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FEATURE
How to Respond Safely and Sanely to a Library Bomb Threat
by Steve Albrecht
| Our responses to bomb threats must be measured and must take in the possibility that the event is a hoax and then initiate safe, practical, and realistic security responses. |
Let’s start by saying something bold and true: In the U.S., bomb threat makers make bomb threats, and bomb makers make bombs. Thankfully, for the safety of our country, they are not usually the same person. This is not the case in other countries, but it is here. In the U.S., actual bombs that explode are exceedingly rare. The ongoing reality is that bomb threats aimed at public businesses—such as libraries or city or county buildings—political rallies, community gatherings, K–12 schools, and even charity events are still far too common.
Here’s the main problem: A bomb threat emailed to your library creates a highly personal, heavily intuitive response that sounds logical (“We need to evacuate!”) and that’s actually an overreaction. It’s better to stay put, investigate fully, and make a careful plan to respond based on what is known about both the threat and the threatener and what is found (a real or suspicious device)—and not shut down the business based on what is most certainly a hoax. (I’ve been studying violence since 1992, and I’m not aware of a bomb ever detonating inside a U.S. library.)
This is not to say we don’t take bomb threats seriously; we do, as they are a crime and create fear and disruption for everyone at the targeted location. Our responses to bomb threats must be measured and must take in the possibility that the event is a hoax and then initiate safe, practical, and realistic security responses. We’ll need to evacuate only in those rare possibilities in which an actual or a lookalike bomb device is discovered.
The reason bomb threat makers do what they do is not to blow up buildings and kill people. Despite what might be easily found on the internet, it’s not that simple to make a bomb that can do that much damage. There are plenty of stories of nitwits who blow themselves up in their garages or basements because they don’t understand the chemistry, physics, and electronics necessary to make a bomb.
The goal of bomb threat makers is not mass destruction—it’s fear. Our response to these electronic threats should include managing the fear of our employees and patrons and the community near the library. Most people don’t understand threat assessment and threat management principles, so they believe that every bomb threat is real. Unfortunately, this can include responding police and sheriffs, fire chiefs, library leaders, and board lawyers.
Dissecting the Threat
Let’s consider the usual components of a bomb threat coming into your library by email and then look at suggestions for a better response. Starting with the electronic arrival of a bomb threat, an important first issue to consider is who it was addressed to. Did it come into the library as a general delivery email? Was it addressed to the director or a specific staff member? Targeting the director may be because the threatener wants to reach an authority figure, whom he has no specific beef with. Sending it to an identified staff member might be because of a previous confrontation or customer service issue that the sender is still angry about or, more concerning, as a result of a stalking or domestic violence issue.
Check the timestamp. If someone sends a bomb threat email at 2:00 a.m., then it’s probably safe to consider that the threatener didn’t really want anyone to be there in person when it arrived. Bomb threats via email that arrive during library business hours are similar to when a threatener calls in a bomb scare to the main library number and speaks to a library employee. The goal is to create fear, disrupt the business operations, tie up police and fire services with a multiple-agency response, and even get the library to shut down a planned program, author’s visit, or other politically identified activity at the facility.
The specificity of the language in the electronic bomb threat is significant, not so much because it proves the validity of an actual bomb inside the building, but because it will suggest that the threatener has a familiarity with the library, its operations, its building design, and the activities of the staffers. One example is someone saying this in an email: “I’ve hidden a bomb in the drop ceiling in the children’s section on the second floor. It’s set to go off in 15 minutes, and don’t bother calling the police because there’s nothing you can do. If you don’t evacuate the library, then you’ll have blood on your hands.”
To start, we need to call the police immediately, because what the person just sent us is a crime. Second, we need to verify a few obvious clues: Is our children’s section even on the second floor? (Do we have a second floor? And if the answer is no, we know even more that the threat is a hoax.) Is there a drop ceiling above this area? Does it look like it has been recently disturbed? Can we have a carefully worded discussion with key staff members to see if they’ve seen or witnessed anything unusual with recent patrons? The more specific the language in the emailed bomb threat, the higher the likelihood the threatener is either known to us, is one of our patrons who has exhibited mental health struggles before, or has made similar verbal or electronic threats.
Review the email threat for its specificity: Who is being targeted? Where is the supposed device? Why is this threat being made? What’s the motive? When will the device go off? How are we supposed to respond (warnings by either doing or not doing something, to make it more likely the person will detonate the bomb)? What must we do to prevent it from happening?
Searching Your Library for a Suspicious Package, Box, or Device
What follows is not designed to turn you into an expert on bombs; it’s about how to use a selected team of library leaders to (quietly, carefully, and skillfully) search your entire library for any item that looks unusual, like it shouldn’t be there, and could be dangerous.
Three-Height Search Technique
Using a team approach, each person should first look from ground-level to waist-level. Next, look from waist-level to head-height. Lastly, look from head-height to ceiling-level. It should go without saying not to open, touch, nudge, or move anything with your foot that you find on the floor, a table, or a shelf. But if you find something, you’ll need to block access to the area and evacuate all patrons and staffers to a location at least one-quarter mile (about 1,300') from the library.
It’s critically important that you only call for the bomb squad (most often staffed by the county sheriff’s department, the fire department, and/or the state police) from this far-off position, not from inside the building. It’s rare to hear of bombs being detonated from inadvertent cellphone or landline calls, but we never want to take the chance that the bomb maker has the sophisticated knowledge of how to do that. |
Hunters vs. Howlers
Here’s a model that may help us understand bomb threat makers versus actual bombers. It was created by Frederick S. Calhoun, based on “Hunters and Howlers: Threats and Violence Against Federal Judicial Officials in the United States, 1789–1993” (cdn.fedweb.org/fed-96/2/Hunters_and_Howlers.pdf), his 1998 report for the U.S. Marshals Service in assessing threats of harm against federal judges and federal courthouses, whom the marshals protect. Calhoun describes “howlers” as people who make threats designed to create fear, but they have no real intention of carrying out the threats. They threaten people directly, verbally, over the phone, or electronically, and their language is intense, frightening, sinister, and ominous. Their weapons are words—not bombs, guns, or violence—aimed directly at their targets.
By stark contrast, “hunters” do not warn their targets. They operate in stealth and strike without notice. They don’t make bomb threats; they plant working bombs that detonate. (Consider this parallel: The U.S. Secret Service talks to howlers, who have threatened the president in a variety of ways; they look for hunters, who have a secret plan and want to take action, not just write or say words.)
We can categorize bomb threat makers (the aforementioned howlers) as these possible suspects:
- Kids, especially in a group, on a dare, who may want to disrupt a library activity or something they don’t want to attend as a student
- Alcohol or drug users
- People with untreated mental health issues, especially those having psychoses, being out of touch with reality, or dealing with rage, revenge, or conspiracy theories about the government that they believe the library caused
- Recently terminated, demoted, or transferred employees from the library or nearby city or county government offices
- An angry vendor who has not been paid on time or enough for their services
- An angry, disgruntled, disturbed patron who is furious about how they or a family member was treated at the library
- Threateners from outside the U.S., which could include bots, AI-created impersonations, or people who want to extort ransoms from the library before they stop making threats
All that said, you should see the sidebar on the right for some helpful advice.
Protecting Cyber-Evidence
Most responding patrol officers will know how to interpret bomb threats, but they won’t always understand IT evidence or how to collect or capture it. Get IT support to capture the bomb threat message. Take screenshots or photos, and print them out as well so you can show them first to responding law enforcement officers and later to detectives if they do a follow-up investigation. You’re most likely to talk with police investigators if they find a suspicious device or if this is a serial case, meaning that the threat maker is making threats all over town to various public entities, schools, or popular businesses. Ask the police, “Has this happened before at other government businesses? Is the threatening language the same? Do you have an idea who is doing this?” Help them figure out who it is if you can.
Despite their best intentions, firefighters and police officers may overrespond—meaning they will order an evacuation of the library to err on the side of caution. But bomb threateners respond to our response. When we overreact and close the library (including all of the other branches, even if they have not had a similar threat), the message to the threat makers is that they won, and they are more likely to do it again, at random times, to prove they can shut down a public agency with a few keystrokes.
If You Have to Evacuate
There are no perfect, fast, or easy ways to evacuate a public facility. If it has to happen, once the building is verified as empty, the local police—or more likely the sheriff’s office—will send in a bomb dog with its handler. If they find what looks like a real bomb, they will send in a robot or a team of experts to defuse and remove it.
Do not stage staff or patrons near any part of the library (the flagpole, the parking lot, the loading dock, in front of the building, along the side of a fire truck). The first responders probably won’t allow you to do this anyway, but it’s important to get everyone as far away from the library building as possible.
Concluding Remarks
Being the shepherds of our facilities sometimes means we have to make hard decisions on behalf of a group of people we deeply care about, because we know more about the totality of the issue and the best response than they do. We recognize the seriousness of this crime. We recognize we have a duty to protect patrons, staff, and the library building. We will have discussed our response with our first responders. We also know that bomb threats are not the same as an actual discovered bomb. We must not allow people making bomb threats to shut down our libraries.
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