Bomb scare at Bogalusa Middle

This kinda stuff has been going on forever.

When I was a kid - before the last Ice Age ;-) - there were fake fire alarms. Some enterprising little hoodlum would pull the lever in an empty hallway, bells would sound, and we'd all file out the nearest exit and hang around outdoors until the appropriate city officials came and looked through the building.

Yeah, bells. Round metal things with clappers. The schools didn't have those electronic doohickeys that sound like a robot farting.

Back in the classroom, we'd get a lecture about how it was against the law, blah blah blah. I never knew who did it 'cuz I didn't hang out with the hoods. Sometimes they were referred to as "greasers," which has a whole different meaning today.

I don't recall any of my classmates going to juvenile hall for pulling the alarm, but that was a looooong time ago and perhaps memory has faded. It was before video cameras were everywhere. Heck, it was before they were anywhere. The first VCR was sold in 1971.

Can you imagine? Nowadays, we're all in someone's lens by simply running errands: at the bank, at the convenience store, at WalMart.

In the mid 70s, bomb scares came into vogue. The building where I worked was evacuated several times after phoned-in threats. But still no caller ID, and I never heard of an arrest.

From the Daily News article:

Police Chief Jerry Agnew said police identified the call as coming from a cell phone. He said cell phone records would be subpoenaed to help identify the caller.

The call not only came into the school but to 9-1-1 as well, and 911 records are being checked to identify the caller along with voice recordings.

Today's kids have grown up with all this technology. They know they've gotta take precautions to make anonymous prank calls to their friends, f'rinstance. The patent for caller ID was filed in 1982, likely before the perp was born.

Not too bright, to believe you can phone in a bomb threat and remain unidentified.

To find this culprit, they prolly oughtta check phone records... and test scores. Heh.