Mixer: A Tale of Two Cities

The Los Angeles Unified School District closed all of its campuses and facilities this week because of an emailed terror threat.

It claimed bombs, nerve gas and automatic weapons were stashed at several schools and an attack – the threat said – was imminent.

Public school officials in New York City received a similar threat, but quickly deemed it a hoax.

New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the city of LA overreacted. And that put a lot of local leaders, like school board president Steve Zimmer, on the defensive.

“I’m not really interested in Mr. Bratton’s opinion on this,” Zimmer said.

And he added that the district hasn’t “heard from a single parent that said that they were upset that we closed schools.”

Bratton — who at one time, headed up LAPD — walked back his comments about LA a little later.

“They made a decision based on their analysis based on their situation. We made one here based on an analysis of our situation,” he said.

The two cities handled the perceived terror threat very differently, and we asked a couple of reporters who covered the story to join us to talk about it.

Howard Blume covers education for the Los Angeles Times, and Richard Perez-Pena is with the New York Times.

They both joined us for the Mixer.