Bomb Threats in NE Disrupt Schools, Traffic

This happened last Friday. I love this story, because not only does it feature some of the under-the-national-radar terrorism we have to face, but also because the D.C. cops once again are made to look 'tarded.

The search for additional devices ended by mid-afternoon, and officials reopened roads and Metrorail lines after concluding that the neighborhoods and tracks were safe. By then, authorities had swarmed upon a home in Northwest Washington and taken a man in for questioning. Hours later, the man was released. No charges were filed.

Police said the man had called 911 from a cell phone about the same time that the threats were called in, also via a cell phone.

Authorities said they identified the questioned man from phone records, began a search for his pickup truck and converged on a house on Kenyon Street NW occupied by his relatives. But they learned that he had called 911 about a traffic accident and had no connection to the case. Ramsey told a reporter last night that equipment was not available yesterday to distinguish among calls made by different cell phones at the same time.

So wrong in so many ways. I guess if you run into trouble in D.C., and you somehow manage to get through to 911 without getting put on hold, and you manage to get the responding officer to pay attention long enough to your petty not-a-threat-to-national-security problem, you could still get hogtied and taken in for questioning later because their sophisticated cell phone number tracking technology, which must be, like, a divining rod or something, erroneously fingered you as someone who called in a bomb threat.

You are beautiful, D.C. metro police department. No matter what they say. Words can't bring you down.