By Kenneth C.
Rossignol
ST. MARY’S
TODAY
CALIFORNIA
(Feb. 20, 2009) —- In the
past two weeks another six
bomb threats have closed the
massive Wal-Mart super store
located on Rt. 235, not the
first series of bomb threats
that have targeted the
store.
But with the
Wal-Mart being closed for
two hours at a clip so the
police can evacuate the
store and check out all the
nooks and crannies with K-9
dogs, the loss in dollars to
the business is tremendous;
however collateral damage
has also been done to
neighboring businesses which
had their access cut off.
Last week the
State Police blocked both
roadways that lead into the
Wal-Mart Plaza, blocking all
customers access to the
Cheseldine Auto Center,
Wendy’s, Checkers, a real
estate office and a dental
office, all of which are
more than 500 feet away from
the Wal-Mart, despite a
recommendation from the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms that a 300 foot
area be cleared around the
threatened building.
Lt. Mike
Thompson, the Leonardtown
Barrack Commander told ST.
MARY’S TODAY that his
officers were assisting the
Sheriff’s Department in the
incident and their
assignments to block off the
access roads were at the
direction of the Sheriff.
Sheriff Tim
Cameron said that he would
review the incident and
determine if any subsequent
incidents can be conducted
by allowing the flow of
traffic to those businesses
which are not affected by
the threats, all of which to
date have proven to be
false.
Sheriff
Cameron did exactly that and
when the next two bomb
threats occurred, the police
pulled back their blockade
of traffic to the service
road that runs between the
Wal-Mart and its neighbors,
allowing access to the other
businesses.
Making bomb
threats to schools and
businesses has become a
pretty standard way of
harassment by students who
aren’t prepared for exams or
disgruntled employees who
wish to economically harm
their former or in many
cases, present employer.
Police
agencies that deploy their
forces in response to such
calls, unless they follow
ATF recommendations are able
to rope off areas much
larger than necessary,
further multiplying the
value of the false bomb
threat and the loss of
businesses, already reeling
from the current national
economic nightmare.
But it was
apparently easier for the
police last week to simply
block off the two main
entrances to the Wal-Mart
Plaza, entrances that also
give access to the other
five businesses, than it was
to block access to the
Wal-Mart parking lot.
Sheriff
Cameron admitted that when
the initial response occurs
that there may not be enough
manpower to properly
restrict access to the store
while it is searched.
A search of
reported bomb threats to Wal-Marts
in the past 10 years found
that there were many
threats, dozens and dozens
each year, but only one
actual bomb.
But police
response to questions about
how they treat a bomb threat
always invokes the bombing
of the federal building in
Oklahoma City, where, there
was no threat before the
bomb was detonated.
In 2007 a
series of bomb threats made
to Wal-Mart stores in
Virginia, Rhode Island,
Michigan, Utah, Arizona and
Pennsylvania included
instructions to wire $10,000
to an account, which one
Wal-Mart did. Police in
those cases believed the
phony calls were made from
overseas.
Just in case
readers might think it’s
pretty stupid on the part of
the police to close stores
which are essentially a city
block away from Wal-Mart,
then consider that according
to CBS News, some of the
bomb threat callers to
Wal-Mart stores instructed
the employees to take off
their clothes, and the
employees stripped naked,
which they did.
In Newport,
R.I., employees got three
phone calls on the same day
and each time wired $10,000
to an account.
At some chain
stores, callers have told
the employees that they
could see them and
instructed the employees to
order the customers to sit
around in a circle, to lock
the doors and not to call
police while they wired
money. When the cops did
call after a customer
couldn’t get in the locked
door, the employees hung up
on the cops, telling the
police that they were being
watched and a bomb could go
off if they talked to the
cops.
Wal-Mart has
been the target of vicious
union organizing campaigns
and a frequent target of
false bomb threats. One
Wal-Mart store in Canada
evacuated their customers
and instructed employees to
look for a bomb instead of
calling police, which scared
the hell out of employees.
On Feb. 4th,
a Hagerstown, Md. Wal-Mart
received a bomb threat that
said there were explosives
throughout the store and
money had to be taken to a
nearby Home Depot. The
Wal-Mart was closed for an
hour while police searched
and they didn’t turn up
anyone at the Home Depot,
according to the Herald-Mail
newspaper.
The
Associated Press reported on
Jan. 9th that an employee of
a Wal-Mart Store in
Washington State was charged
with making bomb threats to
7 Wal-Mart stores in Oregon
and Washington.
A
surveillance tape at the
Boone, N. C. Wal-Mart caught
on tape a man leaving a bomb
at the entrance to the store
last July. A report a North
Carolina television station
said that the bomb was made
from two butane tanks. The
ATF offered a $5,000 reward
for that bombing.
On Monday
Feb. 16th, the same day as
the local Wal-Mart in St.
Mary’s County was the target
of it’s third bomb threat in
a week, a caller to police
in Marietta, Ohio made bomb
threats against that city’s
hospital and Wal-Mart.
The ATF
recommends that the best
search teams of a store or
office building should
include volunteer searchers
of persons who work in the
building, as those persons
are most likely to be able
to spot items which are out
of place.
