Courthouse receives one or two threats per year
By Daily Press staff
There are no leads as to who threatened to blow up the Santa Monica Courthouse on Wednesday, but officials do know that a man, who said he was of Middle Eastern decent, called in the threat.
At about 2 p.m., a man called the small claims court division in the courthouse and said a bomb had been planted in the building, officials said.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies evacuated the building, which had about 250 people inside, within minutes. Several cases were being heard, as well as a few jury trials when the threat was made.
Authorities combed through every inch of the building for about an hour and a half before concluding it was a hoax. Judge Alan Haber, the presiding judge over the westside district of the Los Angeles Superior Court, ended the court day since there was only about an hour left in the business day.
“The dilemma is, at that hour, what do you do?” the judge said. “If one uses their imagination, how long would it take to have 250 people go back through screening? It would have been a waste of time.”
Haber said bomb threats are routine — there was one in early 2002 that occurred about 11 a.m. People were let back in the building later that afternoon, he said.
“It happens once or twice a year and never once have they found a bomb,” Haber said. “It’s havoc to shut down in the middle of the afternoon. But the man gets a perverse satisfaction from doing this.”
The caller most likely won’t be traced because local calls into the courthouse are not recorded, authorities said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 31, 2003. Read the original PDF.