John CapuchinoThe Difference Between Pretending and Facing De Anza College has received two bomb threats this school year. Most of the student body remains uninformed. According Ronald J. Levine, Chief of the Foothill-De Anza District Police Department, the best policy concerning bomb threats is one that causes the least amount of alarm. While decision makers who need to be informed are very much in the know, the general public is kept in the dark. Considering the motives of any would be bomber, according to Levine, the worst thing to do would be to give them the attention they desire. Levine said that the two bomb threats were made by phone. The first call was made by a suspect with a man’s voice. The second was made by a suspect with a woman’s. They were anonymous phone calls with blocked caller ID. According to police records they were the only bomb threats made at Foothill or De Anza over the last four years. There is a “Telephone Bomb Threat Checklist” used by the FHDA Police Department. It has written questions the person receiving the call should try to have answered. Specific information is needed by recipients to better handle the threat, evacuate if necessary, and to catch the caller. Voice tone is described, background noises are used to place the location of the call and descriptions of accents or any unusual phrases used by the caller are all combined on a single sheet and analyzed for an investigation. Levine said that specific criteria needed to be met in order to consider a bomb threat credible. He said that the school district only evacuates buildings when there is a credible threat, and that the police will investigate before evacuating. He said that traditionally most bomb threats made are hoaxes. On the other side of the valley, Mission College received three bomb threats in May and one in September. The person making the threats left Post-It notes in men’s bathrooms. The school evacuated the first three times and didn’t evacuate on the fourth. The Police Chief of the West Valley-Mission College School District deemed the fourth threat not credible. Peter Anning, Director of Marketing, Public Relations, and Graphic Design Services for Mission College said, “When a bomb threat occurs and there’s no bomb, the priority for your police investigation goes to the bottom of the pile, because a crime has been committed, but it’s a misdemeanor.” Anning said that making the threat is a misdemeanor, carrying out the crime and actually injuring people as the result of a bomb detonation carries a life sentence. Anning created bomb threat posters citing penal codes and terms served for convictions. They were posted throughout the school. Anning said that it is effective putting up posters, acknowledging that authorities know there is a person making threats, letting the public know what is being done to capture and stop the perpetrator, and letting the person know what will happen to them once they’re caught. For the two schools it is the difference between tight lipped policy, hoping it will go away, and battling the cause directly by educating the student body and posting information in public places. Both are flawed. For Mission College, the attention given to the perpetrator could cause more bomb threats. For us at De Anza, not evacuating and not notifying the public could leave students vulnerable if a plan to detonate a bomb on campus were carried out.