 "Photo: Andy Facini")
Police cordoned off the sidewalk in front of a Kenmore Square bank for more than three hours Tuesday afternoon to destroy a "suspicious" briefcase that later proved innocuous.
A detail officer reported the unattended briefcase in front of a Citizens Bank branch at 1:16 p.m., and bomb squad technicians arrived at the scene by 1:29, according to a report of the incident read by Boston Police Department spokesman Eddy Chrispin.
Bomb squad technicians "disrupted" the package but found only papers and audio cassette tapes, said a police officer on the scene who asked to remain anonymous in accordance with BPD policy. The branch remained closed until around 4 p.m.
The police "probably won't look for the owner" of the briefcase, because the threat amounted to nothing, the officer said.
The Boston University Police Department used the BU Emergency Alert System to email students about the traffic situation yesterday, but did not activate the text message and phone alert features because BUPD officials thought an emailed warning was sufficient for the situation and did not think students would appreciate more messages, BUPD Chief Thomas Robbins said.
"It was the traffic situation in Kenmore Square," he said. "We could get a widespread dispersion through email. We thought the best way to alert the campus was through email."
The BU Alert sent emails to students warning them of the bomb threat and the ongoing traffic situation at 2:39 p.m., one hour and 23 minutes after the call came in. At 2:48 p.m., BU Alert sent another email reporting the situation cleared.
"If there was any delay, it was just making sure we had enough facts, the correct information," Robbins said. "We want to make sure it's appropriate, and we have all the facts when we send it out."
Robbins called yesterday's execution of BU Alerts an "absolute success."
"We previously had some students call back and say the message was illegible, but we didn't get any feedback on this one," he said.
Some students said their busy schedules on the first day of classes prevented them from accessing their email until hours after the bomb scare had ended, however.
"I got the first email about two hours after because I was in class," Cailyne Ghazarian, a Sargent College and Health Rehabilitation Sciences senior, said. "What if I had gone by that area, and I didn't know about it?"
Jennifer Williams, a College of Arts and Sciences senior, said BUPD should have alerted students with text messages.
"I always have my phone on me, so I get text messages," she said. "If you were at class or somewhere you couldn't check your email, then I wouldn't have even known about it."
Since the bomb scare was a false alarm, some students, like SAR senior Liz Metzger, said it was better for BUPD to use email alone.
"The system's in place for emergencies," she said. "It could have turned the system into something that we thought they were using for everything. It's a bad way to start off the school year."
Staff writers Stephanie Bergman, Lauren Finch and Andrew FitzGerald contributed reporting to this article.
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