and now authorities believe they are part of a pattern that stretches up and down the East Coast. None of the threats was considered valid, but schools in Garfield, Bergenfield, Leonia, Fair Lawn, Englewood, Teaneck, Hackensack, Tenafly and Clifton, along with Sayreville in Middlesex County, received the robocall threats overnight. Police are investigating whether they are related.

EDIT to add:

This was all coming on the heels of the threats of terrorist attacks in December in LA and NYC that weren't long after the terrorist attacks in Paris.

a reply to: theantediluvian

After doing a quick search I didn't find anything about authorities having "solved" those ones either It sounded like the threats in NH/MA/NJ could have been related as well. That's a bit disconcerting..

a reply to: FamCore

There are a lot of weird people in the world who get off on using phone calls to cause chaos, insert themselves into ongoing crises, etc.

I seem to remember bomb threats being called into hospitals following the San Bernardino shooting for instance.

a reply to: theantediluvian

About a month or so back there were a few schools in the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area that had some bomb threats thrown at them--nothing came to fruition, thankfully.

I think that this is becoming one of those triple-dog-dare things going around right now; a testament to the stupidity of teenagers.

Southern Illinois schools are also getting a lot of bomb threats recently. Looks like we have a pattern developing.

a reply to: Klassified

Found this article from 2 days ago about this issue in Massachusetts, and again, some of these were from automated phone calls:

Some of the threats were received via an automated phone calls

www.boston.com...

a reply to: FamCore

My daughter had to evacuate her middle school twice in the past two weeks. Three written bomb threat were the cause. A fourteen year old boy arrested last week admitted to two of the threats. He was arraigned on multiple charges and expelled from the school.
We thought it was over after the arrest was made.... But I got a call last night from the district announcing that an online threat had been made and no purses, bookbags or backpacks would not be allowed in the building today. No news yet on that threat.
It is Muhlenberg School District near Reading, PA.

a reply to: butcherguy

How the hell do you run an entire school, even for a day, when the students can bring their books/binders in? What in the actual hell?

I'm thinking it IS just a "fad" type of thing going around, probably mostly youthful troublemaking boys who want to impress each other I thought I was a terrible kid but I would never have fathomed calling in a threat of any kind. The worst thing I did was make prank phone calls to the girls who were my age using an Andre the Giant Soundboard or something similar... well, maybe that's not the worst I did, but certainly no threats! What's going through these kids' heads (if it is all kids)

a reply to: FamCore
It has been a terrible time. They evacuated her from the middle school the second time and did not get the building cleared before dismissal time, so she was dismissed from the high school. The trouble was that they didn't have their things with them. My daughter went home, but couldn't get in the house because she had no keys and she didn't have her phone.